Chop It Up: OKC chef Tahnee Francis earns national acclaim for West African fusion

Never tell Tahnee Francis the odds.

A decade ago, the Oklahoma City-based chef and restaurateur of Naija Wife Kitchen lay in a hospital bed fighting for her life following kidney failure that led to sepsis, double pneumonia and heart failure.

“I was not supposed to make it out,” Francis said. “I had to learn to walk again.”

A lifelong fan of writing and literature, Francis began a successful career in publishing in 2008 and operated a digital magazine in the Dallas-Fort Worth area until enduring the grueling rehab after her battle with sepsis put that dream on hold.

The odds that Francis would be in Oklahoma City, leading a culinary revolution despite no training in a professional kitchen and nominated as a James Beard Award semifinalist for best chef in the Southwest would be lower than a Texas Longhorns fan going to a game at the University of Oklahoma and not getting a “horns down” gesture thrown at them.

“This is the fifth life I have lived, and I’m almost 38 years old,” Francis reflected on her career that includes celebrity ghostwriting, publishing and hosting a talk show before a surprise turn to cooking and restaurant ownership.

Francis was shocked at the Jan. 22 Beard Award nomination, learning only when she opened Facebook to an overwhelming number of notifications.

“I couldn’t believe it and thought it was a joke,” Francis said, noting that she had to go to the James Beard website to confirm. “It came out of nowhere. My business has doubled within a day. I’m so grateful.”

Francis’ path away from writing and publishing began not long after leaving the hospital. In true “When God closes a door, he opens a window” fashion, she met her future-husband Tobi. He started cooking for her early in their courtship, showing off his family’s Nigerian recipes, primarily from the Yoruba people, who trace their lineage across arbitrary colonial borders of modern-day Benin, Togo and Nigeria.

“I had no idea what the heck he was gonna do with all of those red bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, habaneros, whatever that red looking oil was, and all of those seasonings that I could barely pronounce,” Francis wrote on Instagram in November. Y’all, it took him hours from start to finish, … but the end result was GLORIOUS.”

She’d come to learn that the red pepper-based stew is so ubiquitous across Nigeria that it’s simply known as “stew.” The red oil is palm oil, an ingredient synonymous with the Yoruba people. She’d even later discover through genealogy that her own lineage goes back to the Yoruba tribe. The Francis family owns a house in Nigeria and spends time each year in Africa.

Francis embraced what it means to be a “Naija wife,” learning recipes from her husband, sister-in-law and other wives in the Nigerian Dallas-Fort Worth community. When she relocated to Oklahoma City in 2020, Francis tried her hand offering a pair of dishes at a pop-up and sold out in hours. The event’s success gave her the confidence to open Naija Wife Kitchen in downtown Oklahoma City.

Leading a fusion revolution

Francis’ Instagram and Facebook pages are filled with videos to introduce an American audience to Nigerian cuisine, customs and dishes at Naija Wife Kitchen. She wants West African cuisine to be in consideration with Chinese, Italian or Mexican when Oklahomans are suggesting ideas for dinner. She is her own test case, having no knowledge of Nigerian cuisine before meeting her husband.

“I always say to keep an open mind and an empty belly,” she said. “As Americans, we’re used to different cuisines. West African food as a whole looks different, but don’t be intimidated by how it looks. … That’s why I give away free samples. Even as a James Beard Award semi-finalist, that’ll never change.”

Okra stew in Nigeria is known for being cooked “to draw,” which means that it highlights the natural sliminess of the ingredient, but Francis cooks out a lot of the sugar residue that results in that texture.

“People have been so scared of trying (my okra soup) because they think it is something so foreign, but when they taste it, they say it tastes like gumbo,” she said. “I’m serving Americans because they have an interest in Nigerian and African food, but no one has taken the time out to explain or cater to them. People don’t want slimy here, at least not the majority.”

Francis ends every social media post with the phrase “peace, love and palm oil.” Growing up in the west, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve heard anti-palm oil propaganda, even if you didn’t realize it. In high school, I heard that palm oil was the least healthy oil. In college, I remember hearing about predatory labor practices around palm harvesting and its role in deforestation. The European Union has even banned palm oil from biodiesel over sustainability claims.

Palm oil is the second-most popular cooking oil in the world, and we’re inundated with anti-palm oil information because the United States and Brazil are the top producers of its main competitor, soybean oil. Palm oil yields eight times the output of soybean oil, which seems to nullify the sustainability argument, and many of the health concerns over palm oil are potentially mitigated by its source of antioxidants and high smoke point.

“There is a certain smoky taste that comes from the palm oil, but it is really good for you,” Francis said. “If I’m missing something, a lot of times I’ll add palm oil to see if it balances out the flavor.”

After spending so much time in Nigeria, Francis has learned firsthand how much affordability means to its cuisine. It’s why you should consider West African cuisine when you’re cooking on a budget.

“The middle class is almost nonexistent (in Nigeria),” Francis said. “Our food is meant to last and holds beautifully, and it stretches. The most common food to stretch if someone needs something to feed their families is our stew.”

Add a couple of boiled eggs, put the stew over rice or add some chicken to make the stew stretch and add additional protein.

You can read about a version of the stew I made here. It is such a simple but flavor-packed recipe. You can add so much flavor with a few inexpensive ingredients like curry powder, fresh ginger and either habanero or scotch bonnet peppers.

Learn more about Naija Wife Kitchen and book a reservation here.

Chop It Up is a column from Jacob Threadgill, a “semi-retired” journalist in Oklahoma City, where he wrote for the alt-weekly Oklahoma Gazette for three years. Prior to the Gazette, he wrote music and lifestyle features for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

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