What is Ofe Owerri?

Ask an Igbo person from Imo State to name the best soup and you will get one answer, delivered with the confidence of settled fact. Ofe Owerri. The soup of the capital. The one you cook when somebody important is coming.

It is worth being precise about why, because "it's the best" is not useful information if you are staring at a menu deciding whether to spend nearly thirty dollars on a bowl of soup.

What is actually in it

Ofe Owerri is built from four things, and the whole identity of the dish comes from refusing to compromise on any of them.

The leaves. Okazi, also called afang or ukazi, is a tough forest vine leaf that has to be shredded almost to threads before it will soften. Alongside it goes ugu, the pumpkin leaf, which is softer and sweeter. The combination gives you two textures in the same spoonful, which is the point. One leaf alone makes a different, lesser soup.

The thickener. Cocoyam, known as ede, is boiled, pounded to a sticky paste and dropped into the pot in lumps that dissolve slowly. This is what gives Ofe Owerri its particular body: thick but not slimy, heavy enough to hold a piece of swallow without being gluey. Some cooks use achi or ofor instead. Purists consider this a downgrade and they are not entirely wrong.

The palm oil. Red, unrefined, and used generously. It carries the colour and most of the aroma. This is not a soup that can be made lighter by using less of it; the oil is structural.

The proteins. Here is where the cost lives. A proper pot contains stockfish (okporoko), dried fish, assorted meat — which in practice means shaki, ponmo and beef — and crayfish ground into the base. Snails if you can get them. Each one contributes a different kind of savouriness, and the depth of the finished soup comes from having all of them at once rather than a lot of any single one.

The measure of an Ofe Owerri is not how much meat is in it. It is how many different things are in it.

Why it costs what it costs

Stockfish is imported, usually from Norway, and priced accordingly. Okazi does not grow in Alberta and arrives dried or frozen. Cocoyam has to be sourced, boiled and pounded, which is an hour of work before the soup starts. Ogiri, the fermented seasoning that gives the pot its back note, is pungent, slow to make and not something you can improvise.

Then there is the cooking itself. Assorted meat needs long, separate par-cooking because shaki and ponmo take far longer to become tender than beef does. Put them in together and you get either rubbery tripe or disintegrated beef.

Igbo people sometimes call Ofe Owerri the jewel of the South East. The nickname is about expense as much as quality. It is a soup that announces that no corner was cut, and historically that announcement was the reason you served it to a guest.

Why it is not a vegetable soup

This trips up a lot of people ordering it for the first time. Ofe Owerri is green and full of leaves, so it reads as healthy and light. It is neither.

The leaves are a vehicle. The soup is rich, oily, deeply savoury and extremely filling, and a bowl of it with pounded yam is a substantial meal by any standard. If you are vegetarian this is emphatically not the dish for you: the stockfish, dried fish and crayfish are not garnishes that can be left out, they are the flavour base.

How to eat it

With a swallow, and with your right hand if you are willing.

1. Pinch a piece of pounded yam about the size of a walnut from the ball.
2. Roll it lightly between your fingers and press a shallow dent into it with your thumb.
3. Use it to scoop soup, aiming for a piece of meat or fish as well as liquid.
4. Swallow it without chewing. That is genuinely what the word means.

Pounded yam is the traditional partner because its smooth density holds up to a soup this heavy. Fufu works. Eba works. Semovita is the lightest of the four and the one most likely to get lost against the soup.

Cutlery is completely fine and nobody will comment. But your hand controls the ratio of soup to swallow far better than a fork does, which is why the tradition exists.

How we cook ours

Chef Uchechi learned this soup in Owerri, in her grandmother's kitchen, and cooks it the way she was taught. The cocoyam is boiled and pounded rather than substituted. The assorted meat is par-cooked in stages. The okazi is shredded fine by hand.

The one thing we do differently from tradition is ask you how hot you want it. A properly seasoned Ofe Owerri carries real pepper, and we cook ours to a medium house level by default. Tell us mild and we will pull it back without thinning the flavour; tell us hot and we will cook it the way Owerri actually eats it.

If it is your first time, order it with pounded yam and do not plan anything demanding for the afternoon.

Common questions

What is Ofe Owerri made of?

Okazi and ugu leaves in a red palm oil base, thickened with cocoyam, cooked with stockfish, dried fish, assorted meat and crayfish, and seasoned with uziza and ogiri.

Why is it more expensive than other Nigerian soups?

Almost every ingredient is a premium one, and the dish is defined by containing all of them at once. Leave things out to save money and you have made a different soup.

What do you eat it with?

A swallow — pounded yam traditionally, or fufu, eba or semovita.

Is it spicy?

Traditionally yes, though the heat is adjustable. You choose mild, medium or hot when you order from us.

Next, if this is all new to you: soup and swallow, explained for beginners.