Students Meet Author-Entrepreneurs Elevating African Cuisine

Delesa McCruter ’25 carries a small notebook nearly everywhere she goes. The cover reads “Delesa’s Recipes” in her grandmother’s handwriting, and inside are family favorites she’s collected since she was a young girl growing up in and around Cleveland, Ohio. In other words, inspiration.

“My grandmother always wanted to own a restaurant, but she didn’t have the chance,” said McCruter, a food and beverage major in the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration. Building on her grandmother’s dream, McCruter hopes to someday build a “hospitality empire,” so she was thrilled when two hospitality entrepreneurs, Alexander Smalls and Nina Oduro, visited a course taught by Nolan School lecturer Lilly Jan, Cultures and Cuisine, last semester.

Smalls is a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur, and author, and Oduro is an entrepreneur, writer, and co-founder of Dine Diaspora and Black Women in Food. The pair collaborated on The Contemporary African Kitchen: Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa, a cookbook that grew out of Smalls’ personal journey to understand the food he loved by tracing the history of the slave trade. During their campus visit, which was supported in part by Victor Younger and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Smalls and Oduro met with classes, shared meals with students, and gave public lectures.

“So many things that we eat are historically tied to a part of history where being in this country was anything but a pleasant experience if you were someone who looked like me,” McCruter said. She pointed to the example of an American Thanksgiving staple, candied yams, which traces its history to a much simpler version eaten by enslaved people working on sugarcane plantations. “Food, for a lot of cultures–not just my own–is really the root of family and love, but it’s also in some ways the root of hardship, trauma, and true resilience.”

Max Lewis ’25, another student in Jan’s class, said students spent the semester discussing food from an anthropological and societal lens, answering questions like “Why do we eat the way we do?” For example, he learned how restaurant critics have shaped food culture in different cities by choosing to focus on Eurocentric fine dining or, instead, on “mom and pop” restaurants.

The Contemporary African Kitchen was the most accessible African cookbook Lewis has encountered. “[Smalls and Oduro] very intentionally chose ingredients meant to be available around the world, to help spread the narrative story of African cuisine,” he said.

“French food had its moment, Mediterranean food had its moment, Asian food had its moment,” Lewis added. “And there hasn’t been great representation for African voices, African chefs, or African cuisine.”

Lewis took the class at the same time he was working on the menu team of a major U.S. airline. The airline had been incorporating different cultural dishes into their offerings on global flights, but they encountered challenges. Thanks to Jan’s class, he said, he could bring a better understanding of different people, places, contexts, and the meanings of different flavors to his work.

“An integral way that we connect with other people, no matter political, socio-economic, cultural differences, is over a plate of food or a drink,” Lewis said.

Jan has been teaching the popular Cultures and Cuisines course since 2021.

“A visit from someone like Alexander Smalls or Nina Oduro isn’t just a chance to learn from an industry icon—it’s an opportunity to broaden our perspectives and challenge assumptions about food and hospitality,” Jan said. “I want students to see that every meal has a story, and that understanding the roots and influences behind those stories can lead to more thoughtful, inclusive, and authentic hospitality experiences. Ultimately, learning about foodways is a reminder that hospitality at its best is about creating spaces where people feel seen, respected, and connected, no matter where they come from or what’s on the table.”