Kiano Moju creates summer 2025’s hit pop-up serving her ‘AfriCali’ cuisine in Culver City

Through the glassed-in entrance of Citizen Public Market in Culver City, up its short flight of stairs, past scents of barbecue coming from the Smokey Chance stand and chefs wrapping dry-aged fish into handrolls at Uoichiba, I turn a sharp right and reach the back of the food hall. Kiano Moju stands at an island behind an L-shaped counter. She’s calling out orders: “Two chicken and a beef, please. And I’m still waiting on a shrimp?”

Moju is the author of “AfriCali,” one of the Food team’s favorite cookbooks of 2024, in which she grafts the East African and West African flavors of her heritage with an approach to cooking she learned growing up in the Bay Area. In her hands, bacon, avocado and tomato jam fill an omelet rolled into a chapati in the Ugandan street food called rolex, and dirty chai (jolted with a shot of espresso) complicates the classic charms of tiramisu.

Now Moju has given herself a new job title: restaurateur.

Jikoni, which means “kitchen” in Swahili, is the name of her pop-up operating inside the market from Wednesday to Sunday throughout summer. Dishes derive from recipes in “AfriCali.” She’s structured the menu around riffs on street-food kebabs she remembers from coastal Kenya, where she spent summers growing up.

In the book she writes, “My first time eating mishkaki was in the northern part of Mombasa, in a local eatery where the meat hits your table within seconds of it being pulled off the charcoal grill. The accompaniments are simple because the meat is the star.”

A crowd gathers to order at Jikoni, Kiano Moju’s summertime pop-up inside Citizen Public Market in Culver City.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

As one example of her adaptive process: In “AfriCali,” she considers how to rework chicken and chips, a fast food popular in Nairobi that pairs flash-fried chicken and fries with poussin sauce made of chile-spiced butter and lemon juice. For the cookbook version, she rubs chicken with garlic and dried oregano before roasting it and then brushing the bird with poussin sauce right before serving.

At Jikoni, she grills chicken thighs threaded on skewers. The buttery sauce brings the character, with smoked paprika and Kashmiri chile powder (which has its own berry-like smokiness), a base of ginger and garlic and lemon juice’s lifting tartness. Similarly, garlicky butterflied shrimp soak in peri-peri butter, fragrant with basil, parsley and cilantro and punched with sweet paprika and cayenne pepper.

“Suya” is a Nigerian word for skewers typically coated with yaji, a peppery spice blend that includes crushed peanuts and burns with cayenne and cardamom. Moju thoroughly coats lamb chops with yaji and rosemary; the meat can stand up to the barrage.

A mix of mishkaki (skewered meats) and sides at Jikoni in Citizen Public Market, including egusi and kale in the center.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Each mishkaki variation comes with two sides. Among them: Moju’s simplified variation on egusi, the Nigerian stew thickened with ground melon seeds, which she renders far less soupy paired with kale. She seasons the dish with curry powder and, crucially, ground crayfish for its specific umami. A soothing recipe in “AfriCali” for chickpeas simmered in coconut sauce here becomes a foil for butter beans: They half-melt into coconut milk curried with garam masala and cumin seeds and tinted with turmeric.

Those are my two favorites, though I’d also encourage an extra side of basmati rice to sop up a meal’s mingled sauces. And then dessert: a riff on Key lime pie with the addition of fresh passion fruit and gingersnaps for the crust.

Welcome flavors, smart approach

Jikoni is a thoroughly heartening endeavor. Minus our wealth of Ethiopian restaurants, Los Angeles has too few showcases for the cuisines of Africa; how rich to have a glimpse into contrasting tastes of two of the continent’s coastal cultures on one succinct menu. And given the far more common path of chef to cookbook author, it’s fun to see how Moju and her crew (which frequently includes her mother, Katano Kasaine) acclimate her recipes to the rhythms of restaurant-style service. Interior design is also among her talents: Notice the beautifully curated shelves behind the ordering counter, arranged with African pottery and art and cookbooks written on a breadth of cuisines across Africa and its diasporas, that brings to mind the dining room of Two Hommés in Inglewood that she helped reenvision.

Kiano Moju pictured in the Los Angeles Times test kitchen, preparing pumpkin chapati for an episode of “Chef That!”

(Robert Hanashiro / For The Times)

Return for Swahili-style biriyani

In June, as a practice run for Jikoni, Moju settled into the market stand by serving Swahili-style biriyani, a Kenyan variation in which rice and saucy spiced meat (short ribs, in this case) are cooked separately and combined on the plate with fried onions and rounds of green chile. I heard glowing reports about the biriyani but missed its early run.

Good news: Many people have asked for it, so Moju has said she’ll be re-creating the dish as a recurring Sunday night special. See you there.

Jikoni at Citizen Public Market, 9355 Culver Blvd., Culver City, jikoni.co

Also …

• Want to know where to eat right now in Los Angeles? Danielle Dorsey recaps the Food team’s month of reporting and restaurant recommendations.
• Cole’s French Dip announced in early July that it would be closing on Aug. 2. Karla Marie Sanford reports that, after a surge in business after the announcement, the restaurant will delay its closure by 45 days.
• Jenn Harris reflects on her grandmother, Phyllis Harris, who died on July 17 at 91, and the profound ways she inspired Jenn’s career path.

  

  Phyllis Harris with two granddaughters at a dim sum restaurant in Los Angeles.

  (Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times )

• Stephanie Breijo writes about the legacy of Bill Elwell, the colorful owner-operator of Van Nuys burger stand Bill’s Burgers, who died on July 21 at age 98.
• Gustavo Arellano has the scoop on a new iteration of Carlos Salgado’s Taco María, the lauded Costa Mesa restaurant that closed in June 2023. The location of his new place, named La Sirena? Wisconsin.