A NEW barbecue restaurant at Stretford Mall will help the fight against malaria, as a business woman brings together her two unlikely passions.

Customers at Suya, opening soon at the precinct, will not only get to enjoy authentic West African cuisine, they will also be giving something back to the region where the food hails.

Owner Maryam Idris-Usman is also a research pharmacologist trying to find a new cure for malaria.

Once the 60-seat restaurant and takeaway, which is creating six new jobs, is established, she intends to introduce a scheme where a slice of profits from meals served is donated to malaria treatment research.

Suya means ‘grill’ in Maryam’s tribal language of Hausa, which is spoken across West Africa, and the restaurant’s signature dish is inspired by Maryam’s roots.

Maryam said: “Growing up in West Africa, you see this Suya grill all around, it’s a very popular street food and everyone knows it.

“Wherever there are Hausa people, you find Suya and the flavour is always the same, even though you are miles apart, in Nigeria, or Mali, or Senegal.

“It is so tasty, everybody loves it. It is kind of like a Portuguese piri piri flavour, but the African version is a little less tangy.”

Maryam learned the cooking style from her mum, Hanan, while growing up in Nigeria’s metropolitan city of Kano, before she came to the UK to study for a BSc degree in Pharmacology at the University of Portsmouth, at the age of 19.

Cuts of beef or chicken are marinated in a special sauce made with ginger, cayenne pepper, African negro peppers, lemon and cloves.

They are then cooked on a chargrill and will be served either as mild, medium or spicy, with a side of either rice or chips.

The venture brings together two very different passions for Maryam, who is in her fourth year studying a PhD in Pharmacology and Parasitology at the University of Salford.

She is testing natural plants to find which may offer resistance to malaria and could be used in drug therapy, as part of a joint project with Nigeria’s National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), in Abuja.

She added: “I am determined to see a natural treatment on the market as it is likely to be a cheaper alternative to the poor African population and I believe it might be the answer to the issue of drug resistance.

“Even after I finish my PhD I intend to keep working to get this to happen. I want something positive to come from my work.”