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Ghana-Net.com · Food & Drink
Ghanaian food is built on one principle almost no restaurant menu explains: a starch you swallow, and a soup or stew you swallow it with. Understand that and the whole cuisine opens up. Here are the dishes, the etiquette, and an honest word about the heat.
Western menus list dishes. A Ghanaian meal is a pairing, and the pairing is the dish. You choose a soup or stew, then you choose the starch that goes with it — and not every combination is correct. Ordering light soup with banku will get you a look.
Palm nut, groundnut, light soup, okra, kontomire. Rich, often oily, usually with fish, goat, chicken or beef in it. This is where the flavour lives.
Fufu, banku, kenkey, omo tuo, plantain, yam or rice. Not a side dish — it is half the meal, and it is the vehicle.
Fufu with palm nut or light soup. Banku with okra stew or grilled tilapia. Kenkey with fried fish and pepper. Omo tuo with groundnut soup on a Sunday.
Name both: "fufu and palm nut soup", not "palm nut soup". Then say what protein you want in it. That single habit marks you out as someone who has eaten here before.
These are the heart of it. Two of them — palm nut and groundnut — are the dishes most Ghanaians abroad miss most, and both take real time to cook properly.
Fufu is the one that intimidates visitors and the one worth persisting with. Plantain is the one that converts everybody immediately.
Ghana has 550 km of Atlantic coastline and a fishing tradition that predates every fort on it. Smoked fish in particular is not a substitute for fresh — it is its own ingredient, and it flavours a great deal of what is cooked inland.
Ghana's street food is one of its genuine pleasures, and the rule for eating it safely is simple: go where the queue is. High turnover means fresh oil and food that has not been sitting out.
Three you will meet constantly and should not miss. Kelewele — ripe plantain cubed, spiced with ginger and pepper, deep fried, sold from evening onwards and worth planning your night around. Waakye — rice and beans cooked with millet leaves until it turns reddish-brown, the great Ghanaian breakfast, sold from a bowl by the roadside and gone by mid-morning. Chichinga — spiced meat skewers grilled over charcoal, the standard companion to a cold beer.
Tapped from the palm and fermenting from the moment it is collected — sweet in the morning, sharp by the afternoon, and something else entirely by evening. Best drunk where it is tapped. Distil it and you get akpeteshie, which is strong and should be treated with respect.
Sobolo is hibiscus with ginger and pineapple — deep red, tart, and the best non-alcoholic drink in the country. Asaana is fermented from roasted corn and caramel, traditional and now hard to find. Both are usually sold chilled in bottles or bags.
Ghana takes its lager seriously and the Club-versus-Star argument is a real one. Ask which someone drinks and you will get an answer with reasons. Both are good and cold, which is the main thing.
Do not drink from the tap. Sachet water — "pure water" — is sold everywhere for very little, and is what most Ghanaians drink. Bite the corner, and put the empty sachet in a bin rather than the gutter.
Fufu, banku and kenkey are eaten by hand, and doing it badly is the fastest way to look like a tourist. It is not difficult, but nobody tells you the rules, so here they are.
Always. This is not negotiable and applies across West Africa. Wash first — a bowl of water is usually brought to the table, and it is for your hand, not for drinking.
Pinch off a piece with your fingers, make a small dent in it with your thumb, scoop up soup, and swallow it whole. Chewing fufu is the single most common visitor mistake, and it makes the texture unpleasant when it should not be.
Palm nut and groundnut soups are rich and heavier than they look, and portions are generous. There is no shame in not finishing — but there is no shame in asking for more either, and it will be taken as a compliment.
Ghanaian food is properly hot, and shito — the black pepper-and-fish sauce that arrives alongside almost everything — is hotter still. Try a little before adding it. Bread or plain rice will do more than water if you overdo it.
Where to eat. The best Ghanaian food is almost never in hotel restaurants. It is in chop bars — small, local, often a few plastic chairs and one pot of something excellent. Ask what is good today rather than reading a menu, since what is good today is what they have cooked. And eat where people are queuing.