Visit us

A bungalow on Forces Avenue

Our story, our people, how to find us and the questions guests ask most.

GRA, Port HarcourtBy the Calabash kitchenToday

A cook working at a grill — The grill in the yard. Example photograph.

Our story

Since 2019

Calabash is named for the gourd bowls our grandmothers served from, cut, dried and kept for years. A calabash holds water, palm wine, grain and soup; it travels from region to region and from generation to generation. That is what we want our menu to do.

The restaurant opened in 2019 in a 1950s bungalow in Old GRA. We kept the cement floors, the deep veranda and the mango tree, added a kitchen with three kinds of fire and a Long Room at the back for family days.

We employ thirty four people, most of them from Rivers State, and train young cooks from every region we serve. Our servers can tell you where every dish comes from, and they are always glad to be asked.

The people

Kitchen and floor

Chef and founder

Ibinabo Georgewill

Grew up in D-Line, trained in Lagos and Accra, and still tastes every soup before service.

Grill master

Musa Bello

From Kano. Grinds the yaji, runs the suya grill from 6pm and cooks the North on special nights.

General manager

Adaeze Okafor

Runs the floor and the Long Room, and knows every regular by their usual soup.

People named are invented for this demo.

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