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EnglishWhat Kind of African Food Content Can I Find on African Chop?
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African Chop is a personal African food site built around one cook's experience with West African cooking. You'll find African recipes, notes on visiting African restaurants and grocery stores, and first-hand guidance on finding ingredients and dishes—mainly from Nigeria and West Africa. It suits anyone who wants to cook African food at home, find African restaurants and shops, or learn a new cuisine from someone who grew up eating it.
Recipes and cooking guidance
The site's core is recipes the author collected and cooked herself. She was born and raised in Nigeria and grew up eating dishes such as:
- Jollof rice
- Egusi
- Tuwo da miya
- Kosai
She began writing down her African recipes before the internet existed, searching libraries and cookbooks for inspiration and technique, and compiled them into a cookbook published in 1997. That cookbook is now out of print, though second-hand copies may still be found. The site reflects the same approach: recipes old and new, drawn from her own kitchen practice and from other African cookbooks she collects and uses.
If you want to cook a specific West African dish, this is the part of the site to start with. Expect recipe-oriented content rather than restaurant reviews alone.
Restaurant and grocery store visits
African Chop also documents visits to African restaurants and grocery stores. The author notes that real West African food has become far more available in the United States over the past 20 to 30 years—where she once had to mail-order ingredients and cook everything herself, she can now drive to West African restaurants and grocery stores.
That makes the site useful if you are trying to:
- Find where to eat African food near you
- Locate African groceries and ingredients
- Understand what a dish is supposed to taste like before you cook it
The perspective is that of someone who lived through the shift from mail-order ingredients to local availability, so the store and restaurant content is practical rather than purely descriptive.
Who the site is written for
The author states the site is designed for three broad groups:
| If you are… | What you'll get |
|---|---|
| An African living in the United States | Familiar dishes, plus where to find ingredients and restaurants |
| An ex-pat who lived in West Africa | Recipes and food memories from the region |
| Someone new to African cuisine | An introduction to West African dishes and how to cook them |
What to expect—and what not to
The focus is West African food, with a strong Nigerian emphasis, based on the author's own background and the dishes she names. It is a personal site rather than a comprehensive database: content comes from one cook's recipes, cookbook collection, and visits to restaurants and grocers.
The site does not present itself as a commercial storefront, and no pricing or membership details appear on the page. If you are looking for a place to buy ingredients directly, treat African Chop as a guide to finding them elsewhere rather than a shop.
Getting started
- Decide what you want: a recipe to cook, or a place to eat or shop.
- For cooking, look for the recipe content tied to the West African dishes above.
- For eating and shopping, use the restaurant and grocery visit content to identify options near you.
- If you want the author's collected recipes in one place, note that her 1997 cookbook is out of print—check for second-hand copies.
The site is best used as a starting point for cooking and sourcing West African food, written by someone who grew up with it and still cooks from her own recipe collection.