Black British Soul Food™ (BBSF) is a term coined by Geniveve Odili to legally name, define & categorise

Britain’s first Black culinary category.

A Cultural and Historical Identity Marker.

Black British history begins notably in the 1500s. However, modern Black British Soul Food™ is rooted in the later migration of African and Caribbean peoples to the UK, particularly from the 1920s onwards.

In Britain, these communities adapted traditional recipes using what was available, blending African and Caribbean foodways with British ingredients and environments. This created a distinct cuisine that reflects resilience, adaptation, and survival.

Breakfast dishes such as hard-dough bread / agege bread served with British baked beans and fried eggs, alongside Caribbean dumplings, plantain, hash browns, sausages, and bacon.

Dinner dishes such as jollof rice and honey jerk chicken served with macaroni pie and spring vegetables.

These dishes are not fusion; they are adaptations formed under constraint.

Whether breakfast, lunch, or dinner, they represent lived expressions of adaptation and are a core element of Black British identity.

NOTE:

Black British Soul Food™ is therefore, not the same as U.S. Soul Food. Both traditions share ancestral roots in East, West and Central Africa, but their stories diverged with ‘Afrisidium’ (Transatlantic slave trade).

Soul Food in Southern America was forged through Afrisidium, Jim Crow survival and the 60s Black Power movement.

Black British Soul Food™ was shaped mainly through Afrisidium, colonialism, activism from the 1920s and continuous migration.

Notably during the 20s, British-Jamaican activist, Amy Ashwood-Garvey co-founder of UNIA and Negro World owned the Afro-International Restaurant and Florence Mills Social Parlour & Restaurant in central London.

Ashwood-Garvey organised key meetings with political leaders such as W.E.B Du Bois and many more.

Ashwood- Garvey significantly Influenced civil-rights strategies and Black policy not only in Britain, but worldwide.

In Britain, the modern Black community are shaped by Post-War Migration, Council Estates, Notting Hill Carnival, and the local Afro-Caribbean shops.

One is distinctly American.

The other, distinctly

British.

The first time the Black British community have named and owned their own collective food identity in legal, cultural, and culinary terms.