Accra Restaurants

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The menu has a vast selection of Chinese, International and Ghanaian dishes, but every time we ate there, at least one of the dishes were unavailable. The food itself was very good indeed, but often arrived ten minutes or more apart. Once, David had finished his and was half way through his dessert before my main course arrived. The service was not only slow, but also rather surly at times.

There was a buffet most evening, but as neither of us either very keen on buffets, nor big eaters, we decided to order a la carte.

Favorite Dish: Picture one shows red red chicken which is a sauce of black eye peas with gari (course cassava flour) and chicken, served with plantain fried in red palm oil. It was very, very tasty (there was also additional chilli served in a small dish separately), albeit a little greasy.

Picture two shows fried tilapia with banku – a ‘dumpling’ which is a sour, fermented corn mash which is wrapped in plantain leaves and boiled. It is to be eaten with your hands (right hand only). It was served with an extremely spicy salsa-like fresh sauce.

Picture three shows a very spicy pepper soup with goat meat. Although very tasty, I found it hard to separate the goat meat from the bones. I tried with the spoon, a knife and fork, my hands and my teeth, but only managed to free a little.

Picture four shows kelewele, a side dish of spicy fried plantain. Very nice.

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At the Ring Road East, directly opposite of the UN Headquarters in Ghana, you will find the small French restaurant Au Grand Ecuyer. It is a nice place with a roofed terrace and a cosy interior and surprisingly decent personnel: something you rarely see in Ghana.

The menu is not really as French as the name of the place suggests. You can get some really nice dishes with French names, but it is not realistic to call them typically French. But nevertheless the food is very, very good here. Their chicken khebab, the fried rice, their fish dishes and especially the fishermans soup are very good.

The prices are quite expensive compared to other restaurants in Accra, but for that money you get excellent food, a nice atmosphere and very good service. For a maindish you pay about 70.000 cedis or $ 7,-.

In the area of Osu, very close to Danquah Circle, you can have a very nice meal at Venus Restaurant. The place is based in street that goes from Cantonments Road to the American Embassy and the Salvation Army Guesthouse.

At Venus Restaurant you enter a very nicely decorated place with a roof and chairs made of bamboo and tables made of tree brenches. The lights at night are colourful and the music is pleasant.

On the menu you find a lot of international dishes like a wrap with shoarma (veeery nice!), pizza's, but also indian food and french fries. Another specialty are the cocktails you can order here.

The prices are about average for Ghanaian standards: about 50.000 cedis ($ 5,-) for a normal maindish.

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At the main parking lot there is a nice little restaurant where they serve local Ghanaian food. I don't know the name of the place but I had some good food here.

The place has a big indoor with two levels and a nice atmosphere, and a big outdoor terrace where you can eat in the shade in the outskirts of the market.

The food varies from nice meals like fried of "jollof" rice with fish or chicken, but also dishes like fufu, riceballs, banku and other Ghanaian meals. For me the dishes with rice are the only tasty alternatives, because things like banku and fufu are really disgusting if you ask me. However, all the meals here are very cheap (25.000 cedis, $ 2,50) and you get more then enough to fill your stomach.

Close to Nkrumah Circle in the area of Adabraka, you will find the nice restaurant White Bell. It has a nice and breezy upstairs restaurant that also is used as a dancing place later in the evening. Due to this, the music can be very loud, but when there is nobody dancing, you can just ask the DJ to turn the volume down a little bit.

The food at White Bell is good, but not super. The most popular dish with travellers and expats is the Cheese Burger, but there is much more good food. Besides the typically Ghanaian dishes, they have good chicken and fish meals. I tried the Red Snapper; a nice fish meal.

The personnel at the White Bell is something very special. The waitress that served us had to ask for the orders three times because she didn't understand it the first two times. She brought me pineapple juice when I ordered fresh pineapple and the most hilarious thing: when she brought a bottle of beer she asked if we wanted a straw with it!

But the restaurant is a nice place to eat and drink and the prices are pretty OK.

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One of the best places in Accra to get your fast food is the Osu Food Court, in the area of Osu. Because there are no American companies like Mc Donald's or Pizza Hut in Ghana, places like this are the only place where you can get some nice fast food. Normally I prefer local food everywhere I come, but since the Ghanaian cuisine is not that great, a burger or a slice of pizza can be heaven sometimes.

Osu Food Court is part of a South African food chain that has several little restaurant under one roof:
- There is a "French Patisserie" where you can get great raisinbread, croissants, but also cakes, pies and of course real coffee or cappucchino.
- There is a place where you can get all kinds of roasted chicken with fries or rice.
- Next to the chicken-place you can get pizza, from very small to very big. Typically South African is the "Boerewors-pizza", with some kind of sausage on it. Every wednesday it is very interesting to go to this place because then you can get every second pizza for free!
- And finally there is the "Mc Donald's"-ish place where you can order fries and several burgers like beef-burgers and cheese-burgers.

You can choose to sit outside at the fricking hot terrace, or inside in the airconditioned restaurant area.

There also is a very good internetcafe inside the Food Court. The connection is the best I had in Ghana and the computers are very modern.

In Labadi beach there are a lot s of beach restaurants, but we prefer to go every time in one just in front of the beach door of Labadi resort......Alex, the weiter is friendly, the food is good, u have to waist time cause the african clock is different from the European clock so if u are hangy u have to be patient.

Papaye was the first fast food restaurant in Osu, settled in 1993. It has been often copied, but nobody could succeed to do better.
It is a kind of fast food, but with real fresh food, based on chicken, grilled or roasted with rice.
You can go there every day at any time, but on Sundays, there are too many people and you might wait hours before being served.

Favorite Dish: We like to share of full grilled chicken with rice and ***o.

We like to go on the first floor, dining outside with a view on Oxford street.

Sometimes on Sundays, you have a band in the street playing highlife music.