ON A QUIET SUNDAY IN 2020, Nana Araba Wilmot found herself seated at her mother’s kitchen island in Cherry Hill, laptop open, a scale at the ready, trying to capture something immeasurable. Her mother stood at the stove, instinctively tossing ingredients into a pot of jollof rice—the iconic West African dish Wilmot realized she no longer knew how to make.

“She would go through it too fast and then I’d be like, again—and then it would come out differently,” Wilmot recalls. “I was like, you have to slow down.” What began as an effort to preserve family recipes soon became something more. “After that whole scare when we thought she was exposed to COVID, I started panicking. I was like, I’ve got to start writing stuff down.”

That series of Sunday meals—cooked, documented, and slowly rediscovered—became the seed of Love That I Knead, Wilmot’s traveling supper club rooted in Ghanaian cuisine.

From Fine Dining to Family Stews

Wilmot’s path to the kitchen wasn’t linear. A first-generation Ghanaian American, she grew up in Cherry Hill. After a foray into communications, she attended the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and from there, into the demanding world of restaurant kitchens. She trained under José Garces and eventually made her way to New York to work at the Michelin-starred Le Coucou. But in the white, male-dominated spaces of fine dining, she often found herself culturally isolated.

Then came the pandemic, and with it, a hard stop. She returned to her mother’s house to regroup. “A weekend turned into five months,” she says. “I got really depressed.”

The Backyard Dinner That Launched a Supper Club

One Sunday, her mother asked what she wanted to eat. “I said, I want plantains. I want jollof rice. I want all the stuff!” Wilmot remembers. “She was like, okay, let’s make it.” Soon, the meals became weekly rituals. “Every Sunday she would be like, what are we making?”

Encouraged by a friend lucky enough to share in one of those meals, Wilmot decided to host a dinner outside. She transformed her mother’s backyard, sold 21 tickets, and served a menu of Ghanaian classics—no tweaks, no fusion. “I didn’t make any money,” she admits. “But it was one of the best feelings.”

That dinner became the foundation for Love That I Knead, a name inspired by a family bread recipe. “Bread is life,” she says. “A lot of these snacks I grew up on, I feel like they’re disappearing. I just want to preserve them.”

Philly Roots, Global Vision

Though Wilmot’s career has taken her to New York and beyond, she remains closely tied to the Philadelphia region. Her father, a Drexel grad, first settled in West Philly, and family weekends often revolved around the city. She launched her culinary career here and still lives in Cherry Hill.

She fondly recalls her early kitchen stints on 13th Street during what she calls “the Marcie Turney era,” and more recent collaborations with local chefs like Amanda Shulman and Randy Rucker. “Randy is a gem of a human. That was an amazing collab,” she says of her event at River Twice. “He was like, ‘I’m going to help you in every single way that I can.’”

Still, she sees room for progress when it comes to representation. “We are a diverse city, but when people think of food in Philly, they think of Center City and Rittenhouse,” she says. “I don’t see a lot of representation of Black chefs in those areas, but I know we’re there.”

She points to her own pop-ups—which have taken place from the Italian Market to South Philly—as proof that the interest is there, even if the infrastructure isn’t. “Philly’s a mom-and-pop town,” she says. “People love what they love—cheesesteaks, pizza—but there’s room for more.”

Preserving the Past, Reimagining the Future

Each dinner Wilmot hosts is a carefully composed exploration of West African flavors, presented through her specific lens on food and culture. Her menus change often, but certain dishes reappear—especially her bread.

“I’m always fish-forward,” she says. “Fresh fish is something I just know.” She sources locally when possible, working with regional mushroom growers and fishmongers like Samuels & Son. “I try to connect more with local farmers,” she says, “but it’s hard without a permanent space.”

That, she says, is the dream. “If I had a magic wand, I’d open a bakery with a speakeasy dinner series in the back,” she says. “Somewhere people could get our breads, sit down for a long table meal, and feel connected.”

Until then, she continues to host dinners in Philly, New York, and Washington, DC—each one a small act of cultural preservation, a refusal to let ancestral recipes fade away. “There’s so much oral tradition in our food,” Wilmot says. “I just didn’t want to lose it.”

And thanks to her, we don’t have to.