What to eat Ivory Coast? culinary specialties and gastronomy

As in the rest of West Africa, Ivorian cuisine makes generous use of many starchy foods. One of these is manioc. It is used to make tapioca and attiéké, a kind of cassava semolina, lighter than couscous and particularly popular in the country. The cassava is first fermented in water for several days, then sun-dried, ground, sieved and finally steamed. Attiéké is traditionally eaten with meat or fish. Foufou or foutou is a kind of soft ball with a slightly grainy surface made from boiled cassava, plantain or yam.

Yam is a root with a texture and taste similar to potatoes. This tuber can weigh up to twenty-five kilos, and those found on the markets generally range from one to three kilos. It is prepared as a stew, fries or foutou. Plantains are inedible raw because of their high starch content. On the other hand, it is delicious fried, boiled or mashed (foutou banana). Tôh (or kabato) is eaten mainly in the north. This cornflour-based preparation comes in the form of small dumplings. Placali is a cassava-based variant of tôh.

The palm nut or fruit of the oil palm is characterized by its bright orange, oily pulp. Far removed from our dietary and environmental considerations, palm oil is a major component of West African cuisine. Although decried by nutritionists when refined, pure red palm oil is extremely rich in beta-carotene, vitamins and minerals.

There are, of course, a multitude of vegetables: tomatoes, eggplants, cabbage, squash, potatoes and so on. Some are less familiar, such as okra, a vegetable that looks like a green chili pepper and whose slightly viscous juice is much appreciated for thickening sauces. The saka-saka or sweet potato leaf is often mashed into sauces. It can be replaced by spinach.

As for condiments, Ivorian cuisine makes good use of chili, ginger, cumin and turmeric, not forgetting soumbara. Made by fermenting the seeds of the dwarf tree, soumbara comes in the form of a pellet that is added directly to culinary preparations. A less authentic yet widely used ingredient, Maggi cubes are essential in West African cuisine.

Among the meats consumed in Côte d'Ivoire, chicken is the most popular and accessible, although beef, mutton, lamb and goat are also very popular. The country's coasts and rivers are also teeming with fish and seafood, not to mention the giant African snail, a mollusc that can weigh over 500 g and is usually cooked as a stew. Bushmeat " refers to a variety of game animals generally poached from the savannah or forest. These include the agouti (a large rodent), the hind (actually various species of antelope) and several other animals: warthog, porcupine, snake, monkey, bat, and so on. Although the change of scenery may seem tempting, bushmeat can be a vector for the transmission of serious diseases such as Ebola or coronavirus, not to mention the ecological threat posed by the consumption of this type of meat. As a tourist, it's best to fall back on more traditional meats and avoid a few disappointments.

In Côte d'Ivoire, numerous snacks are often available directly from the markets, such as the famous alloco, slices of fried plantain, orakpessi, which consists of large pieces of yam or plantain, poached and served with a thick, spicy tomato sauce. Finally,attoukpou is a type of small, very crunchy cassava patty topped with shrimps and raw vegetables.

Main courses are generally accompanied by rice, attiéké, plantain, yam or manioc, sometimes all four at the same time. Rice is highly prized, with recipes such as the famous riz gras - sometimes called riz jollof in other parts of Africa - flavored with tomato and chili pepper, and usually served with chicken.

Many Ivorian recipes are combinations of starchy foods and grilled or boiled meats, accompanied by a variety of sauces and condiments. The best known is sauce graine, made with oil palm seeds, or sauce claire, made with eggplant, tomato and onion. Okra sauce is made with fresh okra, while djoumgblé is obtained from dried okra powder. Peanut sauce is made mainly with peanut butter, reminiscent of the mafé eaten in Mali and Senegal. The kwlala is made from the leaves of cortea, a plant widely eaten in Africa and the Middle East. N'tro sauce is prepared with various meats and vegetables and seasoned with red palm oil and akpi powder, a berry native to West Africa. Finally, gnangnan sauce is cooked with solanum torvum berries - sometimes dried - known for their bitter taste, while biékosseu is a similar preparation based on African eggplants and other vegetables.

Garba is a popular dish in Côte d'Ivoire, considered the national dish. Quick and cheap (around 700 FCFA), it is one of the symbols of the country. It is sold in small street maquis and consists of an assortment of attiéké (cassava semolina) and fried red tuna, with a garnish of onions and fresh chili pepper.) Also known as zéguen, attiéké-poisson, guéro, foin, ganguatte, béton or zeh. It is sold mainly by Nigerians of Haoussa ethnicity, to whom it owes its name since garba means boy in Haoussa. Young people in particular devour it, and garbadromes were the first to spring up around universities in the 1990s.
Another emblematic dish is fish with "sauce claire", which is eaten in exceptional circumstances, to celebrate an important event for example. The sauce claire is made with a spice that is a landmark in Africa but little-known here: Akpi, an almond from a fruit tree that grows in the heart of tropical forests.

There are also more complex dishes, such as kédjénou (a stew of poultry, sometimes giant snails, simmered with vegetables and spices), beef sokossoko (a kind of beef bourguignon from Côte d'Ivoire) or choukouya (a spicy mutton or beef barbecue from Niger).

With its largely tropical climate, Côte d'Ivoire has no difficulty in offering travelers a magnificent diversity of delicious fruits. Papaya, for example, can be eaten green or ripe, and is renowned for its many medicinal virtues. The same goes for pineapple, whose flesh is particularly tender and sweet in Côte d'Ivoire, where it is widely cultivated. The mango season in Côte d'Ivoire runs from February to June, and the country is renowned for its mangoes, which are among the best in the world. Originating in South Asia, this fruit, like the papaya, can be eaten green, croque-au-sel style, or ripe, prepared "hedgehog style", cut in a checkerboard pattern.

Other desserts include gnomi, small millet flour fritters resembling mini-pancakes, and similar but thicker wheat flour tratras. Gbofloto is another variety in the form of small balls of fried dough. Groto is a type of yoghurt drink. Coconut is used to flavour many cakes.

Although the country was for a long time - before the civil war of the 2000s - one of the world's biggest producers of coffee and cocoa, these two products are mainly destined for export. Ivorians enjoy a wide range of fruit juices: pineapple, passion fruit, ginger, baobab and côcôta, a tangy local fruit. Bissap is a drink common to several West African countries (Senegal, Mali, etc.), made from roselle, a flower better known as hibiscus sabdariffa. It's made by boiling a few handfuls of flowers to obtain a thick pink syrup, which is then diluted in cool water, with more or less sugar according to preference.

Another classic, bandji, or palm wine, is a traditional beverage obtained from the fermentation of the sap of oil palms, raffia and roasters. Drawn from the trunk early in the morning, the sap initially produces a milky white wine with a sweet, mild taste. As fermentation progresses, the wine becomes slightly fizzy, more bitter and alcoholic. Its alcohol content varies between 7.5 and 11.5°, and it has the same effect as beer, which is increasingly replacing it. Quite similar, koutoukou or gbêlê is a macerated palm liqueur. While in the rest of Africa, tchapalo is a millet-based beer, in Côte d'Ivoire it's made with corn.