Know Before You Go: Lagos - Food

Although I've only been here a week, so much has happened and I feel that I need to write a small novel just to cover everything I've seen and done in Lagos so far. However, the internet is still completely and totally unreliable and as I'm afraid that it will cut out on me at any moment, I think the best thing for me to do is copy-and-paste. As you may (or may not) know, I'm in Nigeria for an internship with the Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) Program through the Monterey Institute and part of my promised deliverable and the end of my stay here is to submit a "Things to Know Before You Go" booklet/brochure/pamphlet about Lagos and Nigeria in general. I've begun working on it already so as not to forget important lessons I'm learning in the beginning (i.e. how to handle the airport). I've decided to test drive bits and pieces of this final deliverable on this blog so, from time to time, I'll post "Know Before You Go" segments to see how they're received. I decided to pick a relatively neutral topic for the maiden test run so below you'll find my thoughts on Food Found in Lagos:

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Food in Nigeria

Measuring the standard of food in Nigeria depends largely on your personal standards for food in general as well as your personal likes and dislikes. The following section is based on my personal preferences although, as I am not a very picky eater and will generally try anything once, I have made notes with less flexible tastes in mind.

Even for a less adventurous food-y, Nigerian food certainly lacks variety. There are about 5 main dishes that are “Nigerian” and although there are some slight variations on each dish, you could, quite easily, try them all out in less than a week. All of these dishes have two parts: a sticky ball of something starch-y (i.e. rice or pounded yams) and a gooey sauce. One therefore eats most (if not all) Nigerian dishes by “sopping up” the gooey sauce with the selected variety of balled starch. Most Nigerian food is fairly spicy by the American standard but I have found it to be, for the most part, very flavorful and quite tasty. Be warned: many if not all Nigerian dishes are cooked with large quantities of “Maggi” which is, essentially, a block of sodium. Nigerian food also tends to be without large quantities of vegetables with the exception of tomatoes. If you’re looking to eat healthy while in Nigeria, you may have to plan ahead. As a great example of the prevalence of tomatoes and tomato-tastes in Nigerian cooking, one of the most common Nigerian dishes, “Jolof Rice,” is essentially rice that is cooked in spicy tomato paste. My favorite Nigerian food staple by far is the pounded yam which someone once described to me as “mashed potatoes… but a million times better.” I have to agree.

If Nigerian cuisine is not to your liking or if, at the very least, you require some degree of variety in your diet, shopping for food in Nigeria can be expensive. As most vegetables are not consumed regularly by the general populace, they are tough to find and can be outrageously expensive (One medium-sized green bell pepper is $12). A cheaper bet is to go with canned vegetables although these are also by no means “cheap.” Conversely, fruits such as pineapple, pawpaw (papaya), oranges, melon, and plantain are readily available for purchase on most street corners and, as I understand it, very cheap if you have basic bargaining skills.

Lagos has a few American-style restaurants but the majority of them are located on Victoria Island where there is a large ex-pat population and, of course, where everything is subsequently over-priced by roughly 200%. If you want to try Nigerian restaurant dining, there are a few fast-food style places where one can go to get a cheap meal. Since being here, I’ve tried “Mr. Biggs” which is a fast-food restaurant that claims to be centered on chicken dishes (mainly a variation of Jolof Rice with chicken) but also has hamburgers and ice cream as well as a rather disgusting chicken “pie” that I would not personally recommend to anyone. If you do decide to try out Mr. Biggs, you absolutely have to try a “Scotch Egg” which is a boiled egg that has been deep-fat-fried for roughly $1. You may recoil now but, trust me, when you get here it will taste like a little piece of crispy heaven. Other non-fast food Nigerian restaurants are scattered throughout and food is generally cheap although, as discussed earlier, by no means "exciting."

If you're hoping for the "REAL" Nigerian experience however, your best bet to to accept an invitation to eat with a local Nigerian family. Nigerians are well-known for their hospitality and will roll out a veritable food red carpet for you in terms of multiple courses cooked to perfection. Besides, it wouldn't be a real Nigerian dining experience without the intense-but-friendly talking/shouting, laughing, joking, and gesturing that is common in almost all Nigerian conversations.

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As a personal note, I would like to mention that I have found one Nigerian food that I absolutely can not eat: "draw soup." As I mentioned earlier, I am not a picky eater and I'm really adventurous about trying new foods. In fact, more often than not, I'll enjoy the food in front of me so much I'll eat way beyond actually feeling full and, when I travel, I always make sure to buy a local cook book so I can replicate my tasty food travels at home. But, seriously, this one dish - draw soup- is positively putrid and beyond anything I think I will ever be able to put into my mouth again. First of all, the smell unleashed in cooking draw soup is one that evokes that of a long-since-expired fish that has been stewing in sewage... Secondly, when you taste draw soup, it tastes exactly as it smells. And, finally, the texture is, very literally, like mucus and oozes and goops from the plate to your fingers. While I'm sure it is an acquired taste, I will be very happy if I never have to eat it again.

Christine demonstrates the mucus-like quality of "draw soup"

I demonstrate the potential of "eba" - one the the many "sticky starch balls" - that tastes a lot like polenta (or so I'm told). We have named this eba man "Wee Wole"