From a self-fundraising MA student to award-winning chef, Zoe Adjonyoh knows being the first isn’t always easy

Zoe Adjonyoh, of Hackney-based pop-up Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, started making and selling Ghanaian food eight years ago as a way to fund her Creative Writing MA at Goldsmiths. Her tutor suggested that focusing on her business might be a better way into writing the memoir that Zoe dreamed of.

Since then, she has won the 2018 Culinary Iconoclast Award, and, upon receiving it, tweeted: “Being ‘the first’ isn’t always easy, it can be hard hacking at the coal face of the food industry to break a new cuisine.” She also published that memoir too, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen cookery book, so it’s surprising when Zoe says she has never worked in a restaurant in her life.