# Say goodbye to the old yams, and hello to the new, when Dozzy’s Grill returns to the next Monday Night Foodball

In the depth of the pandemic Dozzy Ibekwe found hope in a yam. “I was incubating Dozzy’s Grill at [the former] Retreat at Currency Exchange Cafe in Washington Park. Across the street was a U. Chicago Medicine billboard. Its message resonated with me: resilience in the middle of the pandemic, when it was hardest to do almost anything. I asked myself how to capture that in my own work, and the yam came to mind. It’s the ‘king of crops,’ revered by a people known for resilience. I went down to the basement, grabbed a tuber, and staged the shot with the yam in the foreground and the bill

https://chicagoreader.com/food/monday-night-foodball/dozzys-grill-new-yam-festival-ibekwe-igbo-nigerian-west-african-food-iri-ji-guinea-chinua-achebe/

Image: https://i0.wp.com/chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0028-scaled-e1790194016707.jpeg?fit=1024%2C937&ssl=1

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Canonical URL: https://qwibbit.com/q23855

Created: 2026-10-25T18:49:47.549690+00:00

Last edited: 2026-10-25T18:49:47.549690+00:00

Board: 3

Origin: Syndicated

Original source: https://chicagoreader.com/food/monday-night-foodball/dozzys-grill-new-yam-festival-ibekwe-igbo-nigerian-west-african-food-iri-ji-guinea-chinua-achebe/