With many years of culinary experience from Europe, Asia and now Africa, Executive Chef of Lagos Continental Hotel, Ernst-Lothar Frank, says their kitchens and restaurants bring guests who want to experience local and international cuisines.  brings excerpts

W

First, I want to say that our services at Lagos Continental Hotel are world-class. In terms of location, accommodation, dining and entertainment, sports and recreation, service and meeting facilities we offer the best. In Lagos Continental, we are trying to bring different people inside to widen our portfolio. We have Nigerians and foreigners working with us. For example, when you go to Ekaabo Restaurant on the ground floor, we have a spread of food – Nigerian, French, British, Asian, South African and others which gives it an international flavour. This is the strength of Lagos Continental. It also has something to do with the vision of the management and the support, I guess, of the owners. You can have a lot of people coming, if you do not give them an opportunity to buy things, try out things, it’s not worth it.

For me, I will listen to the Nigerian chefs which we have. I didn’t come here to reinvent Nigerian food. That is already here. What we do with the Nigerian food, we actually try to tap into the experience of Chef Chiamaka Nwakalor-Egemba, who has done that already. She has created contemporary Nigerian food. For example, she created Agege Roll made with Ewa agoyin butter; Stir Fried Cous-cous Salad made from pickled sumbo, balsamic cherry tomato and yaji dressing; Seared Seabass With Coconut Ofe Akwu Risotto which made from Ehuru chili oil, efrin oil, kpekere and greens; Pami and Curry Leaf Granita; and Dodo Ikire Ice Cream and Robo Cake made from sweet agbo reduction, kokoro cookie crumble stewed strawberries. Now, what we have in the hotel is more traditional Nigerian food. I try to learn about it. It is very regional. That’s what I found out. Unfortunately, it’s not very well documented. So, I think there is a need to document it, but there is also a need to recognise what it is. Every national kitchen doesn’t matter. This is now Nigeria. I have never been to Ghana, but probably Ghana is the same thing and Egypt is the same thing. You have to concentrate on what you have as a national food. And like a language, like culture, it’s evolving. So, it’s part of the wider culture. If the culture is changing, normally the food is changing as well. I think this is not as much recognised as it should be here in Nigeria. You have to go to Lagos and everybody can tell you where is a good Italian restaurant, or where is a good restaurant like this. You ask them where the best Nigerian restaurant is, who celebrates it, who you can go out with, you do a kind of fine dining, and you can pair it with wine or spirits, whatever you want to. It’s not that easy to answer, because I ask this question and I don’t really get an answer. Yes, everybody has a favorite joint somewhere, but it’s not in the same part as the restaurants here in Victoria Island. They all concentrate on foreign food. So, that is something which we were thinking of, and also which we should not try to change. We cannot change Lagos. But we want to tap into, and we want to also take Nigerian food into another level. We don’t want to invent the potato again or something like this, but the way it is presented, the way it is looked at, that it can be at par with any other national food in the world as well. I truly believe it can, yes.

 It contributes to the revenue quite a lot. We have a strong banquet department. So, a huge part of the revenue of the food is from the banquet. Now, the food in banquet, yes, it is important, but there are other things around the banquet. People have to come here in a big number. It’s about logistics, it’s about organisation. That’s a big part. In the restaurant, it’s a little bit different. You expect a different service. 

But the reputation of the food and the F&B is making the hotels. Most of the time, wherever you go and you discuss a hotel, everybody has rooms and they are nice and they are well kept and their condition is running all the time. What actually makes the difference between one luxury hotel and another luxury hotel? They are all built the same. A lot of money. Okay, you have white marble, you have black marble. That’s the difference. It is certainly the people and the F&B department, which gives it a kind of excitement. You go to the lobby and you expect that your lobby has to be beautiful, but if you want to drink coffee or beverage, you want to get the cake. The food and beverages department is very important to drive the hotel as well. In this hotel, about 40 per cent of the revenue comes from the food and beverage. One has to say in Africa, for example, you will find hotels that have a bigger selection of restaurants because it’s easier. Once you have a city that is saturated with restaurants, you kind of have to look again at what you want to do with the hotel. Take the example of Lagos.

I have been here for seven months, so my judgement is just for a short period. I think it’s booming. I have witnessed the opening of two, three big places, restaurants, where people actually took the plunge and invested a lot of money for restaurants just in the seven months here in Lagos. They want to have a nice environment. They want to have quality food and beverages.

 Yes, we do that. One of the big challenges a hotel has is to bring people from outside because sometimes they are reluctant to, you know, go through the lobby and security, all of that. What we want to do is to make it easier. First, you need to create names of people that are coming. We have one big example, which is the Chinese Restaurant. Most of the guests in Soho actually come from outside. In reality, it would also be a little bit how we see the future of the hotel. Now, for me I would not have a restaurant on the second floor. I would have the restaurant in the lobby with an outside entrance. We cannot change that, but in the future, that is something which we want to do, to separate the restaurant operation a little bit from the hotel. Of course, it is in the hotel, but I want people to go to Soho. I don’t want people to say we want to go to Continental Hotel, because they have a Soho restaurant. No, they have to say, I want to go to Soho. It happens to be in the Continental Hotel.

With Amaka, we have actually approached her. She’s actually pretty independent. What cooperation we have in the future with Amaka is still not really discussed, but there will be cooperation with her, because what I have seen is that she’s brilliant for what she does. She’s an independent chef and she’s not employed for that. We will have cooperation with her and what that framework looks like, I don’t know about that. Wherever you go, there is a trend. Go to London, the Middle East or the Gulf States. Almost every international hotel will get a chef from outside. It doesn’t matter. They bring their knowledge, but also their star power and they make cooperation with them. As a hotel, I always say this. The hotel is big. The hotel operates like an oil tanker. They are slow. A restaurant is much faster. It’s like a sailing yacht. With a restaurant, you can tap into trends and change trends very quickly. This is what we want to achieve also. In the future, Amaka and others, we will bring them to help us do something which we are not able to do. Yet let them do that for you just to make a better experience for the guests.

It attracts people from all walks of life. They choose Chinese Restaurant because they have had it before. We have the Taiwanese community, the Korean community coming all the time. It’s a small community, but they come here. We also have many Nigerians too. I would say 70 per cent of all our guests are Nigerians. Whether you’re seeking to impress a client, toast to success, or simply wind down after a long week, Soho provides the perfect backdrop — refined, welcoming, and steeped in the sensual pleasures of truly authentic Chinese dining. Each plate, whether Szechuan-spiced or delicately Cantonese, is a vibrant story told through spice, texture, and tradition. From its elegant interiors inspired by the rich aesthetics of Asia, to the chef-to-guest interactions that invite diners into the culinary journey, Soho is more than a restaurant — it’s a destination. A hidden gem that reflects the cultural pulse of Lagos and the global heartbeat of true gastronomy.

The Sugar 52, I guess started out as a regular food farm kind of thing. But we have relaunched it. We have made it into a new name. Everything is new. When you look at this alfresco, open-air dining, that is something we wanted to do. With the old community, that was not wide enough. That was not exciting enough. So, we said, okay, let’s rethink the whole thing. We hired some expatriates for the Sugar 52. We want to take it to another level. From furniture, drinks, food level as well, but then also entertainment after that. I would like to say this, everything in life has a commercial side to it. We want somebody who lives in the hotel to have a fine dining experience. I must say that in Ekaabo, we have actually concentrated a lot on our breakfast offer. We get a lot of good comments because it’s wider, it’s better than it was before. But what happens if you want to go out and have a drink and chill a little bit, that would be at Sugar 52. Also, with good food, if you wish to. You don’t have to leave the hotel to look for something else when you want to have a drink or a hamburger. That you can have here as well.