Places to eat in Burkina Faso

It is widely adviced that no traveller should consumpt tap water due to health safety reasons. This rule applies to Burkina as well. Luckily there are bottled water brands (Jirma, Lafi) and bottled water can be easily found almost everywhere (even road side canteedns) and it's what you get when you order water in the restaurants. Where electricity is provided it can be cold as well. Surprisingly enough water in some cases was more expensive than to drink beer!! You could even pay for a 1.5lt bottle 1.5€

Chapalo, is a homemade beer from red millet. It's made by families as source of income. This "beer" takes a special procedure to make. In earthenware pots, milled is mixed with water and then boiled. Then it is mixed with yeast at the end of the 2nd day and then left to ferment overnight. Even though then ready for consumption fermentation procedure continues making it even stronger and less sweet.
Well we tried to drink it while we were in Gaoua (price is really cheap) but I can tell the taste was not what I was dreaming of. It had a rather sour taste and while not being cold the overall experience was rather unpleasing...

While in Burkina we didn't try any street food (so I can't tell about its safety and cost). We tried mainly restaurants that were listed in our guide books or were recommended by our car driver. Generally portions were good, prices rather expensive for local standards (5-10€ per person). Meals served were meat (mainly beef or chicken), rice (of course) or couscous, salads and pommes frites!! My comment focuses on Burkinabe meat: my God it was occasionally so hard to chew that in many cases we gave up hope. Specially chicken which has minimal meat in between bones! Our best dining experiences were at Le Pasha restaurant in Bobo (very expensive but meat was juicy & delicious) and at Nazinga ranch where the antilope filet was superb!

The Calypso is just 300 meteres from the Hotel Comoé, in the same street. Nice atmosphere under the large straw parasols in a nice garden, with some nice african music in the backfround.The service does tend to be a bit slow if there are too many people but there again, usually if a place is full it's generally good !!

Favorite Dish: Braised capitaine, succulent.

This was the only place open close to "Les Cocotiers" at 10 o'clock at night. As I had been travelling from Segou in Mali since 11 that morning, I went in and was pleasantly surprised. The food was good, a friendly welcome and very, very cheap. A bit spartan but when you're hungry....

Before venturing outside the city, Mamadou (see general tips on guides) and I would drink coffee at a sidewalk cafe in Bobo Diaoulasso. The coffee was served in bowls, and one drank it holding the bowl with both hands. I mixed in milk. Good coffee is available in a few places, but often Nescafe was the only option available. At this one particular place, the name of which I can't recall, fruit and very nice pastry was also available. Typically, one could also wait for eggs and other breakfast foods to be prepared.

This is a rather posh restaurant in the residential area of Ouagadougou. It is owned by an Italian man who has two more restaurants and a hotel in Niger.
All the staff are Touaregs from Niger and they serve delicious Italian food and some nouvelle cuisine style food from local ingredients.

Favorite Dish: I would die for a plate of tagliatelle du pape, lovely tagliatelle with cooked ham, cream and onion sauce.
Anything you order in this restaurant is bound to be delicious.

The food here is excellent value for money, it is not as cheap as some street food, but it is guaranteed to be cleaner, and you can try all the local specuialties without any worry of catching some nasty germ. You can have a great meal for about 4-6 dollars.

Favorite Dish: all salads, especially chicken salad,also rice with peanut sauce and my friend Bintou loves the potato ragout.
As dessert try the 'yaourt de la maison', delicious homemade yoghurt.