Chef Stone Takes Africa: The Journey That Built The Burgundy
A Decade in the Making
The Burgundy did not happen overnight. It was a 7–8 year passion project — years of planning, travelling, tasting, and dreaming before the first guest ever sat down. To understand the restaurant, you must understand the journey that created it.
The Spark
Chef Stone (Abiola Akanji) trained in prestigious kitchens across Europe before returning to Nigeria. But something nagged at him: why was there no restaurant that celebrated the full breadth of African cuisine? Not Nigerian food, not Ethiopian food, not Moroccan food — but all of it, unified under one roof with the technique and presentation of the world's best restaurants.
"I kept asking myself: why does African food not have a seat at the fine dining table?" he recalls. "The flavours are there. The history is there. The ingredients are extraordinary. What was missing was someone willing to connect it all."
The African Odyssey
Between 2019 and 2021, Chef Stone embarked on what he calls his "African odyssey" — travelling to nearly every country on the continent. Not as a tourist, but as a student.
In Morocco: He studied the art of tagine — slow-cooked, aromatic, patient. He learned how spice blends are built layer by layer.
In Ethiopia: He explored injera culture and the communal philosophy of eating from a shared plate.
In Senegal: He discovered thieboudienne and the West African tradition of one-pot cooking that feeds entire communities.
In South Africa: He immersed himself in the braai tradition and the emerging fine dining scene of Cape Town and Johannesburg.
In Kenya and Tanzania: He studied the Swahili coast's fusion of African, Arab, and Indian flavours.
Everywhere he went, he cooked with local chefs, ate in homes, visited markets at dawn, and filled notebooks with observations.
From Notebook to Restaurant
When Chef Stone returned to Abuja, he had a vision: a restaurant that would serve dishes inspired by 17 African countries, reimagined with modern technique, and presented as a cohesive 7-course narrative.
The Valentine's Day 2022 preview — a $1,000-per-couple, 12-course dinner for just 10 couples — announced The Burgundy's arrival with unmistakable ambition. The space was still under construction days before the event. It was a statement: this restaurant would be unlike anything Nigeria had seen.
On June 25, 2022, The Burgundy officially opened its doors.
The Legacy Continues
Today, Chef Stone's journey continues through every menu rotation. With 17 distinct menus served since opening and a new one every 4–6 weeks, the restaurant remains a living expression of his continental exploration.
His published book, "Chef Stone Takes Africa," documents this journey in full — part cookbook, part travelogue, part love letter to the continent's culinary heritage.
Beyond The Burgundy, Chef Stone has built an empire: Red Dish Chronicles Culinary School (training the next generation), Truck Central (West Africa's first food truck park), and Red Dish Consulting (helping others build food businesses). But The Burgundy remains the flagship — the purest expression of what happens when one chef decides to unite a continent through food.
The Burgundy seats 70 guests nightly, Wednesday–Sunday. Every visit is a chapter in Chef Stone's ongoing African story. Book: 08094111112.