‘The Sierra Leonean cooking at Shwen Shwen is unforgettably delicious’

Photographs by Sophia Evans

It struck me as a quietly revealing moment. Not just in the picture that it paints of what a meticulous and expensively rendered labour of love Shwen Shwen is (, notably,notably Bradford has remortgaged her house and sunk her life savings into it), but because it shows the purity of intent, edging towards a kind of sweet naivety and blind faith that underpins the project. Is it a risk to meld African flavours and occasional curveball flourishes of modern European technique? To visibly splurge on design-forward interiors and complimentary spritzing bottles of Acqua di Parma in the toilets? And to mount the whole thing not in London but in commuter belt Kent?

The answers are, of course: yes, yes, a thousand times yes. To launch a gastronomically ambitious Afro-fusion restaurant in this Gail’s-coded market town feels, on the face of it, a deliberate act of financial recklessness. And yet, through openness, adaptability, dazzling skill and sheer force of personality, Bradford turns unfavourable odds into something extraordinary.

Shwen Shwen is a bold, unique celebration of culture that announces itself with each deftly weighted sauce and rambunctious hit of seasoning. It educates and entertains with swagger and, even if you are not moved to relieve the walls of some artwork, it deals in the kind of experience that you will want to treasure, savour and very quickly revisit.

The location for all this is a tucked-away courtyard, near the main drag, heralded by an old storybook well and fairy lights tightly strung around a bedraggled maple. Shwen Shwen (the name Bradford, an acclaimed cookbook author, gave the supper club business she founded in 2017) is a Krio-language term meaning “fancy” – a description that plays out, via West African polyrythms on the soundtrack and drifting yam scent in the air, as a kind of rich auntie energy: “fanciness” as both sincere mission statement and winking joke. “I mean this in the best possible way,” my wife, Madeleine, began, as she sipped a ginger and tamarind-spiked mocktail, “but I feel like I’m in a spa.”

There was nothing sedate about the early dishes. Opting for the relatively concise à la carte menu (there are also abundant plant-based options and a £60 seven-course tasting menu), we kicked off with a tableful of snacks: cubes of lamb belly alongside a piquant tomato salsa; deboned mega-nuggets of stuffed chicken wing in a tart “salone fire” hot sauce, squiggled with a kind of blue-cheese crema; golden logs of yam croquette surprisingly primed with shreds of leek and pancetta. Each one was an intricate spring-loaded revelation. But it was the pot of slender, fryer-hot cassava chips, dusted in a housemade version of kankankan – the fittingly kicky, hot-sweet marinade that is a close cousin of Nigerian suya spice – that awakened the grunting, dangerous moreishness that usually ends in an intervention and a Twelve-step programme.

From the moment she arrived in the UK as a teenager, Bradford has been an advocate for Sierra Leone’s distinctive, often misunderstood culture. But, as perhaps betrayed by her septum-piercing, she also has a punkish, progressive attitude to tradition. So yes, we get a glimmering blowtorched fillet of smoky mackerel, and plantain purée inspired by smouldering roadside barbecues in Freetown. Yes, we get succulent griddled spatchcock poussin beside the nutty, mouth-coating spiced palm butter sauce (like all the palm-forward elements here, it contains sustainably sourced red palm oil rather than the ecologically catastrophic mass-produced version). But as evidence of her classical training (she is a graduate of Leiths) we also get a bracing lemongrass gel beside grill-blackened king prawns, and puffed-rice bone marrow – a ragged caveman luge of intensely charred, bottom-of-the-pan socarrat – alongside a buttery span of fermented chilli-honey flatbread.

In truth, I found this last dish a touch overwhelming, and the skilful construction of the pudding we shared – hibiscus sorbet, caramelised white-chocolate crumb and peppery tuile – could not fully distract from the oppressively sweet sense-memory of a limited-edition Magnum.

Still, as we availed ourselves of a hibiscus flower infusion from the dedicated tea menu (I don’t think I have ever seen my Celestial Seasonings-pilled wife express such unalloyed joy), all I could do was look around with awe and bafflement. The awe because Bradford has pretty much minted a new culinary language with such verve and sensitivity; the bafflement from the fact that, but for a well-heeled quartet having a terrific time of it, we were the only other occupied lunchtime table in a restaurant with room for about 50.

This means I am minded to end on an unequivocal note. Go to Shwen Shwen because the food is unforgettably delicious. Go because it is also surprisingly affordable. And especially go because, at a time when loose gangs of “patriots” deliberately seek to undermine multiculturalism, this is exactly the kind of enterprise that those of us who are dismayed and unsettled should be supporting. Maria Bradford has planted a flag of her own. Not as an act of marked territory or cynically concealed aggression, but as an open-hearted invitation to share in something special. I implore those of you who can, to help her keep it flying.