Summer 2003

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Profile: Pat Ononibaku ’85, ’88G Food for body and soul

– Janine Tangney ’03

Pat Ononibaku ’85, ’88G (photo by Ben Barnhart) PAT ONONIBAKU MAY APPEAR RESERVED, BUT get her talking about her Amherst-based Chi Chi Catering business, and she’s all smiles. Get her to make some food for you, and she’ll bustle around the kitchen, putting out plates of delicious Nigerian food, smiling expectantly as you eat. Ononibaku tailors dishes to her clients’ preferences: Do you like spicy food? Eat meat? Like beans and rice? In Nigerian culture, she says, “Everything revolves around food, and you have to make a lot – people will stop by with no advance notice!” Giving food is a sign of love and acceptance, and taking food is a show of friendship. Here, she says, socializing with clients of different ages, races, cultures and professions is one of the best parts of her job. For a time while she was growing up in Nigeria, her mother helped run a restaurant, so Ononibaku learned by watching. Nothing was written down, so when she first started catering, she had no written recipes, but she now provides them to prospective customers. The business resulted from fortunate happenstances. Ononibaku came to UMass Amherst in 1983, and studied home economics while her husband, Charles, studied engineering. At an international cultural fair in 1986, she displayed Nigerian cooking and clothing. Soon, she began getting calls from people wanting her to cater events. In 1988 Ononibaku finished her master’s degree in home economics, with courses in nutrition. She has catered part-time ever since, an arrangement that lets her be with her five children. Business comes mostly through word of mouth, and along with private parties, weddings and family gatherings, she has catered at Everywoman’s Center and Bright Moments Festival at UMass, and for events at Smith and Hampshire Colleges. Her dishes are bright and appealing, the influence of living in a tropical area, she says. Mixed vegetables are a colorful array of carrots, green beans, peas, tomato, spinach and yams. Fish, abundant in coastal Nigeria, is used frequently, but Ononibaku also includes chicken, beef and turkey, as well as a vegetarian option. A mild, spicy curry is part of many dishes. One soup is prepared with goat meat from Hatfield Beef, and seasoned with nchanwu, an herb that aids digestion, and has to be ordered from Nigeria. Since Nigeria was an English colony until its independence in 1960, most starchy foods served there, such as meat pie, are a legacy from the British. The sweetest part of the cuisine are perhaps the fried plantains. Sweets and pastries are rare; fruit salad is the dessert of choice. Today, Ononibaku cooks in a licensed kitchen in Amherst, but hopes that someday her catering business will expand to become an African/Caribbean club. Until then, she is content to make people happy with her food.

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