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[title]Big Zuu is unwrapping a sandwich in Victoria Park’s Pavilion Café, watched by eager Canada geese, keen to take a chunk out of it. Only he’s not sharing. He’s eyeing its spring onion-studded interior like a forensics expert examining a particularly intriguing cadaver. Is London’s food culture improving? In a world where you can get ‘random high-level cheese toasties’ from a park café, he reckons it definitely is.
A hearty but discerning appetite has taken Big Zuu from his beginnings as a grime MC to life as a TV personality known for his double-Bafta Award-winning Dave show ‘Big Zuu’s Big Eats’, where he cooks a personalised menu for a different celebrity guest each week. He’s a mentor on BBC3’s new food-based gameshow ‘Hungry for It’. He’s got a cookery book, stuffed with delicious-sounding personal faves like the West African and Lebanese dishes of his childhood, alongside a foul-sounding cocktail that mixes grime-scene bevvie of choice Courvoisier with lemonade and Coke. He’s got a radio show on Kiss FM. And he’s even got an own-brand hot sauce, Big Zuu Bbquu, which you can buy in a bundle with his recently-released debut album ‘Navigate’. In short, he’s got a lot on his plate.
But although he admits it’s tough to juggle the different bits of his hectic career, 26-year-old Big Zuu is buzzing with energy and opinions. Especially about food. The burritos you get in the UK are ‘shit’. Hot drinks are ‘dead – I’m not going to get addicted to caffeine like some office worker’. And forget London’s restaurant scene, the best places to eat are market stalls: ‘Stuff that represents different communities, especially when there’s an auntie in the kitchen because they make the best food’.
But there are definitely two Zuus. There’s the one that fires off quips: when I ask him how his passion for food started, he says, ‘I was a young, fat man’ before letting out a massive laugh. But there’s also the more thoughtful one, who goes on to explain that ‘when my mum was pregnant with my little brother, I started cooking to help out around the house’.
Culinary beginnings
His intro to the world of cookery was heralded by the ‘ping’ of the microwave. ‘The first thing I did was just pasta and heated-up tomato sauce,’ says Zuu. ‘Then I elevated it to, like, macaroni cheese and shit.’
The real breakthrough came when he started taking lessons from his mum, who’s from Sierra Leone. ‘Growing up I didn’t want to cook African food cos we ate it all the time,’ he says. ‘I got bored of it. It was only when I was 17 or 18 that I started appreciating where I came from, and asking my mum “How do you make this?” “How do you make that?”’ These dishes include ‘the world’s best jollof rice’, which he’ll defend to the hilt against Nigeria and Ghana’s rival versions.
His culinary apprenticeship wasn’t always easy. ‘My mum doesn’t really use measurements, she just hopes and prays and if it works, it works.’ But it was also a two-way street: ‘I taught my mum how to make fajitas, enchiladas, that kind of thing,’ he says. ‘I also taught her that you can’t just season everything with the same seasonings you use for African food. So we kinda helped each other on our food journeys.’
As he explains, authenticity has been pretty central to his learning process. ‘The West, particularly Britain and America, changes food for consumers,’ he says. ‘We remix things. So I like going back to the original versions of stuff and finding out where they came from. It’s about listening to people who come from those places, respecting their culture, respecting their food.’ His quest for authenticity takes him to the most esoteric reaches of YouTube (he loves watching Thailand-based vlogger Mark Wiens), as well as to London’s many specialist shops. ‘London is so diverse and there’s so much access to food from different cultures that nothing is impossible to make. If you like something, give making it a try!’\
Growing up and grime
Zuu grew up on Kilburn’s Mozart Estate, a place he’s got only good things to say about, despite its tough reputation: ‘I remember playing outside, having water fights, [playing the prank game] knock down ginger, all the classic stuff you do when you’re a young kid.
We were just before the internet age so we wouldn’t be stuck at home on a screen, we’d be knocking on each other’s doors asking to come out and play.’
During his teenage years, Zuu’s life started to revolve around London’s then-surging grime scene. He started out as a fan: ‘Skepta, Jamie [JME], P Money: I love those guys.’ Then, he started to forge his own reputation as a stalwart grime MC. His best memories of that time come from legendary and sadly now defunct bar Birthdays in Dalston. ‘It was a great venue that broke a lot of talent,’ he says. ‘I sold it out in 2017, and you know Will Poulter? He was in the crowd. I filmed a show with him yesterday and we were chatting about it. And now he’s gone on to make Hollywood films and I’ve gone on to win Baftas, so that’s how far we’ve come since then.’
Last year, Zuu released his debut album ‘Navigate’, a thoughtful but upbeat meditation on his struggle to find his place in the world: ‘It wasn’t easy, from the mud we was raised/Now I’m cooking cheques like it’s big eats getting braised,’ his collaborator AJ Tracey raps, with a keen eye for a culinary metaphor.But with a wistful look, Zuu admits that the scene’s moving on: ‘It’s more drill now; grime hasn’t got as much traction. But there’s still that energy, there’s still that love for the music, and I pray that never dies.’
And he’s changing too. ‘How did I celebrate winning the Baftas? by eating a kebab,’ he says, explaining that he’s ditched his Courvoisier-drinking ways to focus on work.
‘A lot of the ethos of this country is working nine to five, then Saturday, Sunday you get absolutely pissed and go to work on Monday with a big banging headache. But my work is 24 hours, I’ve always got to be on the job.’
His Bafta acceptance speech acknowledged just how far he’d come: ‘Growing up, there weren’t many people that looked like me on telly. And now, there’s young people watching us doing our ting, going: “You know wha? If these wastemen can win a Bafta, surely we can.”’
Elitism in the food world
Separating class and food in Britain is basically impossible: think fine dining and there are images of crisp white tablecloths and silver service, or a plummy voice on TV extolling the virtues of M&S’s luxury meals. But Big Zuu is passionate in his belief that good food is for everyone.
‘I hate places that are like, “We’ve made this good, so you have to pay £85 now.” I hate that shit. Good food doesn’t have to be expensive.’ His favourite restaurant is kebab house Maison Bab, which has even named a dish after him. ‘They make Turkish food but with French-level cooking,’ he says. ‘The condiments are great and it’s done with a lot of love.’
The same logic extends to the recipes he makes on his show, which often start with ingredients you can find in any normal cornershop. ‘There’s no point me going on about helping people and representing the working class and then going on telly telling people to use truffle oil,’ he says. ‘It’s not what I do. It’s really important to me to make dishes people can afford.’
Is cookery writing in the UK elitist? ‘A hundred percent. We take the piss out of that on the show. People put on this façade that’s so over the top, like, “You can make this but you’ll have to go to Waitrose.” But cooking’s not about that. At the end of the day it’s about feeding each other; it’s a basic means of survival. And some people don’t live in areas where they can get those ingredients.’
Zuu stays away from the language of health and calories in his programme, but he’s also all about steering people towards the value of home cooking as something that genuinely makes your life better. ‘Pasta, tomato sauce and cheese is always better than a takeaway,’ he says. ‘I hate when you order food and it’s disgusting, and you feel rubbish for eating it. Whereas if you cook it, you only have yourself to blame.’
Recipe for success
‘Big Zuu’s Big Eats’ is successful partly because, like ‘Desert Island Discs’, its format is a really neat way to get people opening up and nerding out about the things they love. But it also works because Zuu has a genuine interest in lifting up the people around him and getting the best out of them, and that shines through every aspect of the show. On it, he’s joined by his schoolmates Tubsey and Hyder, who hang around egging him on or ballsing up the odd cookery task: ‘They’re very normal and that’s what I think TV sometimes lacks,’ says Zuu. ‘It’s all very perfect, whereas Tubsey and Hyder just are who they are.’
As I walk through Ridley Road Market with Zuu, he’s constantly stopped by people wanting pictures and he says yes to every one: he even fools around with the market traders, pretending to hawk a sequinned jacket to passers-by. ‘No one is better than anyone else. We’re all humans. We’re all the same,’ he says later, over pie and mash in an old-fashioned tiled shop, whose aproned owner has coaxed him in for a bite, even though he’s already had his lunch. ‘And if I can make more room for people like me to get through, I can die a happy man.’
The shop’s owner puts on a track from his album and brings Zuu a free pudding that gets him indulging both his sweet tooth and his serious side. ‘Don’t rely on stupid MPs and politicians to change things,’ he says. ‘If we rely on people at the top to make a change, we’ll be here all day. Whereas if we at the bottom try and help others, we’ll be so strong we don’t need them. Times are hard, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help someone who’s in a harder position than you. That’s the message I want to give to the world.’ It’s the most sincere Zuu’s been all day – and also the longest he’s spoken for without taking a mouthful of food. Is there anything else he wants the people of London to know before he signs off? He pushes his plate away thoughtfully. ‘This apple crumble is good but I’ve eaten so much I might vomit everywhere.’
Photography by Jess Hand; Styling by Ben James Adams, assisted by Gregory Russill via Gary Represents. Thanks to Regal Boat Hire, Victoria Park
‘Hungry for It’ starts on BBC Three and iPlayer tonight at 8pm, airing weekly. ‘Big Zuu’s Big Eats’ returns next month on Dave and UKTV Play.