GTCO Food and Drinks Festival: Nigerian Jollof Rice Is Sweeter, But I Prefer Jambalaya – Fried Chicken Lady, Chef Tamra Patterson
By Oki Samson, Trek Africa Newspaper
The battle for which is sweeter between Ghanaian jollof and Nigerian jollof continued at the recent GTCO food and drinks festival 2025 which was held at the GTCentre, Plot 1, Water Corporation Drive, Oniru, Lagos. Popular chef, Tamra Patterson who also presented delicacies at the event hinted that he preferred jambalaya though she agrees that Nigerian jollof is sweeter, Trek Africa Newspaper can report.
‘I’m going to say, without a doubt, Nigerian jollof is better. Now if you’re talking about preference, I prefer jambalaya. And I only prefer it because the meat is already in it. I don’t want the meat on top of it, I want it already in it. I’m a lazy eater so I want it already in there, plus it adds a layer of flavor that you don’t necessarily see. However, jollof is really good.’
On her most challenging moments as a chef, Tamra said it is ‘one of the times that I was actually on Guy’s Grocery Games, they told me to make a dessert burger and wanted me to use meat. But meat doesn’t go in dessert, so I was going to make a pound cake burger. I ended up being eliminated after that round and I was like, if y’all would have let me stick with what I chose, I would have won. Honestly, I couldn’t even eat pound cake for like a year after that. I didn’t even want to see a piece of pound cake.’
Tamra Patterson said she is known as the fried chicken lady because of her love for it. ‘Fried chicken just exemplifies love to me. I literally put my love into that chicken. When I was cooking for celebrities, nobody knew my name. They would say, are you calling the fried chicken lady? Now my name precedes itself. Everywhere I go, it’s Chef Tam, Chef Tam, the fried chicken lady.’
‘So here’s the thing. You can live without a lot of stuff in the world, but you cannot live without love and you cannot live without food. And so you may as well combine the two and show the people that you love how much you love them with what you feed them’, Chef Tamra Patterson concluded.
