In May 2023, Hilda Effiong Bassey — known professionally as Hilda Baci — cooked continuously for 93 hours and 11 minutes in Lagos, breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest individual cooking marathon. The event was streamed live on social media and drew millions of viewers across the world.
Jollof rice was one of the centrepiece dishes of the marathon. Hilda cooked it multiple times across the 93 hours, and images of her over the pot became some of the most circulated food photographs of 2023 in Nigeria. The event was a cultural moment — not just a record attempt but a statement about Nigerian food culture, ambition, and the global appetite for West African cuisine.
The record, since broken by another cook in Sri Lanka, is less important than what the event signalled. Hilda Baci's marathon earned coverage from BBC, CNN, Reuters, and every major Nigerian outlet. It brought jollof rice to audiences who had never encountered it. For a dish that had spent decades building credibility in diaspora communities, the marathon felt like an arrival on the global stage.
Hilda Baci runs a restaurant, Hilda's Kitchen, in Lagos. She is also a trained nurse — a detail frequently cited as the discipline behind the endurance. Whether or not you care about records, she cooked 93 hours of honest food in front of millions of people, and the world noticed.