‘Hospitality is our ministry’: How a restaurant brings Africa to South Florida

Sasha Pusey was pleasantly surprised when she recently walked into Eden, a new restaurant in West Park.

Rhythmic Afrobeats played in the dimly lit venue. Paintings of beautiful Black people hung on the walls. Lush, green vines wrapped around the booths.

She could only use one word to describe her feelings.

“Wow,” Pusey, 40, said.

“We ... descend from Africa,” said the Broward school bus driver from Miramar. “Even though I’m of Jamaican descent, we have so many similarities.”

Since Cheryl and Eddy Aitah opened their African restaurant in June 2025 in the small South Broward city near Hollywood, customers like Pusey have spread the word about the genuine cuisine and tranquil atmosphere.

Eden is named for the biblical garden, and the couple wanted to create a space that reflected its peaceful setting.

“Hospitality is our ministry,” Cheryl Aitah said.

The Aitah family wants their restaurant at 2615 S. State Road 7 to show people the joy of African dishes like smoky jollof rice. Jollof rice is popular throughout Africa and is seasoned with rich spices. The smoky rice at Eden is served with crisp, fried chicken.

South Florida’s African diaspora doesn’t yet reflect African culture in the way it reflects Caribbean culture, but this business is blazing the trail.

Maintaining a sense of African culture was important for both Cheryl and Eddy Aitah. Cheryl’s family emigrated to Maryland from Sierra Leone when she was 5, and she later moved to South Florida in 2012. Eddy emigrated to South Florida from Nigeria when he was 24.

How they started the restaurant

Cheryl Aitah, 39, worked in hospitality for two decades on the East Coast and other areas as a hotel manager. By late 2022, she was at a professional crossroads because of the stress that came with her job. With the support of her husband, who studied hospitality as a grad student at Florida International University, Cheryl began looking for a property to run.

Eddy, 31, watched how hard his wife had worked for others and knew she could work well for herself. In 2023, the couple found a location that they knew would be a perfect fit. In January 2023, the couple agreed on opening a restaurant in Miami.

But by April 2023, the landlord of the property stopped answering their phone calls. Undeterred, the Miami couple came up with a second choice in an unlikely place.

“I didn’t even know West Park existed,” Cheryl said. “We had an event some years back in Ives Estates,” in Northeast Miami-Dade. “As I was praying about it, God’s like, check that area [where] you had that event. When I looked at Ives Estates, West Park is so close and everything that we wanted. We decided that we wanted to plant Eden there.”

Cheryl noticed that there was a large African community in Maryland and she didn’t see that when she arrived in Miami. In August 2018, she met Eddy at a Miami African market and the two later married and became business partners.

A big investment

But starting a business, no matter how idealistic that sounds, comes with challenges.

The Aitahs invested more than $1 million to open their restaurant and renovate the property. Friends and family have also helped, but the experience has been expensive.

Those renovations included installing a $200,000 sprinkler system to meet requirements. Restaurant fixtures were imported from Turkey and China, and spices and seasonings from Africa.

Eddy Aitah said that part of Eden’s goal is to put African food on the map.

In addition to the smoky jollof rice, dishes like the spicy pepper soup represent the theme of abundance that Eden evokes. The spicy pepper soup features goat meat and traditional West African peppers and herbs. The menu has fried snapper to reflect local Caribbean tastes.

Cheryl Aitah hasn’t had any success so far receiving small business grants. As a mother, she has little time outside of running a restaurant to be one of many people applying for grant funding

“You’re just one of the many hundreds of applicants that they’re going to look for,” she said. “At the end of the day, maybe they’re going to award you at the most $25,000.”

In the way that Afrobeats artists like Burna Boy have become globally recognized, Eddy said that African cuisine can also become popular with the right presentation. American habits like smelling food before eating or recording for Instagram are not the same in Africa, he said.

“If I see somebody smelling food, it doesn’t sit well with me because we always perceive that it’s dogs that smell food,” he said. “Americans want to smell the food, They want to take pictures of the food because they like the decoration, they like the plating and everything.”

The importance of the restaurant to the community is important to the Aitahs. Cheryl spoke with pride about the number of local residents who are now customers.

“They’re telling us West Park needed something like this,” she said. “This is something that’s for us.”

As Pusey, the Miramar bus driver and Eden diner, waited for her date to meet her at the restaurant, she smiled as she went through the menu. She tried to decide between the pepper soup and the snapper.

“I’m familiar with the area, so it’s good to see fine dining like this within the area,” she said. “We don’t really have many establishments like this for us to really kick back and have a good time in a nice setting.”

If you go

Eden

Address: 2615 S State Road 7, West Park, FL 33023

Phone: 954-544-5306

Hours: Monday-Saturday, Noon-10 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.-10 p.m.

This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.