A popular Afro-Caribbean restaurant is venturing into the Detroit nightlife through a partnership with an local events center.
Yum Village is the new food concessionaire at El Club, a live performance venue at 4114 W. Vernor Highway in Southwest Detroit.
Founding chef Godwin Ihentuge and his crew took over food operations at the club April 1. They will be mainstays there on show nights for at least the next six months.
“So far, it’s been interesting because a lot of people who aren’t familiar with Afro-Caribbean food attend these shows,” Ihentuge said. “So when the people come for the first time to experience this stuff, we’re just overall thankful that we can even be in a position for it.”
Concessions is nothing new for Ihentuge, whose first culinary job was at the Wayne State University cafeteria. The 38-year-old Detroit native said he’s come full circle with his latest venture at El Club.
He’s got some recent experience to draw from. Yum Village became a vendor at Comerica Park last year and will return to sell refreshments at the Tigers’ downtown baseball stadium beginning in May.
Yum Village rose the ranks of the Detroit food market the hard way, one of the first restaurants in the city that served gourmet African and Caribbean cuisine. Ihentuge’s mission has always been making good food affordable and accessible to the community.
“We kind of pioneered that,” he said. “There’s a lot of African restaurants in the city right now. But before us, those restaurants weren’t around.”
Yum Village held fundraisers during the pandemic to raise money for impacted Black-owned businesses in the community. Twice they’ve partnered with the Boys & Girls Club and worked with hometown hero Big Sean for the annual Detroit’s On Now, or DON, Weekend. Yum Village also has an online lifestyle store that sells clothing, tote bags, soaps, candles, backpacks and other brand apparel, the proceeds of which are used to pay staff bonuses for their work.
Ihentuge has built the brand up through sheer will over the past 10 years, using food trucks, street carts, catering services and pop-up dining events to bolster his following.
In 2019, he opened his first brick-and-mortar restaurant in New Center at 6500 Woodward Ave., down the street from the Baobab Fare cafe, which specializes in East African cuisine.
This month marks the four-year anniversary of that milestone in Ihenyuge’s journey. Yum Village now boasts a second Detroit location in West Village at 8029 Agnes St., as well as a restaurant across the lake in downtown Cleveland.
“We have four locations now. But for the most part, one location provides all the food for these others,” the chef said. “So we’re opening these restaurants because they have proper economies of scale, which is an aspect of business that I integrate.”
Yum Village’s dishes include West African staples like jerk chicken and spicy jollof rice. A first-generation Nigerian American, Ihentuge sought to serve up more than just recipes native to his homeland. He also wants to submerge customers in a unique cultural experience true to the African diaspora.
His restaurants celebrate that tapestry in everything from décor to musical performances and live events hosted throughout the year. Fifteen percent of the restaurant’s ingredients come from Haitian, Caribbean and West African sources.
At El Club, Ihentuge will incorporate some of the lessons he learned last year at Comerica Park.
“When we first started there, it wasn’t a lot of overall acceptance to what we were offering and what we were doing,” he said. “Because of that, we had to change it up a little bit.”
They revamped by transitioning from the restaurant menu to more bar-centric dishes like jerk chicken nachos and tacos as well as curry chicken quesadillas. Another of the West African-inspired twists on gastro pub grub are Afro fries and tater tots served with stew and chicken or black-eyed pea fritters. Also on El Club’s menu is the Suya Dip chicken burger, a grilled ground chicken patty marinated with lemon pepper jerk sauce and immersed in a BBQ suya peanut infusion, then served on a toasted pretzel bun.
“We’re testing and experimenting with food all the time, utilizing our own flavors because it’s all about access,” Ihentuge said. “We don’t want people to shy away.”
