A food tour of Accra

Why Accra is worth eating your way around

Ghanaians take food seriously, and Accra is where the whole country's cooking comes together. On one street you can find a Ga family selling kenkey and fried fish, a northern stall doing waakye, a chop bar ladling groundnut soup over fufu, and a modern restaurant plating up jollof with grilled chicken. The range is huge, the flavours are bold, and the prices at street level are gentle.

The catch for a visitor is knowing where to go. The best waakye is rarely in a fancy place; it is at a stall with a queue, often sold out by early afternoon. Chop bars do not advertise. Ordering has its own etiquette, and portions and add-ons like shito, the dark pepper sauce, or wele, cow skin, take a little explaining. That is exactly the gap a good food day fills.

As a Kasoa-based team who eat this food every day, we love showing guests the real thing rather than a tourist version of it. What follows is how we think about a day eating around Accra, and the dishes we make sure nobody leaves without trying.

Start with waakye, Accra's great breakfast

If you try one thing, make it waakye. It is rice and beans cooked together with dried millet or sorghum leaves, which turn the whole dish a reddish brown. On its own that sounds plain; the magic is in the assembly. A proper plate of waakye comes loaded: a spoon of gari, a piece of boiled egg, a tangle of spaghetti, a ladle of stew, maybe some wele, and, crucially, shito for heat.

Waakye is a morning and midday food. The famous stalls open early and the best-known ones can sell out well before lunch, so this is a dish to chase early in the day. It is usually served on a leaf or in a takeaway pack, eaten fast and cheerfully. Tell the seller how spicy you want it and whether you want all the extras.

For the full picture of Ghana's staple dishes and how they are eaten, our Ghanaian food guide goes deeper. Waakye is the perfect first lesson: humble, filling and completely delicious.

Street food and snacks: kelewele and friends

Ghana's street food deserves its own chapter. The standout is kelewele: ripe plantain cut into cubes, tossed with ginger, chilli and spices, then deep-fried until the edges caramelise. It is sweet, hot and savoury all at once, sold from small stands in the evening, often with roasted groundnuts on the side. Once you start you will look for it every night.

Beyond kelewele there is roasted plantain with groundnuts, called kofi brokeman, bofrot doughnuts, meat and fish kebabs, boiled or roasted corn in season, and coconuts split open on the spot. Each has its moment in the day and its regular sellers. Part of the fun is grazing as you move around rather than sitting down for one big meal.

Our Ghana street food guide runs through the snacks worth seeking out and how to eat them safely. On a guided day we point you to the busy, high-turnover stalls, which is the simplest rule for eating street food well anywhere.

Chop bars: where locals actually eat

A chop bar is a modest, no-frills eatery serving home-style Ghanaian food, and it is the beating heart of everyday eating in Accra. This is where you get fufu pounded to order with light soup or groundnut soup, banku with okro stew, or a plate of rice and a rich stew. The setting is plastic chairs and a busy kitchen, and the food is the point.

Fufu, made from cassava and plantain pounded into a smooth, stretchy ball, is eaten with your right hand, pinched off and dipped in soup. Do not chew it much; the local way is to swallow. Light soup with goat or fish is a good introduction, warming and clean-tasting. Banku, a fermented corn and cassava dough, pairs classically with grilled tilapia and a fiery pepper.

Chop bars are exactly the kind of place a visitor struggles to find and order in alone, which is where a guide earns their keep. We know which ones are clean, busy and consistently good, and we help you order the right things for your palate.

A word on chop-bar etiquette, because it makes the experience better. Wash your hands at the basin usually provided, eat with your right hand, and do not be shy about asking what things are. Portions are generous and the pepper can be fierce, so start mild and build up. A friendly greeting in Twi or Ga goes a long way, and our basic Twi phrases guide covers enough to raise a smile from the cook.

Banku and tilapia, the evening classic

If there is one sit-down meal that defines a good evening in Accra, it is banku and grilled tilapia. A whole fish, scored and grilled over charcoal, arrives with a soft mound of banku and a bowl of ground pepper mixed with onion and tomato. You eat with your hands, using the banku to scoop up flakes of fish and pepper. It is messy, sociable and very good.

Spots along the coast and around the city specialise in this, and the fish is often chosen fresh before it hits the grill. Wash it down with a cold Malta or a local beer. It is the meal we most often recommend to guests who want one memorable, unmistakably Ghanaian dinner.

For a smarter setting, Accra also has excellent restaurants doing refined versions of local dishes alongside international menus. Our guide to the best restaurants in Accra covers those, so you can mix a street-level day with a special dinner.

Makola and the markets

You cannot understand Ghanaian food without seeing where it comes from, and Makola Market is the place to do it. This sprawling market in central Accra sells everything, but for food lovers it is the produce, the smoked fish, the spices, the palm oil and the mountains of dried chilli that tell the story. It is loud, crowded and completely alive.

Walking Makola with someone who knows it, you learn what goes into the dishes you have been eating: the gari, the plantain, the cassava, the groundnut paste for soup. You can taste snacks along the way and buy spices and shito to take home. It is sensory overload in the best sense, and it puts the meals in context.

Markets reward respect and a bit of care with your belongings, as any busy city market does. We stay with you, help you navigate and handle any bargaining, so you can concentrate on the food rather than the crowd.

A little market know-how makes Makola far less daunting. Go in the morning when the produce is freshest and the crowds are lighter, keep your bag zipped and to the front, and carry small notes for easy buying. Prices are rarely fixed, so a friendly bit of bargaining is expected, and a smile and a greeting get you further than haggling hard. If you want to taste as you go, buy from busy stalls with high turnover, the same rule that keeps street food safe anywhere. The sellers are used to visitors and many are happy to explain what an unfamiliar ingredient is and how it is cooked, which turns a shopping trip into a lesson in Ghanaian cooking. Look out for the smoked fish and dried shrimp that give so many stews their depth, the fresh chillies and ginger behind the heat, and the palm oil that colours dishes like red red. Even if you buy nothing, walking the market with someone who knows it is one of the most vivid hours you can spend in Accra, and it makes every meal afterwards make far more sense.

An evening in Osu

Osu, and its main artery Oxford Street, is where Accra goes out. In a few walkable blocks you have restaurants of every kind, bars, kebab stands, kelewele sellers and late-night snack spots. It is the easiest place to end a food day, because you can graze, sit down, and move between places as the evening unfolds.

You might start with kebabs from a grill, move to a restaurant for jollof or a grilled fish, then finish with kelewele and a drink. Osu also has good spots for continental food, Lebanese, Indian and more, so mixed groups are easy to please. It is lively rather than rowdy in most places, and it is a fun way to feel the city's social side.

For where to base yourself near the action, our guide to where to stay in Accra covers the neighbourhoods, and Accra nightlife picks up where dinner leaves off.

Drinks, sweets and what to take home

A food day is not only about the savoury plates. Ghana has its own drinks worth trying: sobolo, a deep-red hibiscus drink often spiced with ginger and pineapple, is refreshing and non-alcoholic, while asana, made from fermented corn, is an acquired but interesting taste. Freshly pressed pineapple and other juices are everywhere, and a cold Malta, a sweet malt drink, is the classic non-alcoholic partner to a spicy meal. For something stronger, local beers and akpeteshie, a potent palm or cane spirit, round out the picture.

On the sweet side, look out for bofrot, soft fried dough balls sold by the bag, and nkate cake, a brittle made from groundnuts and caramelised sugar that is easy to carry and hard to stop eating. Toffees, coconut sweets and roasted groundnuts fill the same everyday snacking role, sold at roadside stalls and traffic junctions across the city.

Plenty of what you taste can come home with you. Shito, the dark, deeply savoury pepper sauce, travels well in a sealed jar; so do dried spices, groundnut paste and packets of gari. Our guide to what to buy in Ghana covers edible souvenirs alongside crafts, and we can steer you to the best places to pick them up. A jar of shito in your suitcase is the quickest way to bring a little of Accra back to your own kitchen.

Let us plan your food day

The single best thing about a guided food day is that all the friction disappears. No hunting for the good waakye stall, no wondering how to order fufu, no worrying about which street food to trust. We drive you between the stops, make the introductions and translate the menu of a whole cuisine into a day you will remember.

What shapes the cost is the length of the day, the size of your group and whether you want a sit-down dinner at a good restaurant included. We are happy to work to your appetite and budget, and we will give you an honest, tailored quote.

How a guided food day works

Here is the shape of a typical day. We pick you up in an air-conditioned car, start with waakye while it is still being sold, and move through a market, a chop bar and a few street stalls across the day, with cold drinks and rests built in. In the evening we finish in Osu or at a banku and tilapia spot, depending on what you fancy.

Because it is private, the day bends to you. If you are vegetarian, we route around that; Ghanaian cooking has plenty, from red red to garden egg stew. If you have a sweet tooth, we chase kelewele and bofrot. If you want just a half day, we compress it into the best three or four stops.

Travelling with a Ghanaian team also means the small things are covered: where it is safe to eat with your hands, how spicy to ask for, and what to buy to take home.

Plan your Accra food tour

Eating is one of the best ways to understand Ghana, and Accra puts the whole spread within reach in a single, joyful day. From a sold-out-by-noon waakye stall to a whole grilled tilapia at dusk, the city feeds you generously and cheaply, and every dish comes with a story. Do it with someone local and you skip straight to the good stuff.

Tell us when you are around and what you like to eat, and we will design a food day to match. We will be honest about pace, portions and spice, and we will make sure you leave full and happy.

Come with an empty stomach and an open mind, and Accra will do the rest.

Questions people ask