History of Chin-Chin: From Lagos to the World | Mikey's Gourmet
Michael LawansonShare
Where did chin-chin come from?
Chin-chin did not begin in a factory. It did not begin with a brand.
It began with people who were trying to come home.
In the 19th century, the Saro, freed Africans returning to Nigeria from Sierra Leone, and the Amaro, returning from Brazil and Cuba, brought with them a sensibility shaped by displacement and survival. They were educated, formal, and precise. They built churches and schools. They also brought back a relationship with food that was particular and deliberate.
Chin-chin came from that world. Fried dough, lightly sweet, made by hand.
How chin-chin was made and passed down
It required patience. It required knowing the weight of the dough before it went into the oil, the temperature of the oil when it was ready, the sound of it when it was done. These were not things you wrote down. They were things you learned by standing next to someone who already knew.
How it moved across Nigeria
That knowledge passed from kitchen to kitchen across Nigeria. It became part of what celebration meant. A naming ceremony. A wedding. A homecoming. Chin-chin was there, in a bowl on the table, disappearing faster than it was refilled.
How chin-chin spread beyond Nigeria
It crossed borders the same way the people who made it did. Not through export or distribution. Through memory. Through a mother who packed the recipe in her head when she left Lagos and made it in a kitchen in London, or Houston, or Toronto, because the children needed to taste something that was still theirs.
If you want to understand what chin-chin tastes like, and why the texture is the first thing you notice, we wrote about that too. What chin-chin tastes like and why it stays with you.
About Mikey's Gourmet Chin-Chin
That is what this is. Not a product that happened to draw from a tradition. A tradition that became a product because someone refused to let it disappear.
The recipe at Mikey's has not changed. The kitchen it came from has not changed. What has changed is where it is being made, and who it is reaching.
Read the story of how the recipe came back.
If you are ready to taste it, the current batch is available now. Orders close Thursday at 9pm. The batch ships Saturday.