Chop Chop West African Cuisine: A Kent Treasure Looks to Relocate to Seattle
Chop Chop owners Kingsley and Tierra Tay urge the community to help support the restaurant as they plan their transition to Seattle. (Photo courtesy of Kingsley and Tierra Tay)
By Mead Gill - #SupportBlackBusiness
Operating out of a quaint commissary kitchen in downtown Kent, Chop Chop West African Cuisine is a catering company geared toward bringing authentic African food to African Americans in the Pacific Northwest.
Tierra and Kingsley Tay, the owners of Chop Chop, have spent the last two and a half years cooking West African family recipes for their community while raising their beautiful two-year-old daughter. The thriving family business is staying afloat despite economic twists and turns, but are looking for community support in relocating their passion for food to Seattle.
A Love of Ghanaian Culture
Born and raised in Ghana, Kingsley grew up cooking authentic West African dishes with his family using meat and produce from the backyard. After moving to North Carolina with Tierra, Kingsley struggled transitioning from fresh ingredients back home to processed American food. With help from Kingsley and his mom via WhatsApp, Tierra taught herself to cook the same authentic Ghanaian recipes the couple now serves at Chop Chop.
Kingsley’s African culture and Tierra’s African American culture are the two elements the couple strives to bring together with their business.
“Bridging that gap between the two communities is something that's a big value for us, and just creating awareness about like, both stories and how we're more similar than different,” Tierra said.
Filling a Hole in the Market
After Tierra and Kingsley moved to Washington in 2021, they realized that the West coast, compared to the East Coast, was severely lacking in West African cuisine. It wasn’t until the couple’s friends enthusiastically told them their food was delicious enough to sell did they start making their first moves toward opening Chop Chop. “We want to be able to buy it too, all the time,” Tierra said one friend told her.
As predicted, Chop Chop took the Kent community by storm. What started as a catering business recently expanded to a delivery service, operating on Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub with major catering clients located outside Kent like the University of Washington.
Catering Community
Chop Chop hosts all-you-can-eat African buffet parties the last Sunday of every month in TheMesHHouse collaborative space located directly next to their kitchen. The buffets encourage the community to gather over heaping portions of Ghanaian jollof rice, fufu with grilled chicken, and other classic dishes. Every buffet features a DJ playing Afro beat music, making the event more than just a dinner, but a celebration of African culture and community.
“Instead of just ordering one thing, you can try a little bit of a lot of different West African dishes and see what you like,” Tierra said about the buffet parties.
Since publicizing the buffets on Eventbrite and through Kent Downtown Partnership, Chop Chop has witnessed an increasingly strong interest in their food outside of the African community. This trend has made Tierra and Kingsley’s hope of expanding Chop Chop more and more feasible.
Chop Chop is a woman owned, family operated catering company dedicated to integrating West African culture into the community. (Photo courtesy of Tierra and Kingsley Tay)
Location and Other Limitations
While Tierra and Kingsley manage to stay afloat with their small-scale business model, operating in Kent does not provide them with the resources and customer base they would have elsewhere. Their dream is to operate out of a brick-and-mortar location in Seattle, but the reality of rising inflation and rent costs make the next steps toward expansion farther off than they would like.
Even at their current scale, Chop Chop is forced to rely on their family and friends to help run the buffet parties, and catering for clients as far away as U-District is costly and inefficient.
“Right now, we're not able to hire a full time person and pay them what they would deserve, even though we're in need of more hands,” Tierra said.
For now, the Seattle location is a long-term goal while focusing on expanding their accessibility by starting a new lease in Kent. “There became an opening directly beside the commissary out of a suite, and so we are going to rent that place out,” Tierra said. “We will still cook from the commissary, but people will be able to have longer pickup hours, because they will pick it up from the suite.”
Hope for What the Future Holds
Despite their obstacles in transitioning to a store front in Seattle, Tierra and Kingsley are hopeful and excited to continue growing the business they have put their hearts and souls into. The dishes have proven to have the power to bring cultures together, and the family plans to utilize that power with support from the community.
Chop Chop’s celebration of authentic African culture, mouthwatering Ghanaian cuisine, and devotion toward building cross-cultural Black community makes the business one that deserves our support.
Chop Chop West African Cuisine
202 W Gowe St
Kent, WA 98032
253-226-6887
Instagram: @chopchop_westafrica
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