The Best West African Restaurants in London, Cross-Referenced Across Every Major List

In this guide

Michelin’s African selection for Greater London contains three restaurants and every one of them holds a distinction — two one-stars and a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide. Two of the three have the same owner, and all three awards have been made since 2024.

The published lists follow the stars and cover thinly the part of the scene the stars came out of: Chishuru began as a three-month pop-up in Brixton Village, won in a cooking competition; The Flygerians started as street food in 2016; Suuyar was a stall on a Peckham street corner before it took a shop. Most of this food is still sold from places like those.

💡 The Short Version: Chishuru in Fitzrovia holds a Michelin star and its chef took Chef of the Year at the 2024 National Restaurant Awards. Akoko, four streets away, holds a star too. Akara in Borough Yards took a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide and is the one to book if a tasting menu is more evening than you want. For Ghanaian, Waakye Joint in Tottenham; for Ivorian, Sikatiô in Brockley, which a ranked London-wide list puts at number 34 in the city. For a plate under a tenner: Bola Cuisine in New Cross.

📊 The evidence behind this guide. 15 independent sources carrying 115 citations across 43 named venues, and 24 venues are named by two or more independent sources. Five carry a dated award. Built on: the Michelin Guide, the National Restaurant Awards, the Good Food Guide and The World’s 50 Best; four mastheads; three London publications; YouTube. Evidence built 22 September 2026 · How we rank →

Where they are

Price guide: £ under £20 a head · ££ £20–£45 · £££ £50–£150 · ££££ £300+.

---

The winners

Chishuru and Akoko hold a star each in the 2026 guide; Akara holds a Bib Gourmand, the inspectors’ good-value award. Akoko and Akara belong to the same founder, Aji Akokomi.

Ten independent sources name Chishuru and ten name Akoko. Both took a chef award at the 2024 National Restaurant Awards, voted by an academy of more than 200 chefs, restaurateurs and food writers: Adejoké Bakare was Chef of the Year, and Akoko’s then head chef Ayo Adeyemi was Chef to Watch.

Chishuru, Fitzrovia — a competition prize that became a Michelin star

£££ · 3 Great Titchfield Street, W1W 8AX · Cited by 10 sources · One Michelin star, 2026 guide · #77 of 100, National Restaurant Awards 2026 · book a table

Adejoké Bakare won the amateur category of the Brixton Kitchen competition in 2019, opened the prize three-month pop-up in Brixton Village in September 2020, moved to Fitzrovia in September 2023 and was awarded a Michelin star on 5 February 2024, the first Black woman in the United Kingdom to hold one.

The dining room at Chishuru.

The kitchen cooks across three Nigerian traditions, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, and calls itself “a modern west African restaurant”. Set menu only: sinasir, a fermented rice cake, under butternut squash purée; àsáró, a creamy yam and sweet potato porridge, with smoked eel; mọ́ínmọ́ín, a steamed black-eyed bean cake, salted with cured trout; a spiral of cabbage slathered in egusi.

Tables are inscribed with Nsibidi, the ideographic script of southeastern Nigeria, and the wine list is entirely French. Lunch is £55 a head and dinner £105, set menu only both times, with a £65 pre-theatre menu bookable between 5.30pm and 6pm. The kitchen lists dietary requirements it cannot accommodate; read that page before booking a group.

Akoko, Fitzrovia — twelve courses and a hand-washing ritual

£££ · 21 Berners Street, W1T 3LP · Cited by 10 sources · One Michelin star, 2026 guide · #52 of 100, National Restaurant Awards 2025 · book a table

Aji Akokomi’s restaurant took its Michelin star in 2024 and holds it in the 2026 guide. The name means first, or time, in Yoruba.

The granita course at Akoko.

The tasting menu draws on Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and The Gambia, not one of them. Tatale — a pancake made from over-ripe plantain and warm Ghanaian spices — arrives with goat cashew cream and caviar; ọ̀jọ̀jọ̀, a water yam fritter, carries baobab and yaji; there is a version of ebunuebunu, the green seafood soup of Ghana’s Akan communities, with ribbons of squid. Dessert is ice cream scented with uda, grains of selim, a spice that tastes somewhere between smoke and black pepper.

The room is pastel and quiet with an open kitchen and a counter, and the meal opens with a scented hand-washing. The full tasting menu is £130 at lunch and dinner and takes two and a half hours; a shorter lunch menu is £65. The kitchen publishes a list of allergies it cannot accommodate — tomato, allium, ginger, coconut milk, bell pepper, shiitake, soy and chilli among them — so check it before booking.

Akara, Borough Yards — the fritter the Atlantic carried, at a third of the price

££ · Arch 208, 18 Stoney Street, SE1 9AD · Cited by 9 sources · Michelin Bib Gourmand, 2026 guide · book a table

Aji Akokomi’s second restaurant, open since September 2023, took a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 guide, Michelin’s award for good cooking at a fair price. Choose it over Akoko if a tasting menu is more evening than you want.

Akara’s shopfront, Borough Yards.

It is built around akara: a black-eyed bean fritter, crisp outside and cotton-loose inside, that travelled with enslaved West Africans to Brazil, where it is acarajé. The kitchen serves both, and Michelin files its cuisine as African and Brazilian.

Order more than one filling — BBQ tiger prawn, crab kulikuli, and a vegan BBQ celeriac. Then efik rice, a coconut-scented rice from southeastern Nigeria and western Cameroon, short rib suya with a nutty yaji crumb, and lamb fataya, the Senegalese pastry, under a squid-ink yassa sauce. Drink a Chapman, the Nigerian punch.

A railway arch with blond wood and a long counter facing the open kitchen. Michelin’s inspectors mark it good for solo dining, and the counter is the seat to ask for. The same allergy restrictions as Akoko apply.

---

Ikoyi, and what its two stars are actually for

££££ · 180 Strand, WC2R 1EA · Cited by 8 sources · Two Michelin stars, 2026 guide · #24 of 100, National Restaurant Awards 2026 · #15, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 · the restaurant’s site

It is named after a district of Lagos, eight of the fifteen sources here name it, and its two Michelin stars are the most of any restaurant on this page. It is not in Michelin’s African selection: the 2026 guide gives its cuisine as “Creative”.

A tasting-menu course at Ikoyi.

Ikoyi’s own website describes “spice-based cuisine around British micro-seasonality” and never uses the words West African. Time Out says “it isn’t quite a West African restaurant”, The World’s 50 Best calls the cooking “category-free”, and Vittles writes that the Strand room “has given up the pretence of being tied to any one region of Earth”.

The West African thread that remains is smoked jollof rice, on the menu in some form since the start and arriving late in the meal. Around it are dried citrus, squid worked into marshmallow and Scotch bonnet in the puddings.

It won the Highest Climber Award at the 2025 World’s 50 Best and sits 15th on that list. The tasting menu is £395, with a shorter one at £180, served for dinner Monday to Friday and lunch Wednesday to Friday. Reservations open on the 1st of each month at noon, two months ahead, and that is the only realistic way in. Do not go expecting the food in the rest of this guide.

---

Also strongly backed

Chuku’s, Tottenham — Nigerian small plates and a weekend brunch

££ · 274 High Road, N15 4AJ · Cited by 7 sources · book a table

Deal Bottomless sharing plates: unlimited reorders of selected sharing plates (£30 per person), Sun 22 and Sun 29 Nov 2026, 12:00–16:00; advance booking required. Offer details. Free dessert for your table when everyone is dining (free dessert), Fri 20, Sat 21, Fri 27 and Sat 28 Nov 2026; one dessert per table from the regular dessert menu. Offer details. More all-you-can-eat →

Run by siblings Ifeyinwa and Emeka Frederick and billed as the world’s first Nigerian tapas restaurant. The Good Food Guide named it in Best Local Restaurants in London 2025.

Chuku’s small plates, shared.

Jollof quinoa, plantain waffles, suya-spiced meatballs, ojojo (yam croquettes) and sticky zobo wings, glazed with the hibiscus-and-citrus drink Nigerians drink cold. The tricoloured egusi bowl takes the stew apart and rebuilds it as a shareable vegan dish. Finish with chin chin cheesecake, built on the deep-fried snack.

Two minutes from Seven Sisters on the Victoria line. Closed Mondays, and dinner only from Tuesday to Friday — it opens at 5.30pm. Weekends run from noon, and the Saturday and Sunday brunch, 12pm to 4pm, is three sharing plates and three drinks for £45 a head.

805, Old Kent Road — the Nigerian institution, open since 2001

££ · 805 Old Kent Road, SE15 1DZ · Cited by 5 sources · the restaurant’s site

Open since 2001, with further London sites at Hyde Park and Hendon. The Infatuation calls it a pioneer of British West African fine dining.

805’s leaf stew and pounded yam.

The signature is monika fish, crisp-skinned and fierce with Scotch bonnet. Beyond it, efo riro — a spinach stew loaded with pepper sauce, goat, crayfish and iru, fermented locust bean — with pounded yam to tear and dip, edikaikong, and coconut fried rice. Lamb suya as a starter.

Smart service and loud music. It takes walk-ins and bookings both and runs late.

The Flygerians, Peckham — street food that stayed in the neighbourhood

£ · 14 Bournemouth Close, Peckham Palms, SE15 4PB · Cited by 4 sources · the restaurant’s site

Sisters Jess and Jo Edun learned to cook from their grandmother, began trading street food in 2016 and now run a small bar inside Peckham Palms, a hair and beauty hub.

Fried plantain, The Flygerians.

The 2 Fly Chicks Plate is the order — two pieces of chicken in Mama’s Forbidden Sauce, a sweet smoky red marinade, with jollof and plantain, £17.50. Jollof on its own is £9.50, gizdodo (gizzard with sweet pepper and plantain) £6.50, and there is a Naija fish and chips: battered red bream with cassava chips and hot sauce, £13.50. Sweet agege bread comes toasted with garlic butter.

Halal, with vegan options. Closed Mondays, and it does not open until 1pm any other day; it closes at 11pm Tuesday to Saturday and 10pm on Sunday, and Saturdays have a DJ.

Sikatiô, Brockley — Ivorian, and ranked 34th in the city

££ · 5 Brockley Cross, SE4 2AB · Cited by 4 sources · #34 of 99, The Vittles 99, 2025

Lynda Beble and Brice Assemian opened it in November 2022; they also run Akwaba Market, the Ivorian grocery in Deptford that supplies it. Jonathan Nunn’s ranked ninety-nine puts it 34th in London and says a restaurant this accomplished “should, by rights, be in Paris”. Olive’s writer adds: “There aren’t many places to dig into Ivorian cuisine in London.”

The dish is the soupe du pêcheur, a fisherman’s soup of gently poached fish, crab and prawn served in an Asanka earthenware grinder, and after that the croaker, deep-fried in what Vittles calls a chainmail of crispy skin. Choukouya is on-bone lamb smoked through to the marrow. Sides are Ivorian: attiéké, a fluffy cassava couscous, abolo, faintly sweet steamed rice cakes, and alloco, ripe fried plantain. Drink bissap, the hibiscus infusion.

A small, casual room a minute from Brockley station. The plates are for sharing, so go with at least one other person.

Pitanga, West Kensington — Nigerian food with a twist, since 2018

££ · 220 North End Road, W14 9NX · Cited by 4 sources · the restaurant’s site

Opened on 31 May 2018 by Nky Iweka, who bills herself Executive Mamaput after the roadside cooks of Lagos. The menu suits people new to Nigerian food: shredded stockfish stew and goat suya sit next to a Taste of Nigeria set menu.

Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free versions run right through the list. The Lagos Jump Salad is the signature.

A small, quiet dining room. Bookable, and worth booking, as it seats few.

---

By country, because they are not one cuisine

Jollof and fried plantain are on nearly every menu here. The differences are elsewhere, so this section sorts by country, as the writers who know this food do.

Nigerian

Aso Rock in Dalston (10 Bradbury Street, N16 8JN, its site) is the one to know for ayamase, the stew of green peppers, habanero, onion and iru fried in bleached palm oil that Felicia Ajibabi Adesina created in the town of Ikenne. The Adesina family have run it for decades; it started as a takeaway counter and now has a small neon-lit bar to drink a Guinness at. Cited by 2 sources.

Eko Bar & Restaurant (245 Wick Road, Homerton, E9 5DG) is a Nigerian lounge that does not wake up until late — a live band plays funk versions of afrobeats on Fridays, the asun goat arrives chewy and hot, and there is imported palm wine. Cited by 1 source.

Lekki (323 Kingsland Road, Haggerston, E8 4DL) is the soup restaurant: egusi to finish with your hands once the pounded yam has gone, and Nigerian pies at lunchtime that are Cornish pasties with the seasoning changed. Cited by 1 source.

Enish (its site) is the chain, with a Brixton site at 330A Coldharbour Lane and others at Finchley Road, Oxford Street and Covent Garden. Go for the things the smaller kitchens do not carry: isiewu, a spiced goat’s-head stew from eastern Nigeria, and pomo, cow skin. Resident DJs, and most branches run late. Cited by 3 sources.

Demi’s (89 Cricklewood Broadway, NW2 3JG, and Streatham) is where to eat southeastern Nigerian dishes that barely appear elsewhere in London — ofe nsala, a pale peppery catfish broth thickened with puna yam, and oha, made with a bitter leaf and cocoyam. Cited by 2 sources.

Kneluchii in Beckenham is a smart Nigerian room: asun, dun dun (fried yam blocks with a sweet pepper relish), and banga, the Niger Delta sauce made from palm fruit. Cited by 1 source.

Papi’s Grill in New Cross (its site) is a charcoal operation — asun, tozo beef under suya powder, and a £70 seafood feast for two. Book the bottomless brunch a fortnight out. Cited by 2 sources.

Ghanaian

Waakye Joint (80A West Green Road, Tottenham, N15 5NS, and Streatham High Road) serves waakye, rice and black-eyed beans steamed with dried sorghum leaves until both turn red-brown, and it comes as a full plate: salad, noodles, boiled egg, fried fish and shito, the Ghanaian chilli sauce made with dried fish and prawn. Order tofi — deep-fried turkey tails — with yam fries alongside. A hot counter, not a dining room, and the waits are long. Cited by 3 sources.

The hot counter at Waakye Joint.

Kate’s Cafe in Plaistow is the home-kitchen one: grilled fish with omo tuo, pounded yam, banku and kenkey, and stews to put them in — nkatenkwan, thick with peanut, and abenkwan, made from palm fruit. Its founder Kate has died and her family are running it on. Cited by 2 sources.

19FiftySeven on the Old Kent Road (book a table) is named for the year Ghana became the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence. The groundnut soup with omo tuo, sticky rice balls, comes in a clay pot; kelewele is very ripe plantain fried with cloves, cayenne and calabash nutmeg. Soap and water arrive at the table. Dinner Wednesday to Saturday, plus lunch and dinner on Sunday — that is the whole week. Cited by 3 sources.

Uncle John’s Bakery in Tottenham has been going since John and Emelia Mensah set it up in 1995: bouncy sweet bread, warm bofrot doughnuts, bags of savoury chin chin cracked with black pepper, and hot meat and fish pies heated to order. Cited by 1 source.

Asafo (60 Morrish Road, Brixton Hill, SW2 4EG) is small, family-run and the place to eat fried yam and plantain with chofi, or waakye south of the river. Cited by 1 source.

Ivorian

Sikatiô in Brockley, above, is the one address. Its owners also run Akwaba Market in Deptford, where you can buy attiéké and sauce graine to cook at home.

Senegalese and Gambian

Safna Kitchen at Elephant and Castle does ebbeh — boiled cassava with prawn and crab in a tangy sauce made with unrefined red palm oil — and domoda, the Gambian peanut stew, alongside jollof platters with grilled meat. Ask for wonjo, the Gambian hibiscus drink. Cited by 1 source.

Walfathou Kitchen in Islington is family-run and serves dahen, rice cooked in a buttery peanut and tomato sauce, and chura gerteh, a sweet rice-and-peanut porridge cut with yoghurt. Cited by 1 source.

Eazy Kitchen (302 Walworth Road, SE17 2TE) is the Gambian grill: barbecued and charcoal-cooked plates, and set up for takeaway as much as sitting down. Cited by 1 source.

Papa L’s Kitchen (16–17 Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6LT) is the only West African dining room in St James’s. Lawrence Gomez cooks Gambian-rooted food after stints at The Ivy and Sexy Fish — benachin, the country’s one-pot rice, tempura okra, warm coco bread, grilled tiger prawns — and rotates sixteen dishes every quarter. There is a pre-theatre deal, Wednesday to Saturday between 5pm and 6.30pm. Cited by 2 sources.

Sierra Leonean

Mingles (18 Choumert Road, Peckham, SE15 4SE) cooks Sierra Leonean. Plasas is the dish — cassava leaf pounded and cooked down with palm oil and fish or meat — with rice, jollof and fried fish alongside. Cited by 1 source.

---

Cheapest

• Bola Cuisine, 328 New Cross Road, SE14 6AG — there is a menu, but the actual system is that you ask for a combination and a price is agreed. Plantain, cassava, egusi, puff puff, and change from a tenner or even a fiver. Room for about six people, so it is takeaway in practice. Cited by 1 source.
• Angels Bakery, 136 Plumstead High Street, SE18 1JQ — a bakery that also does jollof and grilled suya. Sweet bread spooned with shito is the snack. Cited by 1 source.
• The Flygerians, Peckham — jollof £9.50, gizdodo £6.50, three wings £5. Cited by 4 sources.
• Lolak Afrique, 38–40 Choumert Road, Peckham, SE15 4SE — counter-order Nigerian bukka food. Get the abula: ewedu, a leafy green; gbegiri, blended beans, sweet and yellow; and a red tomato stew, all three on one plate. Cited by 2 sources.
• Waakye Joint, Tottenham and Streatham — the full waakye plate, under a tenner. Cited by 3 sources.
• Uncle John’s Bakery, Tottenham — bofrot, chin chin and a fish pie. Cited by 1 source.

Quickest

Counters, stalls and takeaway operations where you are out inside fifteen minutes.

• Alhaji Suya, 15 Peckham Park Road, SE15 6TR — suya wrapped and handed over, with branches in Greenwich, Brixton and Walworth. The yaji is imported from Kano state, where the owner is from. Vittles reports that the shop burned down and reopened without its live fire grill. Cited by 2 sources.
• Naija High Street, Lower Marsh Market, Waterloo, SE1 7AB — grilled chicken or fish, or beef stew, in a tray with jollof, beans, plantain and egusi. The sides are all vegan, and it is five minutes from Waterloo station. Cited by 2 sources.
• Bola Cuisine, New Cross — boxed up from the pot in a couple of minutes. Cited by 1 source.
• Aso Rock, Dalston — began as a takeaway and still works best as one. Cited by 2 sources.
• Angels Bakery, Plumstead — pies, bread and a hot counter. Cited by 1 source.

---

Market stalls and counters

Chishuru began as a three-month pop-up in Brixton Village. The Flygerians traded street food and pop-ups for years before taking a unit in Peckham Palms. Suuyar ran a stall on the corner of Choumert Road and Rye Lane, where Kolawole Ajayi handed out tasters, and now has a shop at the tip of Peckham Rye doing an all-you-can-eat suya buffet.

Suya and jollof, Suuyar.

• Naija High Street, Lower Marsh Market, Waterloo. Run by Sisi Olonje as a weekday lunch stall. Cited by 2 sources.
• Suuyar, Peckham. Suya, and an all-you-can-eat suya buffet. Cited by 2 sources.
• The Flygerians, inside Peckham Palms on Bournemouth Close. Cited by 4 sources.
• KayBizz Dishes, Peckham. People travel for the abula and its signature “1960s stew”. Cited by 1 source.
• D&K Gambian Roast Chicken and Rice, Forest Gate Market, E7. Roast chicken and rice cooked to order at a stall. Cited by 1 source.

Peckham is the centre of this, and Choumert Road is the street. Lolak Afrique at 38–40 does Nigerian bukka food and Mingles at 18 does Sierra Leonean; Alhaji Suya is round the corner on Peckham Park Road, and Wazobia has been on Rye Lane since 1994. The Peckham area guide covers the grocers, butchers and the sixty-unit indoor market the cooking comes out of.

Brixton is the other cluster: Enish on Coldharbour Lane, Sato’s Kitchen, an Alhaji Suya branch and Asafo up on Brixton Hill. It is also where Chishuru started.

---

More names

Sato’s Kitchen in Brixton is a Nigerian halal kitchen run by an owner called Agatha and covered by two YouTube creators. Gold Coast does a £35 all-you-can-eat Ghanaian buffet.

---

Booking

• Weeks ahead: Ikoyi, where reservations open on the 1st of each month at noon and are gone the same day. Chishuru and Akoko at weekends.
• A few days: Akara, Chuku’s, Pitanga, Sikatiô, Papa L’s Kitchen. Papi’s Grill wants a fortnight for the bottomless brunch specifically.
• Bookable but rarely needed: 805, Enish, Aso Rock, Eko Bar, 19FiftySeven.
• Walk in: Bola Cuisine, Angels Bakery, Waakye Joint, Alhaji Suya, Naija High Street, Uncle John’s Bakery, Lolak Afrique. None takes reservations. Waakye Joint has a queue, at the counter: long but moving.
• Check the day, not the hour. 19FiftySeven serves Wednesday to Sunday only; Chuku’s is shut Mondays and does not open until 5.30pm from Tuesday to Friday; The Flygerians is shut Mondays and never opens before 1pm.

---

Continue planning your London trip

• 🍽️ Eat in London: Restaurants, Food Markets & Quick Food Hub
• 🌴 The Best Caribbean Restaurants in London — the other side of London’s Black food scene, and it overlaps in Peckham and Brixton
• 🥘 The Best Street Food in London — every multi-trader market and food hall, compared on traders, seating and which days they exist
• 💷 Cheap Eats in London — the same under-£15 territory across every other cuisine
• 🍗 The Best Fried Chicken in London
• 🕌 The Best Halal Restaurants in London — several kitchens on this page are halal
• 🎨 Peckham Area Guide
• 🏛️ Fitzrovia Area Guide — Akoko and Chishuru are four streets apart in it

Stalls and takeaway counters change hours more often than restaurants do — check before travelling.

Common questions

What is the best West African restaurant in London?

Chishuru in Fitzrovia has the strongest claim. It holds a Michelin star in the 2026 guide, and its chef Adejoké Bakare took Chef of the Year at the 2024 National Restaurant Awards. Akoko, four streets away, holds a star too and is named by just as many independent sources. Michelin's African selection for Greater London is those two plus Akara, which holds a Bib Gourmand.

What is the difference between Nigerian and Ghanaian food?

Both sell jollof and fried plantain. A Ghanaian kitchen has waakye — rice and black-eyed beans steamed with dried sorghum leaves until both go red-brown — plus banku and kenkey, the sour fermented corn doughs. A Nigerian kitchen has egusi, a stew thickened with ground melon seed, pounded yam and amala to eat it with, and suya, thin beef grilled and dusted in a peanut-and-chilli spice called yaji.

Where is the best jollof rice in London?

For Nigerian party jollof, smoky from the bottom of the pot, try 805 on the Old Kent Road or Bola Cuisine in New Cross. For the Ghanaian version, 19FiftySeven on the Old Kent Road or Waakye Joint in Tottenham. For thieboudienne, the Senegalese original it descends from, go to a Senegambian kitchen: Safna Kitchen at Elephant and Castle or Walfathou Kitchen in Islington.

Where do I get suya in London?

Alhaji Suya in Peckham imports its yaji spice from Kano state in northern Nigeria, where the owner is from. Vittles reports that it burned down and reopened without its live fire grill. Suuyar, also in Peckham, runs an all-you-can-eat suya buffet and started as a stall on the corner of Choumert Road and Rye Lane.

Where is the West African food in Peckham?

Choumert Road, mostly. Lolak Afrique at number 38–40 does abula, the Yoruba trio of ewedu, gbegiri and tomato stew poured over one plate; Mingles at number 18 cooks Sierra Leonean. Alhaji Suya is around the corner on Peckham Park Road and The Flygerians trade inside Peckham Palms on Bournemouth Close.

Is West African food in London expensive?

A tasting menu at Ikoyi is £395 and at Akoko £130. At the other end, Bola Cuisine in New Cross will give you change from a tenner, a jollof plate at The Flygerians is £9.50, and the stalls and bakeries sit under that.