Ayo Balogun

A 20-year veteran of the restaurant industry, Ayo Balogun has worked everywhere from a Michelin-starred Indian restaurant to an Italian deli making fresh mozzarella. He serves American food at his popular Brooklyn cafe, The Bureau, and offered similar fare at his now closed Trade Union Diner.

While he’d flirted with the idea of opening a place dedicated to his native Nigerian cuisine, he shied away from it because he thought there needed to be more education about the diversity of Nigerian Cuisine. Beginning in 2015 Ayo hosted a series of Nigerian pop-up dinners called IYA EBA — a Yoruba name for women who sell eba, a Nigerian staple food made from pounded cassava flour — this proved immensely popular. Ayo opened the aptly named Dept of Culture, where he prepares elegant, flavorful four-course meals based on the regional cooking that he grew up with in Nigeria’s Kwara State.

“It’s important for us to tell our stories from our own perspective,” says Ayo, “We should celebrate the similarities we have through food.”

Since opening in 2022, Dept of Culture has been named one of the top fifty restaurants in America by Bon Appetite, one of the top ten restaurants of the year by Eater, Time Out Magazine’s top10 new restaurants in New York, infatuations top 10 of 2022 and many more. Dept of Culture was nominated for the Best New Restaurant James Beard Foundation in 2023, and in 2024 and 2025 for the JBF Best Chef – New York. In 2023 Chef Balogun opened Radio Kwara, described as Dept of Culture’s American cousin. Radio Kwara was recently named one of the best restaurants in the country by Resy. Most recently Mr. Balogun started Old Habits roasting specializing in variants and excellence of African coffees.