The West African chef and YouTuber behind Motherland Kitchen

A quiet intersection across from a rundown barn in rural Frederick doesn't seem like the kind of place you'd expect to find noteworthy West African cuisine, but that's exactly where Motherland Kitchen is: Upon entering, the aroma of dried crayfish fried with ginger, garlic and a complex blend of spices wafts through the air.

Motherland Kitchen is owned by Cameroon-born Sabina Jules, an IT professional turned chef who runs a YouTube cooking show of the same name as the restaurant. Jules sees herself as an ambassador for African cuisine. “The cuisine is new to a lot of people. People want to come and sit down and talk,” she says. “It's an experience, and most people want to meet you and ask you questions.”

Raised in an English-speaking, mostly French-speaking West African country, Jules began learning to cook at age 9, following in the footsteps of his mother, a professional chef. After getting a visa to attend Kean University in New Jersey, Jules worked as a database administrator for 20 years. Still, the family business of cooking remained in the back of his heart. By the time the pandemic hit, Jules had had enough of IT and was ready to look for a restaurant space.

Some of Motherland Kitchen's dishes have deep roots in Jules' background. N'dole, considered Cameroon's national dish, is a fine, leafy stew seasoned with boiled crushed peanuts and dried crayfish. Jules cooks your choice of beef, shrimp, or chicken. Chicken DG (French for “director general”) was invented by Cameroonian cooks during the boom decade of the 1980s. The idea was that only the company's director generals could buy a hearty dish of deep-fried spicy whole chicken and garnished with plenty of vegetables like green beans, plantains, and carrots.

If you ask Jules for recommendations, she won't necessarily suggest traditional Cameroonian food; she's just as proud of Caribbean staples like beef pâté. (“I make all my dishes with the same amount of love,” she says.)

Motherland Kitchen has a wide selection of vegan dishes based on the cooking methods Jules' mother used when the family had no meat: stews such as cabbage/pumpkin seed and oyster mushroom/peanut are served with heaping servings of fufu made from starches like corn, cassava and plantain.

Jules has also started a cooking channel, uploading an instructional video each week based on a different menu item from Motherland Kitchen. Her videos are detailed; before cooking Chicken DG on camera, she talks about how the dish was invented and the economic situation in Cameroon at the time. The video is a reminder that while the Cameroonian Embassy is on Massachusetts Avenue, its unofficial cultural hub is right here in Frederick, in the backstreets.