Urban Kitchen set for season four

There is a great need to get people back into the kitchen and stem the movement towards processed and fast food all on a budget. Urban Kitchen, a TV show, aims to make cooking fun and affordable.

It is 30-minute show, which explores the negotiational strengths of randomly selected cooks, who prepare sumptuous African meals and recipes on a low budget.

The host introduces the show, giving the background of the cook for the day. She ushers the chef into the studio and discusses the meal of the day.

During each episode, the cook is put under financial pressure. Each cook gets to negotiate his or her budget. During the programme, viewers get to watch documentary footages of the cook in the market, negotiating the purchase of ingredients for the meal of the day.

The nutritional value of the meal would be reviewed after the preparation by a top African celebrity, with good cooking culture. The appearance of the celebrity comes as a surprise to the cook. Aside from teaching viewers how to make meals under a tight budget, the show doubles as a fresh perspective for the world to see African culture using food and entertainment.

People contest to be on the show. They make a one-minute video of themselves showing their negotiation skills and send it to the show’s social media page for people to vote. The video with the highest number of votes for the week gets invited to the studio. The winner is asked to list five celebrities he or she would have loved to cook for. Out of the five listed, the producers ensure that one of them goes to the studio.

Personalities who are ‘celebrities’ in their chosen profession are also invited. It could be politics, sports, fashion or entertainment. Celebrities such as, Basketmouth, 9ice, Pasuma, Denrele, Eva and a host of others have been on the show.

The content creator, Daodu Omoluku, said, “we came up with the idea of a food channel that would be seeing every aspect of life from the food’s perspective and we bought the idea of Urban Kitchen show in 2015. We were hit very hard by the recession that year and we realised that was an opportunity to teach people to be thrifty when it comes to food.”

He added, “one reason why we chose to run a food show is that, as beautiful and uniformed as our food is, 80 to 90 per cent of people who create food content are people who have mere passion for food and they feel like giving out this knowledge of theirs to people.”

The show’s host, Chinonso Arubayi, said, “Urban Kitchen is different from other shows I have hosted and it’s special for me as a woman because I love food and at the same time, I also like to save my money. Coming on the show, I have several people come in and tell me how they were able to bag a deal in the market.”

Urban Kitchen is owned and created by Sate Television Limited, a Media and Entertainment outfit with its HQ in Lagos, and is aired on terrestrial TV and YouTube. The show launched on terrestrial TV on 14th August 2017 and runs on 13 platforms in Nigeria. It is the only Nigerian culinary show available on In-flight Entertainment (IFE), and major VOD platforms.