Ghanaian restaurants

This is an except from a longer post on Ghanaian food on the Shopping and Cooking board, but as it deals specifically with restaurants, I thought that it belonged here as well. If the moderators would like to excise the overlap feel free.

The report is written by one of my graduate students, Erin Metz ([email protected]). I had hoped to arrange an LTH Ghanaian meal but the timing was not right.

GAF

For an upscale option (where you will find mostly white clientele and decor that is more "american view of africa" than authentic african aesthetic) try Ofie (oh-fee-AY). Twi for "Home" this restaurant has both Nigerian and Ghanaian dishes. In truth it depends largely on which chef is in the kitchen the day you come. On a good day this restaurant has the best groundnut soup I have ever had.

For an experience like that you could find on the streets of Ghana, head to Chicago's northside Wilson Street neighborhood to the Palace Gate Restaurant. The kitchen is teeming with women chatting away in Twi. Ghanaian men flock in around lunchtime during the workweek, young folks fill the restaurant on friday and saturday nights, and sunday afternoon is the best time to catch the family crowd as families stop by for lunch after church. The atmosphere and preparation of the dishes here is precisely what you would find on the streets of Ghana. While many of the dishes are quite good, they would not necessarily be the best I have ever had. The best nkatsikwan in the world belongs to a woman with a roadside stand on Cantoments road in Accra. For twenty US cents you can get the best lunch of your life.

The menu at Palace Gate has no prices, which is a typically Ghana thing to do. If you were on the streets in Ghana, you would order the volume of your lunch in terms of the price. Instead of a small medium or large bowl of soup for a set price, you would tell the woman you'd like "2000 cedis (ghanaian currency) of nkatiekwan" and she would fill your bowl accordingly. At palace gate everything costs $8 as far as I can tell.

Other restaurants are emerging in the area, and there are several on the south side that I have not had the chance to try yet.