The owner of new restaurant Cafe Nubia wants to bring African culture and Mediterranean cuisine to a Dallas audience.
Nigerian-born Kenechi “KC” Nnamani opened the restaurant in record time, just three-and-a-half months. Cafe Nubia served its first guests on Valentine’s Day 2024.
The room is filled with the colors and patterns Nnamani calls “eclectic African.” The restaurant is named for the ancient region near Egypt and Sudan, where Nnamani took inspiration from powerful Black pharaohs.
“I want people to know everything in here was intentional,” Nnamani says, pointing to the gold chandelier from Turkey and the seats that face a DJ booth and live music stage. The restaurant and hookah bar is a fusion of African and Mediterranean food, as he describes it. The jollof rice Nnamani grew up eating is offered as a side for mains like lamb chops with pita, za’atar cauliflower steak and a rib-eye steak.
Some proteins, like salmon, come with seasoning options that illustrate the theme: Salmon with African spices, Mediterranean spices or blackened.
It’s Nnamani’s first restaurant, but he’s been dreaming of it since he wrote the business plan in 2005.
“It took 20 years to bring this to life,” he says. In those 20 years, he worked as a consultant while his wife worked as an anesthesiologist. And perhaps he’s been thinking about hospitality since he was a kid. Nnamani’s mother, a caterer in Nigeria, often experimented with other cuisines in her home kitchen. Her six kids were served things like peri-peri chicken and crème brûlée.
“Kids always wanted to come home to my house,” Nnamani says. It’s clear he’s thinking about how Cafe Nubia can feed friends, new and old, now.
The restaurant’s executive chef, Gerardo Herrera, has worked in restaurants for 25 years, including at Haywire in Plano and Ali Baba in Las Colinas. Nnamani appreciated the chef’s experience making Mediterranean food and is also proud Herrera spent time as executive sous chef at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, including for owner Jerry Jones’ suite during Dallas Cowboys football games.
Some of the cocktails emphasize African culture, like the Zobo Old-Fashioned that uses dried hibiscus native to Nigeria. The Nubian margarita brings it back to Texas with the squeeze of lime and Tajín on the rim.
Nnamani chose to open Cafe Nubia in the northernmost sliver of Dallas, near the intersection of George Bush Turnpike and the Dallas North Tollway. Just as ancient Nubia was an “intersection” of cultures, Nnamani says his Dallas-based restaurant is accessible to lots of cities: Plano, Frisco, The Colony, Carrollton, Lewisville, Addison and more.
Cafe Nubia is at 3920 Rosemeade Parkway, Dallas. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Reservations on OpenTable.
