We were lucky to catch up with Nina Sodji recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nina, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

By being in the cooking business for over 20 years, I have tried a different approach to solving the need of my community for an African restaurant. But after trying for several years with an authentic restaurant and ending up in a bankruptcy, I had a few years to reflect on the experience. At one point I was given up on the restaurant idea when a friend suggested for me to enroll in our local culinary school. It was a game changer at that point, it opened up a whole universe of different ways of thinking about food in general. I was able to travel with the culinary school where I discovered that there was a lot of different cultures being represented but African cuisine was almost nonexistent. At that point I started to write down different recipes ,structures and concepts. After graduating from the culinary school, I was a little hesitant on opening another restaurant, so I started to teach some cooking classes at my school, I was enjoying that to the point of wanting to become an adjunct chef but one of the requirements was for me to earn a bachelor degree. Towards the end of bachelor program, I was invited to a African summit. At lunch through the event, I was in line with a Caucasian woman. When we got to the food table, she burst out with disappointment “I came to a African summit and I’m eating Tacos !?”. I was right behind her and it touched my soul. African culture equals African food, each culture talks through its food, so the idea that it wasn’t there but I was in the perfect stage of life to offer that really touched me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Nina Sodji, I’m was born on the West coast of Africa, a small country called Togo. I moved to America almost 30 years ago due to a civil war happening in my country. A woman in Africa is raised with the idea of becoming a housewife. So from childhood everyone specially the girls get to spend a lot of time along the mom, grandmother and Aunties in the kitchen. I started to enjoy more specifically when my grandmother would come early on Saturday mornings and make us breakfast.
When I moved to the us, it was hard to find the right ingredients to make our favorite dishes, so my sister and I would go to different groceries store and scavenger hunt for the perfect ingredients. After a few years our community was growing and so was the need for a restaurant, grocery, catering ect…

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

After the African summit, I put all my fears aside and decided to open another restaurant but this time with a casual dinning concept. For a year I worked on the idea and licensing of Okra African Grill and we finally opened in march 2020 and two days later the Covid pandemic hit the world and everything was shut down

Have you ever had to pivot?

With the pandemic closing all doors, I quickly pivot on delivery systems, DoorDash, Uber eats, grubhub and also my own website okraafricangrill.com. Social media was another big help specially Facebook with different organizations that was supporting local restaurants to help us stay open.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Okraafricangrill.com
• Instagram: @okraafricangrill
• Facebook: Okraafricangrill
• Linkedin: Ninasodji
• Twitter: Okraafricangrill