Photograph courtesy Eric Adjepong. Elmina. 2208 14th St., NW. Chef Eric Adjepong has competed on Top Chef and hosted shows on the Food Network. He’s written a cookbook of Ghanaian recipes and a children’s book based on his own upbringing in New York City as a first-generation Ghanaian-American. He’s even developed a kitchen and dinnerware collection. Now, though, Adjepong is finally opening his own restaurant. Elmina, an upscale spot centered around his native West African cuisine, will debut on 14th Street NW in January 2025. “I’ve wanted to open a restaurant since I was like 10. And I knew if I was going to open one, I wanted to have it be on my accord, 100 percent fully my own,” Adjepong says. “It can only have worked if I had saved enough money to do it myself. And I did, finally.” The restaurant, located in the former Seven Reasons space, will offer contemporary takes on regional Ghanaian dishes, exploring ingredients and flavors from both coastal and landlocked parts of the country as well as West Africa and the African continent more broadly. It’s an extension of the cooking that Adjepong has done not just through TV and books, but through his pop-up and catering company and his work for restaurants like Kith and Kin, the former Afro-Caribbean restaurant from chef Kwame Onwuachi. Elmina’s menu of small plates and family-style platters will include street foods like kelewele, spiced plantains with ground nuts, and kyinkyinga, grilled meat skewers. There will be Ghanaian classics like fufu and light soup (a tomato-based soup with steamed fish or meat), which will be accompanied by a hand-washing ceremony since fufu is traditionally eaten with your hands. And of course there will be jollof rice. “I always say if an alien were to drop in Ghana or the West African region and ask ‘take me to your most popular dish,’ eight out of 10 people will say jollof rice,” Adjepong says. On the more modern end, Adjepong plans to have a crudo on the menu augmented by West African ingredients such as palm oil, passionfruit, and corn nuts. He’s also working on a vegetable take on suya (traditionally spiced beef), crispy okra fries, and seared wagashi cheese (a West African cheese made of cow’s milk). Adjepong will also offer a four-course tasting menu (price TBD), highlighting both family recipes and more refined dishes. While Africa isn’t as well known for its desserts, Adjepong says he’s fallen in love with making sweets and cakes. On the menu of Elmina, he’s working on 2.0 versions of puff-puff (the spiced doughnuts also known as bofrot) as well as abele walls, milk ice cream popsicles. The bar menu aims to celebrate the bountifulness of the region, incorporating ingredients like soursop, hibiscus, mango, alligator peppers, and palm wine made from the fermented sap of palm trees. As for the space itself, Adjepong wants the atmosphere to feel like nights in Accra, the capital of Ghana, full of West African culture and music. Each section of the dining room will be themed around commodities of the region, including cotton, tobacco, indigo, wood, and sugarcane. Green tones represent the lushness of Ghana, and blues nod to the Atlantic ocean. There are also lots of accents in gold, which Ghana is known for and is Adjepong’s favorite precious metal. In fact, the name Elmina comes from a town in Ghana which means “the gold mine” or “the treasure.” “That is what I want to celebrate. It’s the treasure,” Adjepong says. It’s the gold of the food, the people, the music, the entire country.”The post Star Chef Eric Adjepong Is Opening an Upscale Ghanaian Restaurant in DC first appeared on Washingtonian.