When visiting The Gambia you'll find a huge choice of restaurants to suit every palate including Italian, Indian, Chinese and Lebanese, as well as international restaurants selling everything from a full English breakfast to fillet steak with peppercorn sauce. But its best to try the local food of course. Here are the most common and delicious foods and snacks to try in The Gambia.
The most common food served in a Gambian home is white rice with any one of a number of spicy sauces. It is traditional in The Gambia to all gather round one large bowl of food with each person eating from the part of the bowl immediately in front of them, using their right hand
Afra is a very popular late night snack. Typically, you’ll select your choice of meat which will be chopped up in front of you, seasoned and grilled then served with mustard or a spicy sauce.
Akara is a delicious local dish served for breakfast sometimes in tapalapa bread. It’s made from black-eyed peas, grounded into flour and deep-fried. Akara is a favourite but others include Oleleh and Abala, street food snacks, again made from black-eyed peas, and traditionally come wrapped in a banana leaf.
Made from the fruit of the giant baobab trees, this pale brown, non-alcoholic drink is delicious and good for you, being full of vitamins, calcium and fibre. It’s also stimulates good bacteria.
Domada is a peanut based dish and probably the most cooked dish in The Gambia and comes served with white rice. Domada is made from peanuts with tomato paste, mustard, black pepper and onions.
Okra Stew, also known as Superkanja, this stew is made with beef, fish, onions and, of course, okra and sometimes prawns or crabs.
Made by collecting the sap from the top of certain palm trees, palm wine, a cloudy white drink, can vary from a sweet and mildly alcoholic drink when freshly collected (especially from a tree that hasn’t been tapped before) to a sour and much stronger drink, after the sap has been allowed to naturally ferment for a few hours. It gets stronger over the nest day or so but if left too long turns into vinegar.
Tapalapa is brea that looks much like a French stick and is commonly eaten for breakfast with jam.
Yassa is another common dish that you’ll often find on restaurant menus, usually in the form of Chicken Yassa. The chicken is cooked with chillies, lime, onions and mustard and a stock cube of Maggi cubes, a popular ingredient in the Gambia. Variations that you’ll sometimes find include beef, fish, prawn or vegetable.
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