LAKEWOOD • A restaurant’s menu can be a glimpse into a life. This is especially true at African Grill and Bar.
A picture of the Osei-Fordwuo family is on the first of the menu’s eight pages, along with words on how they came to establish the restaurant that has maintained a presence in the Denver area for 20 years now. One could read about how a couple from Ghana, Sylvester and Theodora, made this happen against the odds.
For more insight, one could view the Adinkra symbols on the menu’s back page.
These are storied symbols from the Osei-Fordwuos’ native land. Gye nyame “expresses the omnipotence and supremacy of God in all affairs,” the menu reads. Aya, meanwhile, “is a symbol of endurance, independence, defiance against difficulties, hardiness, perseverance and resourcefulness.”
The symbols speak to how an American dream came true. As Theodora simply puts it: “God and dedication.”
And a steadfast belief in the cuisine that spans the menu’s other pages — that spans the African continent.
Yes, there is much, much more than the starchy fufu Sylvester pounded as a child, among other foods he and Theodora knew in Ghana.
As he was scraping together a life in Colorado in the early 2000s, he saw Ethiopian restaurants around. “But we don’t have West Africa, we don’t have South Africa or North Africa,” he remembers thinking. “We don’t have all of Africa.”
Enter African Grill and Bar. Dive into the menu. For the uninitiated, it is indeed a dive.
The menu’s pages are packed with words and grainy images unfamiliar to the average American eater. Kabobs are familiar, their accompanying suya powder less so. Chicken wings are familiar, not so much their tomato sauce. And maybe one has had plantains and yams, but not Theodora’s plantains and yams.
She’s the one cooking and also taking orders, often greeting the overwhelmed customer. The eye drifts between kelewele (fried, diced and well-seasoned plantains), aprapransa (roasted cornmeal cooked with palm butter), banku (fermented corn dough), several stews with names like ugali and chakalaka and many more dishes incorporating meats, spinach, black-eyed peas, okra and jollof rice.
For those lost in the menu, Theodora makes it easy with a few questions: Meat or no meat? Spicy or not spicy? Rice or fufu? “Yes, dear,” she replies. “Yes, dear. Yes, dear.”
And out comes something like a bowl of goat and fist-sized fufu plunged in a spicy soup. Or lamb and rice coated in a milder peanut soup. Beef or chicken are other standard picks, the oxtail or cow feet for the more adventurous.
One can venture further to beef towell (stomach) or the octopus special. Perhaps these are images that conjured up misconceptions the Osei-Fordwuos heard when they opened the restaurant 20 years ago.
“Am I gonna be sick?” Sylvester remembers hearing. “There were so many stories and misunderstandings. We said, If the Chinese were able to bring their food to America, if India was able to bring their food, why not Africa?”
It would not be easy. Far from it.
Life had never been easy, not since childhood in Ghana, where Sylvester and Theodora learned to cook at young ages to keep siblings fed. Parents were not always around. Sylvester’s died ahead of his teenage years.
To rise above hardship they put their trust in God — they met in church — and in education. Sylvester went on to be an accountant, and Theodora worked in business administration.
All the while, they dreamed of America. “Growing up back home, America was a place like heaven,” Theodora says.
It would not be that.
Sylvester struggled for a place to live. He drank juice in the absence of food. He tossed newspapers and drove trucks among other jobs.
He and Theodora barely could afford bus fare, let alone rent. A breakthrough came with a management position at 7-Eleven. The couple would later run a cleaning business. Then an opportunity in the food business came about — an opportunity for that African restaurant they saw missing.
They opened in 2004, initially in Aurora. They bought the first plates from a dollar store. One of their children was 4 at the time, the other was 2 months.
“I didn’t know how we would survive,” Theodora says.
The restaurant did not survive. They lost the building but not the passion; they continued to cater out of a van. Nor did they lose faith and their belief in America.
America was not heaven. “But still, if you work hard and get favor of God, you’re able to penetrate,” Theodora says.
They reopened in Aurora in 2010. They moved to another location a few years later, closer to the airport. In 2019, they bought their current, spacious building in Lakewood — the one location that would stay open in a difficult decision made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Theodora sounds only grateful. “Lakewood has been a blessing,” she says. “They love us, and we love them.”
As evidenced by the reviews — 4.7 stars with 1,300-plus Google reviews — and by Theodora’s slow, loving work in the kitchen. She and Sylvester can be found here long before opening at noon and long after closing at 9 p.m. The kids have helped out here and there, between their college educations.
African Grill and Bar “is a testament to family strength,” reads the story on the menu’s front page.
On another page is the story of the Osei-Fordwuo Foundation, the nonprofit helped by restaurant proceeds. A photo shows a gift from last year: a $5,000 check to a school in Africa.
“What we faced is what we’re trying to help others not to face,” Sylvester says. “I went to school with no shoes, barefoot. I went to school hungry. I went to school in tattered clothes.”
Now he’s living a dream — this restaurant that overcame the odds and those misconceptions of African food.
But yes, the occasional customer still appears lost in the pages of the menu. The food is as foreign as those Adinkra symbols on the back page.
But then there’s a symbol that is unmistakable, one that is another credit to African Grill and Bar’s success: Akoma, in the shape of a heart.
