THE STANDARD

I was born, bred and buttered in Surulere, Lagos.

My mother, whom I have always called The Mama, made chin-chin by hand. Every batch. When it was frying, the smell filled the kitchen and drifted into the street. My brother, a childhood friend, and I would wait for it to cool, then fill our pockets and disappear. It never lasted long. The children on the street would come asking.

As I got older, I started standing beside her. I learned the weight of the dough. The temperature of the oil. What the right texture felt like before it went in and after it came out. I learned what made the neighborhood love it.

In 2009, The Mama left Nigeria for the United States. The kitchen was the same. The ingredients were still available. But the person who knew what to do with them was gone. The smell left with her.

For years, the recipe existed only as a memory.

Pictured: The mama (middle), my friend (top right), my brother (bottom left), and me (top left) making chin-chin in Benin.

In 2013, I was at a family gathering in Nigeria. There was chin-chin on the table. The texture was wrong. The grease showed. With the disgust on my face, someone laughed and asked if I thought I could do better. I said yes. On the way home I got the ingredients.

That batch took some hours. When I took it back, I already knew it was right. Upon giving them to try, the room went quiet for a moment. Then came the sounds. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. This is niceee. "Call it Mikey's." "Grandma's recipe." "Gourmet Chin-Chin." The room named it before I did.

"Make this into a business," they said. So I did.

Before long I was selling to people with an acquired taste. People who knew what good chin-chin was supposed to taste like and had stopped being able to find it. They started ordering, then carrying it with them when they traveled. To Dubai. To the Caribbean. To the United States. The chin-chin crossed borders I hadn't crossed yet.

In 2015, I came to Los Angeles. The product already had people who knew about it. In 2017, Mikey's Gourmet found its home here. In 2020, we had a chapter in Dallas. But Los Angeles called us back.

Today we make it the same way it was made that first night in Nigeria. Carefully. In small batches. With the same attention to texture, balance, and finish The Mama brought to every batch she made. The recipe hasn't been rushed or reinvented. It's been kept because it works.

The Mama is in Los Angeles now. She can smell it again.

Michael "Mikey" Lawanson
Conservator, Mikey's Gourmet Chin-Chin