Have you seen the videos of non-Africans savouring fufu, a West African local dish, with egusi soup and assorted meat with joy lately?
You must be wondering what exactly got into these people. Well, the reason is not far fetched.
https://youtu.be/ElrNkpFvvN4
The fufu challenge went viral after an influencer on TikTok Keith Atowo, a 24-year-old pharmacy student from Ypsilanti, Mich shared videos of himself eating it.
Keith is most known for sharing videos of himself eating — and sometimes cooking — traditional West African dishes and now he has helped introduce fufu to scores of people who aren’t even black.
He has more than 260,000 followers and a no-frills approach to content creation — no soundtracks, special effects. When he’s hungry, he sits in front of his camera with dishes from Cameroon — he moved to the U.S. when he was 12 — and starts each video by describing what’s on his plate in his soothing voice.
The rest of the clip consists of the sound of him quickly tearing through his plate and enjoying the dish.
Keith said some West Africans — upset by videos of people spitting out fufu — have criticized videos like his online for turning the meal into a viral challenge.
He however said his goal wasn’t to start a trend, but he sees the popularity of fufu as a chance to direct money to businesses in the U.S. and boost interest in travel to African countries.
“It’s a good thing that people are learning about our cultural food. It’s a good thing that people are wanting to try,” he said.
“It’s not only going to create a business outlet for many African restaurants we have … but people are going to be more intrigued to travel to Africa.”
Joeneen Hull, a 31-year-old nail artist who had never tried fufu, watched series of people dipping warm chunks of starchy dough into rich, spicy soups.
“One day, I was just like, ‘you know what? Today’s gonna be the day’,” she said. “I’m craving it so bad. I don’t even know what this food tastes like and I’m craving it.”
She drove nearly 80 miles from Moreno Valley in California to Veronica’s Kitchen, a Nigerian restaurant in Inglewood.
At first, she was determined to order multiple soups and showed an employee several pictures from the restaurant’s Yelp page.
He suggested one would be more than enough. She settled on two: egusi and okro (okra) soup.
From her car, still parked outside the restaurant, she filmed herself as she dipped a mouthful of dough into the okro soup. “Bomb — it is so worth it,” she said while filming herself.
Hull’s fufu videos quickly spread on TikTok, amassing more than 6 million views, but her intention was never to go viral. “I just wanted to get some good food and record it, so that other people could see that it’s good food,” she said.
The videos generated traffic to local restaurants around. TikTok users like Hull generally mention where they ordered from, which led to free publicity for small, minority-owned businesses across the country.
At Veronica’s Kitchen, business quadrupled the week after Hull highlighted the restaurant, said owner Veronica Shoyinka, who has been selling Nigerian food in Los Angeles since the ‘90s.
To the surprise and amusement of the African diaspora, fufu is having a moment. Across the TikTok app, #fufu videos have been watched more than 250 million times. The videos have been shared and debated publicly on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and privately on WhatsApp and in group chats.
