Eh’vivi Brings Ghana Dishes to Charlotte Tables – Charlotte Magazine

The skies are clearing after an unexpected spring thunderstorm as I drive through a Concord subdivision. I park in front of a two-story home with beige siding and stone accents and walk around to the backyard. The sun highlights a narrow white tent that shades a long table set with 20 chairs. Ceramic vases of terra cotta-dyed Pampas grasses and natural wicker placemats pop against a black tablecloth.

This is “East Meets West: An Immersive Culinary Meeting of the African Coasts,” hosted by Charlotte-area chefs and friends Awo Amenumey and Ammalu Saleh. Amenumey owns Eh’vivi—“tasty” or “delicious” in Ewe, one of the primary languages of her native Ghana. The company shares the cuisine of her home country at pop-ups and special events, like this one. Saleh runs a similar business, Serengeti Kitchen, with food from Tanzania.

Amenumey, 37, emerges through the sliding glass patio doors. She’s wearing distressed skinny jeans, cheetah-print mules, and a white chef’s coat lined with a blue-and-green patterned fabric from Ghana. She takes the time to hug and speak to each guest—friends, influencers, foodies—as if they’ve been friends for decades.

Once folks are seated, the chefs introduce themselves, though everyone knows their reputations well enough to have spent $125 to be here. Amenumey puts her arm around Saleh’s shoulders as they share how they met at the North End Farmers Market two years before; how they’ve collaborated to create seven courses for tonight using cassava and plantains, staples in both their countries; and how they sourced ingredients from local farms, including Old North Farm in Shelby.

“In Africa,” Amenumey tells their guests, “cooking is a way of having community and sharing with anyone you come across. … and we want to see the foods from our countries in the forefront of the culinary scene here in Charlotte.”

Growing up in Ghana’s capital, Accra, Amenumey says her parents exposed her and her two sisters to “all kinds of foods, but Ghanaian food was my core.” Dishes in Ghana, often soups and stews, are usually served with a starch, like cassava, rice, or maize. “It’s bold, very umami,” Amenumey says, “and we use a lot of spices and peppers.”

She grew up in a house with 20 extended family members—“my mom and dad, my two sisters, multiple aunties, uncles, cousins, grandmas, grandpas.” The women in her family were always in the kitchen, and she began helping around age 8. “The stove or coal pot”—an outdoor pot similar to a charcoal grill—“was never off,” she says. “So that’s always been a part of me.” But she never considered that cooking could be a career.

She had just graduated from high school in 2006 when her family relocated to the U.S. for her father’s job as a diplomat at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, D.C. “When I got here, I was like, Where is Ghanaian food? I saw Asian food, I saw Mexican food, I saw Italian food—all kinds of food but not mine.”

She began to cook for everyone she could. “I was like, ‘This food I grew up eating is good and delicious.’” But she still never considered that cooking could be a job until her husband, Kevin, whom she married in 2010, suggested culinary school. “I would do a little research here and there,” she says, “but then I’d just brush him off.” 

Five years passed. The couple had two children, whom Amenumey stayed home to care for. “We’re very spiritual people … and one day my husband told me, ‘The Holy Spirit told me that after I’m done with my master’s (degree), it’s your turn to go back to school, to do culinary,’” Amenumey says, chuckling. “I was like, OK, I guess I’ve got to take this seriously.”

Most of the ingredients Amenumey uses—like rice, okra, tomatoes, and greens—are staples of Southern cuisine. “They were brought here through the Transatlantic Slave Trade,” she says. “There’s so much that connects us in our cooking.”

Shortly after that conversation, in summer 2015, the couple moved their family to Paducah, Kentucky, for Kevin’s job. Amenumey was shocked to learn that West Kentucky Community & Technical College, in their small new city, had a culinary program. She started in January 2016. “My very first class was, like, a whole new world had opened up to me,” she says. “I was just lit up.” She graduated at the top of her class a semester early—despite giving birth to her third child in the middle of her final year.

She was working for the school’s café after graduation when Kevin got another job offer—in Charlotte. When they arrived in 2018, Amenumey didn’t want to work in a traditional restaurant because of the long hours, so Kevin suggested she try catering.

“I started Awo’s Catering,” she says, then laughs. “The name was so corny.” 

Her first clients were fellow members of Christ Embassy Charlotte church, and she cooked whatever cuisines they requested. But just a couple of months in, she was offered a job as a traveling sous chef with Morrison Healthcare, which operates kitchens in more than 1,000 hospital and health care systems, including Atrium. She worked the job for three years while she ran her catering business at home. She enjoyed the job, she says, but “one day, I looked on my Shelton app, and I had stayed in hotels for 200-and-something nights of the year.” 

Amenumey quit and rebranded Awo’s Catering to Eh’vivi to get back to her core. “When I came to the U.S. and started cooking for people,” she says, “Ghanaian food was always at the heart of it.” 

Today, Eh’vivi hosts about four events per month—cooking demos, pop-ups, festivals, and more. Amenumey’s also a full-time corporate chef for a local food service procurement company, Foodbuy, and has a line of gourmet cookies and granolas called BisKrunchies. But Eh’vivi is her passion, and she hopes to eventually turn it into a restaurant. 

“Charlotte’s food scene is growing … and I want to add to the diversity of what we have here while sharing my culture,” Amenumey says. “My hope is that Charlotteans continue to have an open mind and an open palate.”

Tess Allen is the associate editor.