Black British Soul Food™ (BBSF) is a term coined by Geniveve Odili to define Britain’s first formally claimed Black culinary category (currently undergoing trademark registration). It is not just food.

It is a cultural and historical identity marker.

What is Black British Soul Food?

BBSF is rooted in the migration of African and Caribbean people to the UK from the late 1950s onwards. Communities arrived via the Windrush and beyond. In Britain, these communities adapted traditional recipes using what was available. Blending African and Caribbean food ways with British ingredients and environments: This created a distinct cuisine that reflects resilience, adaptation, and survival.

Breakfast dishes such as Harddough bread/Agege bread served with British baked beans and fried eggs, to Caribbean dumplings paired with plantain, hash browns, sausages and bacon.

Dinner dishes such as Jollof rice, jerk chicken with Macaroni pie and spring vegetables.

These example dishes are beyond fusion. Whether, breakfast, lunch or dinner. They are lived expressions of Black British identity.

Note: Black British Soul Food™ is therefore, not the same as U.S. Soul Food. Both traditions share ancestral roots in West Africa, but their stories diverged. Soul Food in America was forged through slavery and Jim Crow survival.

Black British Soul Food™ was shaped mainly through Post-war migration, Council estates, Notting Hill Carnival, and the Afro Caribbean local shop’s.

One is distinctly American. The other, distinctly British.

It is the first time Britain’s Black communities have named and owned their collective food identity in legal, cultural, and culinary terms.