Akoko (*) – London

1. Ojojo (yam fritter, vegetable medley, boabab & mint yaji)
2. Yassa (baked oyster, nokoss onion foam)
3. Abunuabunu (squid)
4. Moimoi (mackerel, black-eye bean sauce)
5. Sinasir (caviar, goat cashew cream)
6. Egusi (monkfish)
7. Guinea Hen (yam sauce, bbq matoke)
8. Jollof (Lake District beef, ox tongue, mbongo sauce)
9. Zobo (lemon verbena, hibiscus)
10. Chi-chin (ehuru, caramelised white chocolate)
11. Sweets (black sesame fudge, kuli kuli inspiration)

Wow, what a meal. This was my first introduction into West African cuisine.

My favorite savory dish was the squid. The green sauce (I don’t remember what it was made of) made the dish spectacular. For most of the dishes, I think the sauces were the standout component. My favorite dessert was the black sesame fudge (I could talk about this dessert forever – it blew my mind and I wish I could buy a whole bar of it). I love black sesame so biting into this dessert was literally like heaven for me. It was so thick and creamy, sweet but slightly savory because it’s sesame seeds. It was perfectly balanced. The weakest dish was the Guinea Hen. It was cooked perfectly, but lacked any distinct flavor and the garlic cream sauce was a little bland.

The jollof rice was good, but I thought the sirloin steak was underwhelming and the squid ink sauce didn’t really provide anything extra to the dish. However, the carrot sauce was amazing.
We opted for the caviar supplement which was absolutely delicious – I highly recommend.

All the flavor elements in each dish went well together and alone. I pretty much ate everything off my plate.

At the start, there was a handwashing ceremony. The service was pretty quick. A couple minutes after finishing our plates, they were already being picked up and didn’t wait too long for our next dish. We were there for 2.5 hrs. I thought this meal was of pretty good value – the portion sizes were decent and everything was delicious.