West African restaurants in London
10 places
805
££The oldest name on this page and the one south London Nigerian families have been marking occasions in for a quarter of a century, with further London sites at Hyde Park and Hendon.
Akara
£££Named after the black-eyed bean fritter it is built around, from the Chishuru team - the casual counterpart to the starred room.
Akoko
££££A Michelin-starred tasting menu drawing on the cooking of Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, with a grill and a clay oven at the centre of it.
Alhaji Suya
£Suya - beef skewered, spiced with yaji and grilled over charcoal - which almost nowhere in this half of London does properly.
Chishuru
££££Adejoké Bakare became the first Black female chef in Britain to hold a Michelin star, cooking the food of west Africa on a fixed menu.
Chuku's
££Nigerian food served as tapas by a brother-and-sister team - the format is the idea, and it makes an unfamiliar menu easy to order from.
Ikoyi
££££Two Michelin stars and a menu that uses West African pantry ingredients - grains, peppers, fermentation - without presenting itself as a heritage restaurant.
Pitanga
££Opened on 31 May 2018 by Nky Iweka, who bills herself Executive Mamaput after the roadside cooks of Lagos, and it is the westernmost entry in this guide — everything else is central, south or north-east.
Sikatiô
££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.
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.