Abubakar Salim, known for his role in House of the Dragon, has opened up about the food memories and flavours he would choose for his final feast.
The actor grew up in Welwyn Garden in Hertfordshire, but his Kenyan heritage meant the family kitchen was always filled with Swahili cooking, shaped by Indian and Arabic influences.
“My mum has always been the cook in our family. My memories of being young are just my mum being in the kitchen cooking all the time — that was her love language,” Salim said.
Dishes like maharagwe, kidney beans simmered in a tomato and coconut sauce, and matobosha, sweet coconutty flour dumplings, were regular features of his childhood table.
Salim says cooking has become a form of personal therapy, describing time in the kitchen as almost meditative and the one place where he can truly switch off from everything.
His relationship with food has not always been easy, however, as preparing for the series Raised by Wolves required rapid weight loss that left him with a difficult relationship with eating.
“It almost sent me crazy. My relationship with food turned really sour and I’ve just now started to see food as something fun and enjoyable rather than fuel,” he said.
For dining out, Salim counts Sagadi, a Basque restaurant in Shoreditch, among his favourite spots, praising its steak as the best he has encountered and visiting solo or with loved ones to mark good occasions.
His ideal last supper would begin with his mother’s mahamris alongside Kenyan beef kebabs known as kababu, coated in egg batter and deep fried for a satisfying crunch.
The main course would be a bowl of ramen from Yokato Yokabai, a Montreal restaurant he discovered while filming Assassins Creed, where he would walk an hour through snow and queue again just to eat there.
He describes those noodles, served al dente with seaweed, egg, pork belly, spring onion, mushroom, chili oil and tonkotsu broth, as the ultimate comfort food that left him warm and completely satisfied.
To drink, Salim would simply have tap water, explaining that beverages can distract from flavours and that alcohol was never part of his upbringing as a Muslim.
The meal would close not with a fine dining dessert but with a Tesco own brand warm chocolate cake, microwaved and eaten from a bowl, just as he remembered from childhood.
“I think we’re always chasing that feeling, especially as actors, trying to remember what it was like to be a kid. That chocolate cake will transport me there straight away,” he said.
Abubakar Salim currently stars in the latest season of House of the Dragon, available to watch on Sky Atlantic or Now TV.