Meet Nigerian Born, American Culinary Expert, Chef Tunde Wey

Akintunde Asuquo Osaigbuovo Ojo Wey, popularly known as Tunde Wey, is a New Orleans-based writer, activist-artist, and celebrity chef. Tunde was born in 1983 to a comfortably middle-class Yoruba family; his grandfather had been second-in-command during the military junta that ruled the country from 1966 to 1979. Tunde was born in Lagos, Nigeria, before moving to Detroit, Michigan at age 16 to complete his education.

He intended to become a lawyer before realizing that cooking was his true passion. Wey's restaurant pop-ups in New Orleans, Detroit, and Nashville, which charges white customers "reparations" prices for food, have been written about in the New York Times Magazine.

Featured in GQ, Time Magazine, NY Times, Apartmento, and The Washington Post, Wey's dinners are considered political performance art. Some examples of his work include charging black and white customers different prices to mirror wealth disparity in America, and selling white people $100 boxes of salt as reparations.

Chef Tunde Wey's work focuses on racial inequity, but it didn’t always. He’s a co-owner of Revolver, in Hamtramck, Michigan, a community table restaurant where a revolving lineup of chefs serves prix fixe, locally sourced, communal menus in the style of traditional French guesthouses.

Currently based in New Orleans, he doesn’t only cook and serve food—he also asks diners to engage with inequality in the United States. In 2016, Wey started the Blackness in America Dinner Series, which offered a chance for people to come together in 14 cities across the country to discuss how blackness intersects with their work and lives.