Yolele

Yolélé by Pierre Thiam

Get To Know The Maker

Where are you from/where did you grow up?

I am from Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, in West Africa. I came to the US to become a college student, but I found my passion by working in restaurant kitchens in NYC. I ended up in Brooklyn for the same reason so many do – it’s great place to be!

Why did you start your business?

I started Yolélé to share with others the vibrant and festive West African foods I grew up with, while at the same time providing livelihoods to smallholder farmers back home.

How does your work connect to Brooklyn?

Brooklyn is where I opened my first restaurants, where I wrote my first cookbooks, and where I first connected with other West African immigrants who found a way to share their food. Brooklyn is where Yolélé was born, and where the company still resides.

Fundamentally, Brooklyn is the embodiment of the transcendence of borders that we try to express every day at Yolélé. You can tell by looking at a street map that Brooklyn is an amalgamation of villages (just as Dakar is), each with its own grid orientation. Neighborhoods often have fuzzy boundaries just as we do in post-colonial West Africa. And the people here come from all over the world, have boldly dared to change their circumstances. That is what Yolélé is all about.