Our story
Two cousins and a cool box.
Saltwater Grill began in 2019 with a cool box of croaker in the boot of a car and a grill borrowed from an uncle. Here is how a Sunday pop up on Ikot Ekpene Road became a restaurant (example history).
Ekaette cooked. Idongesit drove to Ibeno at four in the morning. On Sundays they grilled whatever he brought back on the forecourt of his uncle's shop, and by two o'clock it was always gone.
People came back because the fish was fresh and the pepper was honest. Within a year the Sunday pop up was Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the queue reached the road. In 2021 they took the lease on the building next door, knocked through a wall and built a proper kitchen around a charcoal grill.
The chalk board came from the pop up days, when there was no menu, just a list of what was in the cool box. It is still the heart of the restaurant. The boats decide what we cook; we just write it down.
Today Saltwater Grill seats sixty, runs an oyster bar with oysters from the Oron creeks and employs twenty eight people from Uyo and the coast. Idongesit still makes the four thirty call most mornings.
Years
From a forecourt to a dining room.
- 2019
The Sunday pop up
A borrowed grill, one cool box, croaker and tilapia only.
- 2020
Three days a week
The first chalk board, and the first regulars.
- 2021
The restaurant
A real kitchen, 38 seats and a cold room.
- 2023
The oyster bar
Eight stools and mangrove oysters from Oron.
- 2025
The terrace and private room
Room for 60 and for the big nights.
The people
Who cooks and who calls.
Names and roles are invented for this demo.
How we buy
Fair to the boats, kind to the sea.
Same crews, every day
We buy from six boat crews and pay the same day by transfer, rain or shine.
No juveniles
We do not buy undersized fish, and we tell the crews why.
Nothing wasted
Heads and bones become stock, small fish become fish cakes, and the shells go to a farm in Itu as lime for the soil.
Ice from clean water
Our ice is made from treated water in our own machine.
We do not decide the menu. The sea decides, and we write it on the board.
Come and taste it
The board goes up at noon, Tuesday to Sunday.