Eastward Bound

Museums have long proved one of London’s greatest selling points, attracting tourists, undergraduates and pensioners alike to witness relics of global history. Though many of these institutions are centuries old, a recent initiative to redevelop the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has seen many of these museums, galleries and theatres blossom anew. And every museum needs a cafe, right? From the Garden Cafe at the Garden Museum, to Spring at Somerset House, impressive in-house catering is reinvigorating the once-dowdy genre of museum dining. 

Introducing Café Jikoni: a new collaborative project between the V&A East and Jikoni, the Marleybone-based restaurant with a “no borders” approach to their cuisine. The partnership, which has been in the works for a couple years, seeks to bring familiar but exciting, "maternal" dishes at a lower price point than its W1 counterpart, to an 120-cover space in the heart of the Stratford site. The husband-and-wife duo behind Jikoni, Nadeem Lalani Nanjuwany and Ravinder Bhogal, see the expansion as an opportunity to honour and explore the spread of the people who visit the museum, as well as the local demographics of E20 – many of whom were priced out and displaced after the development of the area in the late 2000s. 

Ravinder knows as well as anyone that museum cafes tend to cater to a rather limited taste: “public institutions are such international communities, both with who work there and who visit, yet the food offerings rarely cater for our multitudinous identities. I wanted to create something that felt nostalgic, welcoming & comforting, a taste of home.” She calls her style of cooking “culturally appropriate”, meaning that the offerings mirror the clientele and content of the museums, plucking from cuisines which reflect a fuller scope of British culture in a joyful, relaxed way.

The dishes on offer are nostalgic, original spins on such grandma-friendly classics as pork pies and Tottenham cakes. Personal intrigue falls on the macaroni dhal, or the prawn toast scotch egg, or the yuzu and pandan strawberry iced buns – all playful and inventive, without straying into absurdity. The cafe will open on Saturday 18th of April, coinciding with the launch of The Music is Black: an exhibition on 125 years of afro-diasporic influence on British culture. Café Jikoni is part of an important shift in the dynamic between public institutions and the public itself, and we’re excited to see how it fares in its new location.

Read more about the V&A East here!