A Life to Create

I returned to London from a trip through Lille, Brussels, Köln and Amsterdam.

I set out to see cities.

Somewhere along the way, I realised I was also learning how to see myself.

I travel by observing.

I notice buildings, yes, but I also notice the shops underneath them. I notice what people are eating, what is sitting outside grocery stores, how businesses present themselves, what people buy in bulk, what a neighbourhood smells like, what is considered beautiful and what people gather around.

This trip reminded me just how much of that observation is part of who I am.

Palais des Beaux-Arts

In Lille, I visited the Palais des Beaux-Arts.

The rooms were magnificent.

Enormous paintings. Beautiful frames. Extraordinary craftsmanship. History everywhere.

I could appreciate all of it.

But I also felt strangely disconnected.

So much of the work felt heavy.

Death. Suffering. Religion. Power. War. Mythology. Fallen men. People dying beautifully.

There was grandeur, certainly, but there was also an air of morbidity that became difficult for me to ignore.

I kept looking around and thinking about how old the stories felt.

Then I found a vaisselier.

An old wooden cabinet filled with plates.

And suddenly I was interested.

Of course I was. 😂

The table.

The objects people kept.

What they ate from.

What they displayed.

What they considered beautiful enough to preserve.

The small evidence of everyday life.

That resonated.

Those plates told me something about people actually living.

Someone chose them.

Someone ate from them.

Someone washed them.

Someone brought them out for guests.

Someone decided they were beautiful enough to display.

Perhaps they were passed from one generation to another.

I found myself far more interested in that than in another enormous scene of death or mythology.

And that made me think.

I am interested in history, but I am particularly interested in living history.

The history that sits around a table.

The history carried through ingredients.

The history contained in ordinary objects.

The things people use without necessarily thinking of them as important.

A plate.

A cooking pot.

A serving dish.

A tablecloth.

A recipe.

Those things tell stories too.

Then came Brussels.

I spent time walking through the Triangle, the wholesale cash-and-carry district.

Rows and rows of businesses selling clothing, accessories and other goods in bulk.

It was fascinating simply watching what people were buying.

Artificial roses caught my attention.

Nothing extraordinary.

Boxes of artificial flowers.

But immediately my mind started moving.

Tablescapes.

Events.

Photo shoots.

Reusable décor.

Presentation.

How something inexpensive can become valuable when it is styled properly.

How many times can it be used?

What colours are people buying?

What products appear in several shops?

What is moving in volume?

That is how my brain works.

Even when I am wandering through a city, part of me is always looking at the business behind what I am seeing.

Then the neighbourhood started changing.

The clothing wholesalers gave way to African salons.

African food shops.

Grocers.

Boxes of produce outside.

Okra.

Aubergines.

Tomatoes.

Peppers.

Habaneros.

And what I loved was that none of it was presented as unusual.

These weren't ingredients being displayed as something exotic or fashionable.

It was simply food.

Food people needed.

Food people recognised.

Food people were taking home to cook.

That was interesting to me.

Because a grocery shop tells you something about who lives in a neighbourhood.

A salon tells you something.

A restaurant tells you something.

The ingredients sitting outside a shop tell you something.

Within a few streets, I could see commerce, migration, community and culture interacting with each other.

And I wasn't just sightseeing anymore.

I was watching how people live.

How they trade.

How they eat.

How they gather.

How they recreate pieces of home somewhere else.

How culture moves.

I love that.

Köln was another shift.

Another train.

Another city.

Another language around me.

The Rhine.

The cathedral appearing almost immediately as you arrive at the station.

People moving through the city.

Food.

Streets.

Architecture.

By this stage of the journey I had become even less concerned with seeing everything I was "supposed" to see.

I was enjoying moving.

Arriving somewhere and simply allowing the city to reveal itself.

I think there is something important in that too.

Not every experience needs to become a checklist.

Sometimes walking, eating, looking and noticing are enough.

And then Amsterdam.

Amsterdam felt different again.

I stayed in Noord, across the water from Centraal, in an area where modern residential buildings sit beside Amsterdam's industrial past.

Even there I was looking at the city through contrast.

Old and new.

Industrial and affluent.

Water and land.

Then I took a late canal cruise.

Amsterdam at night from the water is beautiful.

The canal houses.

The leaning façades.

The bridges.

Houseboats.

Lights reflecting on the water.

People sitting inside their homes while boats quietly moved past.

It felt intimate.

You weren't looking at the city from outside.

You were moving through it.

Then I went to Moco Museum.

And I absolutely loved it.

I did not want to leave.

After my reaction to the art in Lille, that interested me too.

Here was another museum, but I felt completely differently inside it.

The work was contemporary.

Sometimes playful.

Sometimes provocative.

Sometimes very simple.

Sometimes immersive.

But it felt alive.

It spoke to the present.

One piece read:

“In times of ugly, the best protest is beauty.”

That resonated.

Because I think beauty can be dismissed too easily.

A beautiful table.

Flowers.

A well-designed room.

A beautifully presented plate.

A carefully planned experience.

Good lighting.

Music.

Objects chosen with intention.

We sometimes treat these things as decoration.

And sometimes they are.

But beauty can also be care.

It can be dignity.

It can be generosity.

It can be a way of saying that something matters enough to give it attention.

That life deserves to be made beautiful.

Then I came across another piece.

A TIME magazine Person of the Year cover with a mirror where the photograph would normally be.

I stood in front of it.

Phone in my hand.

Looking at myself inside that frame.

And I had a very clear thought.

I do feel relevant.

Very relevant, actually.

Not because somebody has given me permission to be.

Not because somebody has chosen me.

Not because I am waiting for a publication, an organisation, an award or another person to tell me that my experiences are worth something.

My experiences matter.

My observations matter.

The things I am building matter.

I have cooked.

I have built businesses.

I have closed businesses.

I have started again.

I have lived in different countries and moved between different cultures.

I have taught.

Written.

Created.

Travelled.

Raised a family.

Worked in restaurants.

Watched customers.

Watched food trends change.

Watched African food become part of wider global conversations.

Watched ingredients move.

Watched people reinterpret food.

Watched good businesses succeed and watched others disappear.

I have spent years thinking about what happens around a table.

That is experience.

That is knowledge.

That is material.

All the Parts Belong Together

Chef.

Entrepreneur.

Educator.

Traveller.

Storyteller.

Observer.

For a long time, I treated those as separate parts of myself.

This trip reminded me that they belong together.

Cooking is part of my work.

But so is observing.

I notice how people shop.

I notice packaging.

I notice prices.

I notice when branding feels loud and when it quietly belongs to a city.

I notice ingredients sitting outside a grocery shop.

I notice the artificial flowers in a wholesaler and immediately imagine a table.

I notice a cabinet full of plates in a room filled with famous paintings.

I notice the spaces people gather in.

I notice what people consider valuable.

I notice where there might be an opportunity.

I notice culture while it is happening.

And I don't need to separate those things from being a chef.

They are part of being Chef Dumebi.

Food has never only been about what is on the plate for me.

It is culture.

Commerce.

Memory.

Design.

Migration.

Hospitality.

Identity.

Community.

People.

And again and again, I find myself returning to the table.

Because the table is where so many of those things meet.

Sometimes travel doesn't introduce you to somewhere new.

Sometimes it introduces you back to yourself.

I returned to London feeling less interested in becoming somebody new

and much more interested in fully embracing the person I already am.

There is work to do.

A life to create.

And I am very excited to make it.