In Oakland, This Nigerian Spot Serves Amazing Late-Night Oxtails and Jollof Rice

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

At 9jaGrills, a newish Nigerian spot near Oakland’s Jack London waterfront, the main dining room follows the standard blueprint for today’s shiny, Instagram-optimized restaurants: the lush faux greenery wall, the neon-lit catchphrase (“Food 🔥, Drinks & Vibes”) in glowing pink cursive. The space is tidy, bright and perfectly pleasant — but, at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, it was also totally empty.

Instead, a couple dozen people had crowded out on the small tented patio in back, which was a distinct ecosystem unto itself: a haze of hookah smoke, disco lights, cheap furniture and mystery drinks in red plastic cups. On the big-screen TV, two identical twin DJs from Nigeria spun Afrobeats on stage in Lagos. Everyone else on the patio appeared to be West African, and apart from one table of middle-aged gentlemen dipping fufu into a big bowl of stew, no one else seemed to have come for the food at this hour.

It was more of a backyard party vibe. A kick back with a couple of cold Trophy Lagers vibe.

Not that we were going to let that deter us from our mission. We had made the trip because we had a wicked craving for oxtails, and we’d heard on good authority that this food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-lounge was the spot in Oakland for Nigerian-style oxtails and jollof rice — and maybe the only spot where you can reliably score those dishes until midnight on the weekend.

Open since July of last year, 9jaGrills has one of the broader menus I’ve seen among the East Bay’s Nigerian restaurants, running the gamut from classics like pepper soup and suya meat skewers to lesser-known (at least in the U.S.) favorites like stir-fried Indomie instant noodles and a whole stewed goat’s head. The menu is divided up into grilled dishes, jollof rice plates, whole fried fish, and soups and stews meant to be scooped up with “swallows” (i.e. assorted starchy, dough-like rounds). Factor in the large variety of swallows and optional side sauces on offer, and just figuring out what to order might be a little bit intimidating to newcomers to West African cuisine.

What I can tell you for certain is that the plate of oxtails and jollof rice is a crowd pleaser. The rice alone was amazing: tomato-tinted and steaming hot, with a luxurious oiliness and a smoky, savory depth of flavor I couldn’t get enough of. It’s jollof so good you’d make a special trip just to eat it.

Meanwhile, the oxtails were slow-cooked in a dark, well-spiced gravy until they’d achieved just the right level of tenderness. When we sucked on each bone, all of the gelatinous skin and fat came clean off, and the prickle of chili heat in the sauce was incredibly addicting. These are oxtails so tasty that if you don’t watch your dining partner like a hawk, he’ll polish off the last several bones before you have a chance to protest. As a self-proclaimed scholar of oxtails, I couldn’t find a single flaw. On the side were some of the best fried plantains I’ve encountered in a long time — crisp and slightly charred on the outside, with an oozy sweetness that helped balance out all of the other heavier, more intense flavors.

The oxtail dish by itself satisfied our hunger, but of course we didn’t stop there. We also ordered the whole fried pompano — a flat fish, vaguely flounder-like in appearance, with delicate flesh and a rich, earthy taste. It was incredibly satisfying picking that fish clean — dunking strips of it into the bright, searingly hot housemade pepper sauce, and dipping the eye sockets (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) into a tub of suya spice mix. The plate came with a heaping portion of the same excellent jollof and fried plantains.

Finally, we dug into the fragrant, spicy, palm oil–based stew known as ayamase, which 9jaGrills’ friendly owner had tried to steer us away from, warning us that it came with a kind of “local” Nigerian rice that Americans don’t tend to like, and asking, with some concern, whether we’d eaten Nigerian food before. With that kind of introduction, of course we had to order it, and it may have been the most memorable dish of the night. Ayamase consists mostly of beef offal: the liver, the intestines and especially the skin, cooked until it’s so tender and slippery that it practically melts in your mouth. The stew was studded with flat, toothsome locust beans and a hard-boiled egg — all delicious when mashed into the sauce, then ladled over the nutty whole-grain ofada rice, which was perfect for soaking up the stew’s oily richness.

Crouched over our feast in the semi-darkness of 9jaGrills’ backyard patio, we shoveled rice into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten for days, and held the oxtail bones in our hands, inspecting each one to make sure we’d picked it clean. Then, utterly stuffed and hyped up on Naija beats, we stumbled back into the bright lights of the restaurant proper, like we’d just woken up from the most beautiful dream.

9jaGrills is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–midnight, and Sunday 2–10 p.m. at 303 Broadway in Oakland.