Eating vegetarian in Accra is more possible than newcomers expect and harder than the menu suggests, and both halves of that come from the same fact: Ghanaian cooking builds its savouriness out of dried fish, crayfish and smoked shellfish rather than out of stock cubes.
— Where to eat cheaply in Accra
The dishes that are genuinely plant-based
Cooked without the usual additions, these are vegetarian and most are vegan:
- Red red — black-eyed beans stewed in palm oil with fried ripe plantain. The best cheap vegetarian meal in the country.
- Gob3 — beans and gari, often with plantain.
- Kelewele — spiced fried plantain.
- Gari soakings — gari, sugar, water, sometimes milk and groundnuts.
- Roasted or boiled plantain with groundnuts.
- Fried yam with pepper — check the pepper.
- Koko — the millet porridge — and koose, the bean fritters.
- Kontomire (cocoyam leaf) and garden egg stew, when made without fish. Usually they are not, so ask.
- Rice and vegetable stew, on the same condition.
- Salads, fruit, and the abundant produce of every market.
What hides in everything else
This is the part that catches people, and it is not a matter of a stray ingredient. It is how the food is built:
- Shito contains dried fish and dried prawn. It is on or beside almost everything. It is not a chilli sauce with fish in it; it is a fish sauce.
- Crayfish powder and smoked fish go into soups, stews and kontomire as routinely as salt.
- Palmnut and groundnut soup are usually made with fish or meat stock, even when no fish is visible in the bowl.
- Beans are frequently cooked with fish or meat for depth.
- “Vegetable” on a menu often means the dish has vegetables in it, not that it has nothing else.
Assume fish unless told otherwise, and ask before the plate is made up rather than after.
How to ask so the answer is useful
“Is it vegetarian?” is the wrong question, because the word does not map cleanly onto how the food is described. These work:
- “Does it have fish inside?” — the single most useful question, and it covers dried and smoked fish as well as fillets.
- “Does it have crayfish?” — ask separately. Many people do not count crayfish powder as fish.
- “No shito, please”, said before the dish is assembled.
- “No meat, no fish, no crayfish” — the full sentence is not rude, it is clear, and a chop bar cook will simply tell you what she can do.
Nobody will be offended. Fasting is common in both Christian and Muslim Ghana, and a request to leave out meat and fish is entirely familiar even where the word vegetarian is not.
Where to eat without negotiating
Dedicated vegetarian and vegan restaurants exist in Accra and are concentrated in Osu, Labone, East Legon and Airport Residential. They are restaurants rather than chop bars, and priced as such.
Indian and Lebanese restaurants are the reliable middle option: a full vegetarian menu, no ingredient archaeology required, and cheaper than the Ghanaian fine-dining end.
Cooking for yourself is the cheapest answer by far, and Accra’s markets are exceptionally good for it — beans, plantain, yam, cassava, garden eggs, tomatoes, peppers, groundnuts, greens, and fruit that costs a fraction of what it does in a supermarket.
— Where to buy food cheaply in Accra — Accra’s markets
Vegans, specifically
Everything above, plus two things:
- Milk in tea and koko is evaporated or powdered and is added by default. Say no as it is being made.
- Eggs turn up in bread — tea bread and butter bread — and in a great deal of street breakfast food.
Palm oil, groundnut oil and coconut oil are used far more than butter, so the fats are rarely the problem.