Ghana Eats
The food in Ghana has been amazing. There are a few notes to be made first, however. As for traveling to any underdeveloped part of the world, it is recommended that Americans be intelligently picky when eating food in Ghana. This is because getting super adventurous with food here, while fun and necessary to enjoying different cultures, can result in many sorts of illness. But, I’ve been sure to monitor myself and try each dish available at least a couple times. Another note is that service here can be a lot more relaxed and potentially frustrating, if you expect grade A service for every meal. Because of this, it has been very common to order something at a restaurant, then be told 30 minutes later that your dish is not available. We have also spent quite a bit of time waiting for everyone to get a meal, as there are often only a couple workers manning a very small kitchen. The other note is that food can get very spicy, so it might not be for everyone.
On this Dialogue, we’ve had most of our food at various restaurants. We have had breakfast everyday at the facilities that we are staying at. Breakfast hasn’t been anything too outrageous. It’s been mostly toast, eggs, and cereal, for me. The lunches and dinners get a lot more wild. Most of the restaurants offer a few basics: fried rice, plain rice, chicken, plantains, and fish. Most of these restaurants also offer some Ghanaian food: Jollof, Red Red, Fufu, Kasava, Banku, and Palava sauce. Currently, I’ve been able to carve out a solid opinion on these Ghanaian delicacies based off trying them all at multiple restaurants. Fufu is probably the most unique and hard to describe. It is a type of fermented yam dropped into a bowl of soup. The yam ends up tasting like some really concentrated mashed potatoes, so concentrated that it is recommended to swallow, instead of chew, the fufu. Personally, I wasn’t too big on the fufu, but it has been a favorite of some of my peers.
My favorite is Red Red (Jollof, a spicy rice, takes 2nd place.) Red Red is a mixture of beans and spices, that is often accompanied by fried plantains and/or fish. For me, there has been something about the spicy and sweet combo of the fried plantains that hits the spot. As a group, the whole Dialogue was treated to a home cooked meal from Auntie Mary in a town called Winneba a few days ago. She made us by far the best meal, including the best Red Red, I’ve had so far. The food here as a whole is a bit adventurous, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s add some flavor to their diet.
