After years of research, chef Omer Al Tijani has unveiled the first English-language Sudanese recipe book. Released during Sudan’s ongoing, underreported humanitarian crisis, this book goes beyond recipes, reaching into reportage, historic expedition and travel memoir. Writer Alexandra Pereira takes a walk with the chef near his London home to chat social justice, travel, and, of course, food.
Strolling up to the grand observatory at Greenwich with my old friend, chef and activist Omer Al Tijani, I clutch his newly-released 336-page book The Sudanese Kitchen to my chest. Over the years, we’ve enjoyed walks, dances, swims and meals throughout Europe; I can still remember the first time I experienced Omer’s cooking. Ta’mia—flat discs of dill-fragranced falafel—with a peanut butter salad. Sambuxa, small samosas variously stuffed with feta, potato, nigella seeds and olives. Tabeekh mulukhiya, a rich and herbaceous jute leaf stew. It was a revelation to me, a heady blend of delicious everyday dishes to the decadent, laborious, ceremonial.
As we look out across the rolling green beneath the observatory, surrounded by rows of terraced houses, estates, the River Thames, and in the distance, ‘The City’ aka London’s financial district, we wonder when humanity decided to possess so much. “Since forever—it’s ancient history,” Omer says, glancing towards the skyscrapers that house global banks and financial institutions. “Now we live in this globalized world, we’re aware of one another, but we still want to take. You see that I’m existing here—why do you have to have any interference with me? The world would be a very different place if we just left each other alone.”
Omer and I met as students at a concert in Manchester in the late Noughties. Even then, Omer was sourcing herbs, spices and other staples to master undocumented family recipes, while annual visits to the Sudanese capial of Khartoum and wider travels fostered his growing interest in languages, food history and global health. After graduating, he backpacked across Latin America before settling in London, working as a pharmacist.
During a 2018-2019 sabbatical, Omer completed a months-long expedition across his homeland, a trip crucial to his research on a book he felt compelled to complete—and as independently as possible following disheartening meetings with major publishers. And he did it. As much as The Sudanese Kitchen tells the story of food, drink and dining cultures, it also weaves in events such as Sudan’s 2019 revolution and the unrest that led to 2021’s coup. Recipes aside, it’s an evocative travel memoir from a native voice with a diasporic lens.
Across two autumn days this year alone, over 2,000 Sudanese were murdered in massacres led by the RSF (Rapid Support Forces), a brutal militia founded in 2013. This follows years of genocidal behavior, droughts, famines, revolutions and coups in the region, based on systematic non-Arab ethnic cleansing that has become indiscriminate.
“To truly understand today’s Sudan, it is essential to know what happened in 2019 and 2021,” Omer says as we walk. “Having a clearer contextual understanding of the current events, it becomes evident how the major stakeholders, such as the UAE, Egypt, and other regional parties, are aligned with the EU, Russia and the US, to keep Sudan perpetually in crisis for their own gain.”
“Cooking and eating Sudanese food sustained us through the revolution; The iconic sit-ins, especially in Khartoum, where food from all over Sudan was shared among the protesters.”
- Omer Al Tijani, chef and activist
Social media and underfunded publications have been responsible for enlightening the masses, from the displacement of over one million refugees and child slavery in the DRC, to the despicably casual treatment of Black Americans and Latinx migrants by ICE. Then there’s the way major news outlets report first on the dismay of tourists being stranded on Jamaica during the recent Hurricane Melissa disaster, or the many desperately struggling African countries rendered unworthy of column inches at all. Western powers repeatedly ignore intelligence and atrocity warnings about Sudan. “The world had grown accustomed to Black and African suffering and regarded it as the status quo,” Omer says.
Following Sudan’s 1989 coup, many Sudanese migrated to the UK, including a host of professionals and academics. The Al Tijani family were one such family of doctors and thinkers. Omer is a British national; born in Ireland, he returned to Khartoum as a child, but grew up in Birmingham, central England, as his family deemed the UK safer and with greater higher education and employment opportunities. Today, some 20,000 Sudanese live across the UK, with 6,000 of those in London, though it’s harder to estimate across the diaspora including UK-born Sudanese.
The Sudanese Kitchen began to really take shape when Omer embarked on his mammoth six-month cross-country research trip with a photographer in December 2018. Detailed so vividly in the book, it’s the closest thing to traveling through Sudan right now.
Tensions have always been brewing and Omer was aware they were arriving during unprecedented change with Sudan on the cusp of revolution. As one perilous leader was tipped out of power in 2019, hope soared; but not for long. A military coup in 2021 dissolved the transitional civilian government, with climate change also devastating the region with 2020 floods across 17 of the 18 Sudanese states, followed by subsequent droughts.
The situation in Sudan, a country of 50 million people, has gone from bad to worse, with a full-blown war between the army and the paramilitary breaking out in 2023, costing at least 150,000 lives to date and exacerbating existing conflicts and economic instability—plus the fast-growing refugee crisis following South Sudan’s 2013 civil war.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN World Food Programme, an estimated quarter of a million Sudanese civilians are trapped and trying to escape both the RSF and the Sudanese Army’s advances, fleeing violence, sexual violence, starvation, and disease. It’s reported that 25 million people are now facing hunger, though the numbers are likely far higher.
Omer’s extended family eventually made it safely to Egypt, at various times over recent years, joining the estimated 12 million fleeing and displaced overall to neighboring countries including Chad, Libya and Uganda. “It was ages before my 17-year-old cousin left Sudan alone,” Omer tells me. “He was trapped at the border due to crazy waitlists and hypermilitarized hierarchies.”
Until the research trip though, most of Sudan remained a mystery to Omer. He journeyed cross vast stretches of Nubian desert and the Nuba Mountains and deep inland cities like Al Obayed, into cosmopolitan hubs like Al Fashir, towns along the Nile and the revered Port Sudan, on his quest to preserve a record of recipes usually passed down through oral traditions.
Al Fashir is famed for its decadent, sophisticated cuisine: deboned roast whole chicken, red hibiscus and baobab stews, whole lamb stuffed with a whole chicken stuffed with boiled eggs. Set on the Red Sea coast, the port city takes a day to reach by car from Khartoum and is as famous for its swimmable, diveable waters as for being an illustrious trading hub. “If I could live anywhere in Sudan, it would be here,” says Omer. “Some of my favorite memories of traveling across Sudan are rail travel, sailing on the Nile, visiting remote villages, seeing Port Sudan for the first time.”
“We returned to Khartoum for a short break in March 2019 that was just long enough to rest our heads and smell tear gas in the streets fizzling with weekly protest marches. Then we headed Northeast to Port Sudan, a thriving cosmopolitan city on the Red Sea coast with connections to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt. The unspoilt sea life spawns many interesting seafood dishes such as Ruz Sayadia (fisherman’s rice) and Senniyat Samak (fish casserole), both of which include a tart tamarind paste to complement the fresh fish.”
- Edited excerpt from the chapter 'Bearing Fruit' (pages 236-239)
The window of time to manage the trip safely was shortening. Omer reflects on the growth of hope, followed by the deepening grip of the paramilitary as they were invested in more heavily, and the West turned a blind eye to the indiscriminate ethnic cleansing.
Many of those Omer got to know on their travels are now impossible to reach. “I have no idea where most of them are now. People’s numbers changed, disappeared, everyone was trying to flee the conflict.”
Back in London, pre-coup, Omer continued diving into library archives and mapping out a book that would invite a global readership to explore those flavors at home, when visiting Sudan became then challenging, and today, impossible.
Beautiful maps and historical insight are interwoven into Omer’s memoirs, family photographs, recipes and exquisite photography. Images depict pebble grills and impresario-style robed men turning skewered meat al-fresco, or dark, cooly decorated Art Deco-meets-Baroque living rooms of strangers Omer was invited to cook with, sunrise over the Blue Nile between Er Roseires in the east and Al Damazine, capital city of Blue Nile State.
Published by indie publisher Almas Art Foundation—also an art space near Waterloo celebrating cross-disciplinary African and African diaspora work—the book is a warm celebration of and stirring tribute to Sudanese culture and history. “Cooking and eating Sudanese food sustained us through the revolution; The iconic sit-ins, especially in Khartoum, where food from all over Sudan was shared among the protesters,” Omer tells me. “I remember these moments when I make Sudanese food today to keep the revolutionary spirit alive, in the face of the forced expulsion and mass displacement of people across Sudan, forcing them to be once again food-insecure.”
What would a renewed and serious diplomatic effort in Sudan look like to Omer? “World leaders need to see the warring generals for the criminals that they are and charge them with war crimes,” he says. “The UAE needs to be sanctioned until it stops supplying arms.”
Watching Omer sign hundreds of books at the London launch, I feel respect, happiness and relief for my friend. A retrospective film plays in the background, featuring Sudanese visual artist Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, co-founder of The Crystalist conceptual art group in bohemian 1970s Khartoum. Autumn brunches and dinners are planned in Copenhagen, New York and London; merchandise and excitingly, an online Sudanese shop is in the pipeline.
The Sudanese Kitchen is compelling for its contrasts; as the Western media neglect of Sudanese suffering reminds us of pervasive colonial empires, the encroaching threat of cultural erasure is proven. Documenting and preserving culture is nothing short of magical, with futures and memory a lifeline for survival against oppression and subsequently, preparing, sharing and eating food together is treasured.
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Follow The Sudanese Kitchen, a living digital archive for Sudanese food and cultural heritage. The book, The Sudanese Kitchen, is available to buy now.
Omer’s favorite London food spots
“Sudanese people tend to stick together, and for the most part, they don’t like to make a lot of noise,” says Omer of London’s diaspora. ”So they may be living right next to you, but you won’t know about it. If you live in west London, King of Alkaware near Edgware Road, Cafe 2000 in Shepherd’s Bush, Toteil in Acton, Hounslow, even Chiswick, then you’ll definitely feel a Sudanese presence.”
1. Refill in Brixton, south London, a no-frills takeaway Jamaican food and drinks in the heart of Brixton: “I always get one of the main dishes with rice and peas, and plantain—so satisfying! Their drinks section is also extensive, with each drink known for many health benefits. I’m obsessed with the mango punch.”
2. Al Kahf in Whitechapel, east London: “The closest I could find to the Sudanese Dal’a—a slow-cooked marinated lamb that falls off the bone, served with rice and vegetables. This dish hits the spot.”
3. Diyarbakir Kitchen on Harringay’s Green Lanes in northeast London: “I love Turkish food and Harringay offers some of the best in London. I love the lamb and aubergine [melanzane] stew with red and white rice. And the rice pudding is insane.”
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Alexandra Pereira is a writer and editor published by Vice, Suitcase, The Paris Review, Fodor’s and Service95. She writes about water, solo travel, folklore and people and also makes theatre at Blood Sport Co and is a contributor at Pariah Press and Union Magazine. She lives between London and Copenhagen.
