Accra eats on the street, at every hour, and most of the best food in the city is cooked within a metre of a road. It is also the part of eating here that newcomers worry most about and adjust to fastest.
— Where to eat cheaply in Accra
The day, by what is being sold
Street food in Accra runs to a timetable, and buying at the wrong hour is the commonest mistake:
Early morning. Waakye, koko with koose, tea and bread, boiled eggs, porridge. The waakye sellers set up before six and the good ones are finished well before noon.
Mid-morning to lunch. Rice and stew, jollof, fried yam with pepper, kenkey and fish, gob3 (beans and gari), roasted plantain with groundnuts.
Late afternoon and evening. Kelewele, chichinga (kebabs) over charcoal, roasted corn in season, bofrot, fried yam and chicken.
Late night. Rice joints — check check — frying jollof and fried rice to order on a griddle until the early hours, outside the bars.
Who is selling
Stationary sellers work a pitch: a table, a coal pot or a fryer, and a regular crowd. They are there every day and their reputation is the business.
Head-pan sellers walk a route with the food on their heads — bread, pure water, fruit, boiled groundnuts, kelewele — and appear exactly where people are waiting.
Traffic hawkers sell into stopped cars at junctions: water, plantain chips, fruit, bread, drinks, and a startling range of things that are not food. Buying is normal. Have the money ready, because the lights change.
Market sellers cook for the traders, which is why the food around Makola, Kaneshie and Madina is both cheap and good.
Judging a stall in ten seconds
- Is there a queue? Everything else is secondary. Turnover is what keeps food safe, and a crowd is a crowd of people who have eaten there before.
- Is the food hot, or has it been standing? Something lifted straight from the oil or the pot is a different proposition from something that has sat in a covered pan since lunch.
- Is there water and soap for the seller’s hands, and is the money handled by someone other than the person serving? The good stalls separate the two.
- Is it covered? Against dust and flies, between servings.
- Buy what the stall is for. A seller who does one thing does it well. The kebab man’s rice is not why anybody is there.
The hygiene rules that actually matter
Most stomach trouble in Accra comes from water and from food that has been standing, not from the fact that a stall has no walls.
- Eat it hot, freshly cooked, and eat it where it was cooked.
- Drink pure water sachets or sealed bottles. Never water or ice from an open jug, and treat home-made drinks in unlabelled bottles with caution.
- Peel your own fruit for the first few weeks rather than buying it cut.
- Carry hand sanitiser or use the seller’s bucket. You will be eating with your hands more often than you expect.
- Expect a bad week, and then not another one. Nearly every newcomer has one while their gut adjusts, and it is not a reason to retreat to hotel restaurants for a year.
Street food vendors are regulated: the Food and Drugs Authority licenses food businesses under the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851), and food handlers are meant to hold a health certificate from the assembly’s public health department. It is worth knowing the rule exists; it is not what you should rely on at a particular table.
— Malaria, water and staying well — Drinking water in Accra
Paying
Carry small notes and coins. A seller at six in the morning cannot break a large note, and this is the single most avoidable friction in the whole transaction.
MoMo is accepted by most stationary sellers and by many hawkers. Traffic hawkers are a cash trade, because the lights change.
A word about the plastic
Almost everything is served in a black polythene bag or a takeaway pack, and pure water comes in sachets. It is a genuine waste problem that Accra has not solved, and carrying a container for takeaway food is both welcomed and unusual.
— Waste and recycling in Accra — What to eat in Accra — Chop bars in Accra