From losing both parents by age 11 to cooking waakye for Queen Elizabeth; the story of a Ghanaian chef

His dream as a child was to become a doctor but life had other plans for him.

Losing his mother at age 10 and his father just a year later, he had to step up to assist his grandmother to cater for his sisters’ education and that was when he discovered he had a passion for cooking.

Though he held on to his dream of becoming a medical doctor till he completed secondary school, he had to choose cooking because there wasn’t enough money to see him through medical school.

Today, Elijah can boast of being the only known Ghanaian chef to have ever prepared a meal for the late British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and the meal he prepared for her was waakye.

But this feat didn’t come easy. Elijah who appeared in GhanaWeb TV’s People & Places in 2021, told the story of how a mistake helped him get a chef to become his mentor.

Elijah who was staying with his aunt in Nigeria by age 12, took up a job as a cleaner in a restaurant to raise money which he could send to his grandmother in Ghana to support her with the upkeep of his sisters who were staying with her.

While he was preparing for his Junior Secondary Certificate Examination (BECE in Ghana) he mistakenly threw the chef’s sauce away, thinking it was waste. When the chef found out, he was angry and kept throwing things at him while verbally abusing him.

“I started crying… then I burst out, ‘do you think if my mom was to be alive, I would be here cleaning whilst my colleagues are learning for exams tomorrow’.”

Having gone through similar situation before, the chef calmed down upon hearing what young Elijah said and from then, became his mentor.

Elijah Amoo Addo, who studied culinary studies at Sphinx Hospitality School and catering services in Lagos, Nigeria, didn’t limit his craft to cooking in kitchens of big restaurants and hotels where the rich dine and feast, but went a step further to ensure the vulnerable and less privileged in Ghana also get to taste his food.

After an encounter with a mentally challenged man who came around to pick leftover food from the trash to share with other people living on the streets, Elijah got colleagues to come together and properly pack leftover food which he handed over to the beggar.

This led to the formation of Food for All Africa, the largest food bank in West Africa, in 2015 and it was through some of their works he won the admiration of the late Queen Elizabeth II, and got to be awarded the Queen’s Young Leaders Award.

On the day of receiving the award, everyone turned up in their best traditional or formal attire to meet the queen but Elijah decided to wear his chef uniform.

His look caught the attention of the queen and after the ceremony, the queen asked if he would like to cook for her.

“After everyone had received the award we had a picture-taking session… I was behind and everybody was shouting ‘where is the chef, where is the chef’. Apparently, she wanted to talk to me so she asked ‘would I want to cook for her’ and I said ‘oh yes, if given the opportunity. What would I cook?’, I said my favourite food is waakye.”

And not only did he cook for the queen, but he also got to return to the UK to work with the Commonwealth to create recipes.

Watch Chef Elijah’s interview below:



ADG/EK