The Stories Behind African Spices

Every spice in the Taste: Africa pantry carries a route, a market, and a grandmother’s correction.

Berbere is not a flavor so much as an argument — a dozen ingredients, toasted separately, blended differently in every household. Suya is a lesson in restraint dressed as a lesson in heat. Grains of paradise, the pepper that once rivaled black pepper on European tables, still tastes like the trade route it traveled.

When we build a menu, we start with these histories, not with the plate. The plate is what’s left after the story has been told properly.

Words by the Sensational Events editorial table