Lagos eats well, cheaply if you know where, and spicily almost everywhere. This is what you will find on the plate, and how to go about ordering it.
Rice
- Jollof rice - rice cooked in a tomato and pepper stew, the centre of every party. “Party jollof”, cooked over firewood in huge pots, is smoky and catches at the bottom, and that bottom is the best part. Nigerians will tell you it is better than Ghana’s.
- Fried rice, with vegetables, liver and prawns, usually served alongside jollof at parties.
- Ofada rice with ayamase - local brown rice with a fiery stew of green peppers, locust beans and assorted meat. Lagos’s own.
- Rice and stew, plain white rice with tomato stew - the everyday plate.
Swallow and soup
The heart of the Nigerian kitchen. Swallow is a soft, dense dough eaten with your right hand: pinch off a piece, roll it, make a dent with your thumb, scoop up soup with it and swallow without much chewing.
| Swallow | Made from |
|---|---|
| Eba | Garri - fermented, roasted cassava |
| Amala | Yam flour - dark brown, and the Yoruba favourite |
| Pounded yam (iyan) | Boiled yam, pounded smooth |
| Fufu | Fermented cassava |
| Semo and wheat | Semolina and wheat flour |
The soups:
- Egusi - ground melon seeds with leafy greens
- Efo riro - a rich Yoruba spinach stew
- Ewedu and gbegiri - jute-leaf and bean soups, eaten together with amala and stew. Order abula.
- Ogbono - “draw soup”, slippery and stretchy
- Okra, banga (palm nut), afang and edikang ikong, from across the south
Soups come with “assorted” - a mixture of meats and offal, including shaki (tripe) and ponmo (cow skin) - or with goat, beef, chicken, fish or snail.
Street food
- Suya - thin beef skewers rubbed with yaji, a peppery groundnut spice, grilled at roadside stands in the evening. Served with raw onion and tomato in newspaper.
- Boli - roasted plantain, with groundnuts or a pepper sauce
- Akara - deep-fried bean fritters, at breakfast with bread or pap, a fermented corn porridge
- Moin moin - steamed bean pudding
- Puff-puff - sweet fried dough balls
- Gala - a sausage roll sold in traffic
- Agege bread and ewa agoyin - soft white bread with mashed beans and a dark, oily pepper sauce. A Lagos breakfast.
- Roasted corn and ube - in the rainy season
- Asun - spicy grilled goat, at parties and bars
- Pepper soup - a hot, thin, peppery broth of goat, fish or chicken, best with a cold drink
Small chops are party finger food: puff-puff, samosas, spring rolls, peppered gizzard and chicken, by the plateful.
Drinks
Zobo (hibiscus), kunu (millet), fresh palm wine, Chapman (the Nigerian fruit cocktail), malt drinks, beer, and pure water - sachet water - everywhere.
Where to eat
- A buka - a local restaurant serving food straight from the pots. Point at what you want, and say which swallow and which meat. Bukas bring a bowl of water to wash your hand before swallow.
- Mama put - a roadside food seller, named after the customer’s call of “Mama, put…” as the plate is filled.
- Restaurants, from local chains to expensive places on the Island, and delivery apps for all of them.
Before your first bowl
- It is hot. Scotch bonnet - ata rodo - goes into almost everything. Ask for small pepper, but a stew cooked that morning cannot be made milder at the counter.
- Eat where it is busy. Food that sells fast is fresh, and food that has been sitting in the heat is the risk.
- Be careful with cut fruit, salads and ice from the street, which meet untreated water.
- Use your right hand, and wash it first.
- “You are welcome to join me”, said by someone eating, is politeness. Saying “thank you, enjoy” is the correct answer.