Byredo Bal d'Afrique magazine: Dieuveil Malonga
by Liz Johnson Artur
On an unseasonably warm Tuesday afternoon in October, the 32-year-old Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga was bustling about the narrow office kitchen above the flagship BYREDO store in London’s Soho. Plates of mise en place were arrayed on a nearby conference room table. It was not, Malonga admitted, the kind of cooking set-up he was used to: Known for his elevated take ‘Afro-fusion’ cuisine, he’d flown in from his home in Rwanda two days prior, to prepare a special dinner in celebration of, well, himself. Two floors down, in the gallery space above the shop, guests would soon be arriving for the latest event in a yearlong series fêting BYREDO’s signature scent, Bal d’Afrique, and by extension, the African culture that inspired it; Malonga first met BYREDO founder Ben Gorham at an earlier soiree, a dinner at Milan Design Week in honor of the artist Dozie Kanu, which Malonga had been enlisted to cater. “Ben is very cool and humble,” he recalls. “He came into the kitchen to thank me, and we took the time to discuss and exchange.”
The conversation sparked another collaboration, only this time, Malonga would be the man of the hour. Perhaps no creative compatriot is better suited to illuminating the sensory world behind the Bal d’Afrique: Food, like fragrance, conjures place, and Malonga’s cuisine draws on flavors from across the vast African continent. Born in the town of Linzolo, just outside Brazzaville, Congo, some of Malonga’s earliest food memories are of native cassava root and leaves—“in every menu I make”—and of seeing his grandmother cook in her restaurant. He moved to Germany when he was ten, and later trained in gastronomy at the Adolph–Kolping Schüle in Münster; his high-end culinary skills were further honed by stints at the Michelin-starred restaurants Schöte, La Vie and Aqua, and at the InterContinental in Marseille, France. But Malonga’s true voice, as a chef, emerged during a two-year sabbatical that he spent journeying around Africa, visiting 48 of its 54 countries to learn about their various culinary traditions. In 2020, he opened Meza Malonga—‘meza’ means ‘table’ in the Bantu language—in in Kigali, Rwanda.
The restaurant has won major plaudits for its inventive tasting menu that privileges African ingredients and cooking techniques. (This year, it was nominated for the Best Chef Awards Top 100.) Gorham’s brief for the London dinner was to “connect with the perfume and represent the countries of Africa through spices.” This chimed perfectly with Malonga’s fresh, modern approach to cooking. “The good thing is, I work in a laboratory so I could start from there,” he says, referring to the 7-hectare farm in Rwanda where he grows fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices. Malonga brought over 4 spices from his farm to represent different regions of Africa: djansang from Cameroon, odika from Gabon, suya from Nigeria and roze from Morocco. Additional ingredients were from Afro-Caribbean vendors at South London’s Brixton market.
As guests for the intimate dinner filtered in, and mingled with flutes of champagne and glasses of ruby red Hibiscus French ’75 cocktails, Malonga was putting the finishing touches on his first course, a sliver of pink tuna dressed with spicy Ghanaian shito, mango and hibiscus maize and avocado cream. Co-hosted by Tosin Adeosun, an archivist and creative consultant to BYREDO, and Péjú Oshin, an associate director at Gagosian, the evening’s invitees comprised a mix of some of the best and brightest of London’s vibrant African diaspora cultural scene. Those assembled included Torishéju Dumi, who had just won raves for her debut at Paris Fashion Week, ELLE fashion features director Eni Subair, and Labrum London’s Foday Dumbuya; there were also art world luminaries like Helene Love-Allotey, Head of African Art at Bonhams auction house, multimedia artist Phoebe Boswell, and painter and performance artist Adelaide Damoah (see page TK), whose work “The pain took me to another place with the pleasure and it was a magical beautiful creative womb space” provided a backdrop to the dinner table. Guest Femi Adyemi, the founder of NTS Radio, helped curate the playlist. At around 8:30, they sat down to eat, at a long dining table adorned with bouquets of yellow and orange dahlias arranged by florists Jrasic. Bottles of Bal d’Afrique were displayed on side tables by the Swedish design team Halleroed.
The convivial vibe was buoyed by mains served family-style. Pillowy Moroccan bread studded with aubergine. Creamy suya-spiced cauliflower, beef mafe (a nutty beef stew), plaintain ravioli and okra jollof hailed as a highlight by many of those partaking. As photographer Liz Johnson Artur posed subjects for portraits and snapped candids, the guests caught up with each other, the conversations taking in everything from the imminent Frieze art fair to anecdotes about experimenting with ayahuasca. For dessert, Malonga served Tanzanian chocolate with a rich, buttery sorghum caramel and Rwandan coffee, then guests lingered at the table over glances of Sancerre or repaired to cow print-patterned sofas for late night confidences. “Fusion is what makes a good party,” says Malonga. “Bringing people from different backgrounds together and sharing food. People don’t eat to make themselves full; they eat for the emotion and the experience.”
Malonga’s vision is for nights like this to be more commonplace, with menus conceived by African chefs. Several years ago, inspired by his sabbatical travels, he set up Chefs in Africa, a digital platform that aims to nurture young African chefs in their careers; the ongoing initiative earned him a nod by World’s Best Restaurants as its 2022 Champion of Change. Malonga has even bigger plans for the future: opening a “culinary innovation village” in Musanze, Rwanda that will combine a culinary school with an experimental farm and a restaurant providing a farm-to-table dining experience – all in service of his goal of building a bridge between Africa and the rest of the world. “Africa is the garden of the world,” says Malonga. “With everything that I do, I want to promote ingredients from Africa and awaken the world to our gastronomy.”
