From TikTok clip to own business: Raoni Babel makes a splash with Surinamese sushi

Raoni Babel from Rotterdam combines Surinamese food with sushi and has built his own business on it. What began with a TikTok video has, according to Rijnmond, grown into a well-known name, with Suriname as the next goal.

Raoni Babel has translated his love of Surinamese food into Japanese cuisine. With his catering company, the Rotterdam native has been making a striking dish for almost ten years: Surinamese sushi. Rijnmond ran his story this weekend. Although the idea for this story came from Utrecht, Babel is in fact based in Rotterdam.

Raoni says: "Ik hou van sushi en ik hou van Surinaams eten", and he has combined those two loves. In his rolls he uses ingredients such as masala chicken, panko, mango, fried salt cod and yardlong beans. The sushi rolls are fried.

From clip to business

The idea took shape when Babel posted one of his creations on TikTok. After even his critical mother reacted enthusiastically, he put a video online that drew a lot of attention. Viewers asked where they could buy the rolls, after which he started selling them himself.

Growing demand led to the founding of his catering company Koken met Babel in 2017. After more than a year of success he quit his job to focus fully on the business. He told Rijnmond: 'Ik heb er mijn baan voor opgezegd'.

Customers can pick up orders from his premises on the Maasboulevard. He also caters on location. Rijnmond writes that the idea, born from a video, has grown into a well-known toko in Rotterdam's streetscape.

Why fried

The choice to fry everything has a reason. In 2023 Babel told the Algemeen Dagblad, as Waterkant reported, that many Surinamese people like sushi but are less enthusiastic about raw fish. That is why he fries all the ingredients first, before they go into the sushi roll. According to him, original sushi has little flavour and soy sauce supplies it, whereas Surinamese ingredients don't need that sauce.

The people around him also needed some time to get used to it. According to the title of an earlier interview on his own website, people at first thought he was out of his mind. His approach was picked up later, though: he shares his variations on TikTok and Instagram under the name 'Koken met Babel', and the reactions are glowing, the paper wrote.

For the growing demand for his sushi, he sought help from the Ondernemersbalie van Rotterdam. About his mission he said there that it is about "het samensmelten van culturen".

Next step: Suriname

Babel does not want to stop at the Netherlands. According to him, Suriname does not yet know Surinamese sushi the way the Netherlands knows it now. His plan is to conquer Suriname as well as the Netherlands.

The story shows how a Surinamese dish, devised in the Dutch diaspora, can find its way back to the country of origin. For Surinamese Dutch people and other entrepreneurs with a culinary identity of their own, it is an example of how a video on social media can become a business. That remains a conclusion drawn from this one story.

You can read more in the original Rijnmond article, on which this report is based, and on the website of Koken met Babel.

Bronnen

• Rijnmond
• Waterkant
• Ondernemersbalie Rotterdam (ondernemen010.nl)