African Restaurant Dining in London, New York and Dubai: Where to Eat the Continent's Best Food Abroad

The world is eating Africa. Not the sanitised, stripped-down version sold in novelty pop-ups, but real, layered, ancestral food, smoky suya skewers, slow-simmered egusi, fermented injera stacked high with doro wot, and jollof rice that carries the authority of a thousand family arguments about which country makes it best.

African restaurants in London, New York, and Dubai are no longer fringe fixtures or ethnic curios tucked away in immigrant neighbourhoods. They are earning Michelin stars, filling fine-dining rooms, and drawing food journalists who once overlooked the continent entirely. Something has shifted, and it is worth understanding exactly what it is, where the best tables are, and why Africa has not yet seized the full commercial value of what it has put on the plate.

From the Margins to the Michelin Guide

For decades, African cuisine existed in global cities largely as a service to diaspora communities. The jollof rice was for homesick Lagosians. The injera was for the Ethiopian cab driver who could not find his mother’s recipe anywhere else. That story has changed fast.

London moved first, and it moved loudly. In early 2024, Adejoké Bakare’s Chishuru became the first UK restaurant run by a Black woman to earn a Michelin star. Bakare, a self-taught chef born in Kaduna, Nigeria, built her culinary identity around Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa techniques, serving dishes like sinasir, a fermented rice cake with butternut squash puree, at prices that signal serious fine dining. The same 2024 guide awarded a star to Akoko, the West African restaurant founded by Aji Akokomi, which pairs British ingredients with jollof rice, suya, and grains of selim ice cream. Meanwhile, Ikoyi, named after the Lagos island neighbourhood and perhaps the most decorated African restaurant in London, holds two Michelin stars and is ranked tenth at the 2024 National Restaurant Awards.

These are not outliers. They are the visible crest of a longer wave. According to Country and Town House, Resy, the restaurant booking platform, predicted African food as one of the defining dining trends of 2023, and by its own assessment, was proven right. London saw multiple high-profile African openings that year, with momentum carrying through 2024 and beyond.

The commercial logic is no accident. London has a large West African population, over 170,000 people of Nigerian origin alone, according to the UK’s 2021 census. Still, the restaurants that are winning critical attention are increasingly drawing non-African diners. The food is doing what good food always does: crossing borders without a visa.

The Top 10 Places to Find Africa’s Best Food Abroad

From the boroughs of New York to the towers of Dubai, these are the addresses and the cities where African food is being executed at its highest level outside the continent.

London, United Kingdom

According to Time Out London, London leads the global pack on African fine dining, and the case is not even close. Ikoyi at 180 Strand holds two Michelin stars and a tasting menu that pushes West African flavour profiles into avant-garde territory, think scotch bonnet caramel and palm oil-washed spirits. Chishuru in Fitzrovia runs set menus at £50 for lunch and £99 for dinner, with a kitchen that treats Nigerian culinary heritage with the precision of French technique. Akoko, set in Marylebone, crafts tatale pancakes from overripe Ghanaian plantain, served with goat cashew cream and caviar, a dish that tells the full story of what West African cooking can be in a world-class kitchen. At Southwark’s Africa Centre, Little Baobab transports diners to Dakar through Khadim Mane’s Senegalese cooking, grounding the experience in an institution that has championed African culture in London since 1964.

New York City, United States

NYC Tourism notes that New York’s African dining scene runs on two tracks. There is the Ethiopian corridor, anchored by Awash across multiple locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, which introduced tens of thousands of Americans to injera and doro wot. And there is an emerging West African scene from Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Farafina Cafe & Lounge in Harlem combines Senegalese yassa and groundnut stew with live music and cocktails, making the cultural exchange a literal performance.

Okay Africa notes that Cafe Rue Dix in Crown Heights blends French and Senegalese culinary traditions, the product of West Africa’s colonial history and its own distinctive kitchen innovation. Queen of Sheba in Hell’s Kitchen serves some of the most consistent Ethiopian food in midtown Manhattan, and Bunna Cafe in Brooklyn offers a plant-based Ethiopian menu that draws vegans and meat-eaters alike. For Nigerian fine dining with a nightlife edge, Lagos delivers in a way few restaurants in the city attempt.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Few.ae notes that Dubai’s African dining scene punches well above its weight, driven in part by the city’s large Nigerian expat community and in part by its culture of high-end experiential dining. Enish Nigerian Restaurant & Lounge at The H Dubai on Sheikh Zayed Road serves the full canon of Nigerian cuisine, jollof rice, egusi soup, suya skewers, and pepper soup in a setting that balances Lagos lounge energy with Dubai elegance.

Tribes at the Mall of the Emirates operates as a pan-African restaurant, serving Moroccan lamb tagine, Kenyan nyama choma, and Mozambican peri-peri prawns in a dining room with African art and earthy decor. Tagine at the One & Only Royal Mirage delivers Moroccan gastronomy using recipes sourced directly from Casablanca and Chefchaouen, with dim lighting and hand-polished walls that put the country firmly in the room. Zagol in Downtown Dubai’s Souk Al Bahar is the city’s most consistent Ethiopian dining destination, serving kitfo, tibs, and traditional Ethiopian coffee, accompanied by incense and popcorn.

Other Global Destinations Worth Noting

Beyond the headline trio, African food is making its mark in several other key cities. Paris carries a deep tradition of Senegalese and North African restaurants, a legacy of France’s colonial relationship with West and North Africa. Restaurants like Chez Zagora and Le Maquis continue to serve Congolese and Ivorian dishes in a city that has been eating African food longer than most. Amsterdam has a growing Surinamese-Ghanaian-Nigerian dining cluster. Toronto hosts a thriving West African food scene anchored in the Rexdale and North York communities. Berlin and Brussels both have established Congolese and Cameroonian restaurant communities that predate the current wave of culinary interest by decades. And in Riyadh and Doha, the Gulf’s appetite for African food, particularly Nigerian and Ethiopian cuisine, is growing in step with expanding African diaspora populations in both cities.

A Culinary Guide for Non-African Diners: What to Order and Why

The prospect of walking into an unfamiliar cuisine can stop first-time diners cold. Here is the entry point for different palates.

For diners from Europe and North America: Start with Ethiopia. Injera, the large, slightly sour, fermented flatbread that doubles as both a plate and a utensil, is one of the most accessible communal eating experiences in the world. Order a combination platter of stews (wots): misir (red lentil), gomen (collard greens), and doro wot (slow-cooked chicken in berbere spice paste). No cutlery required, and the flavour complexity will reframe what you think “simple” food can achieve.

For diners from South and Southeast Asia: West African food’s use of fermented locust beans (dawadawa), palm oil, and dried fish creates umami depths that will feel familiar. Nigerian egusi soup, ground melon seeds simmered in palm oil with leafy greens and assorted meat, maps closely to the textural richness of South Asian lentil curries. Jollof rice, cooked in a tomato-and-pepper base with a smoky, caramelised bottom layer, has structural similarities to biryani and paella.

For Middle Eastern and North African diners: North African cuisine, Moroccan tagines, Tunisian shakshuka, and Egyptian koshari share a clear lineage with the broader MENA food tradition. But push further south: Senegalese thieboudienne (fish and rice) is one of West Africa’s most celebrated national dishes and rewards anyone who loves aromatic, one-pot cooking. Suya, dry-rubbed, skewered beef grilled over an open flame, is the continent’s answer to kebab, and demands no adjustment whatsoever.

For Latin American diners: The connection runs deeper than geography. Much of what defines Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean cuisine, acarajé, moqueca, rice-and-beans combinations, traces direct lineage to West African cooking, particularly Yoruba and Igbo traditions from present-day Nigeria. Eating jollof rice or akara (bean fritters) in London or New York is, for many Latin Americans, an act of culinary homecoming.

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How African Dishes Made It Onto Global Menus

The route is rarely linear. Some African dishes entered the global mainstream through diaspora necessity. Ethiopian restaurants opened in Washington, D.C., in the 1970s and 1980s as refugees and immigrants built communities in Adams Morgan, a neighbourhood that became the city’s unofficial Ethiopian quarter. The food survived because it was good, affordable, and built for communal sharing.

West African food followed the migration patterns of Nigerians and Ghanaians to London, New York, and Houston throughout the 1990s and 2000s. It sat mostly in the background, in church basements supper clubs, market stalls, and takeaway spots, until a new generation of chefs and restaurateurs decided the food deserved a proper room. Chefs like Jeremy Chan at Ikoyi trained in classical European kitchens before applying that technical precision to West African ingredients, creating a fusion that neither diluted the food’s African identity nor made it inaccessible to mainstream diners.

Social media did the rest. Nigerian food content, jollof rice cook-offs, the annual “Jollof Wars” between Nigeria and Ghana, pepper soup mukbangs, generated millions of views across YouTube and TikTok from the late 2010s onward. The food arrived at the restaurant door already famous.

Culinary Tourism as Cultural Currency: Africa’s Model Nations

Culinary Tourism as Cultural Currency: Africa's Model Nations

Grand View Research notes that some African countries have figured this out better than others. The global culinary tourism market was valued at approximately USD 16.11 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 76.36 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 21.9% over that period. Africa currently holds just 3.48% of that market, a fraction that represents both underperformance and opportunity.

A 2024 Hilton study of 10,000 travellers across nine countries found that culinary experiences ranked as the top priority for more than half of respondents across all age groups. And Marriott International’s 2025 research showed that 88% of affluent travellers consider discovering new foods essential when choosing a destination.

Morocco has built the most mature culinary tourism infrastructure on the continent. Marrakech’s food scene, the Djemaa el-Fna food stalls, the riad dining experiences, and the cooking class industry generate year-round inbound tourism and have successfully positioned tagine, couscous, and mint tea as globally recognisable cultural exports. The government actively supports this through the Moroccan National Tourist Office’s international marketing campaigns.

Ethiopia is building on its coffee heritage, which is the birthplace of coffee, to develop culinary tourism around the traditional coffee ceremony, alongside injera-focused food trails. The country’s cuisine has an estimated 200+ dishes across its diverse ethnic communities, giving it enormous menu depth.

Ghana is making the most deliberate push of any sub-Saharan nation. In October 2025, Ghana held its first government-backed pan-African food festival, AfroGastro, under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts. The event drew chefs from twelve African and diaspora nations. Ghana’s tourism minister, Abla Dzifa Gomashi, described gastronomy as “a strategic pillar” for the country’s tourism and export plans, adding: “Food is not only about taste; it’s about trade. We must brand, package, and promote it like any other export.” The festival linked food diplomacy explicitly to Ghana’s ‘Beyond the Return’ diaspora engagement initiative, using cuisine as a commercial and cultural bridge.

South Africa leads the continent in wine tourism infrastructure and is the regional anchor in the culinary tourism market, accounting for 1.28% of the global market. It’s “Rainbow Cuisine”, a fusion of Cape Malay, Zulu, Afrikaner, and Indian culinary traditions, which gives it a genuinely unique story to tell.

In March 2025, Tanzania hosted the Second UN Regional Forum on Gastronomy Tourism for Africa in Arusha, co-organised by UN Tourism and the Basque Culinary Centre. The forum positioned gastronomy as a driver of sustainable and inclusive growth across the continent and institutional recognition that food tourism is now a serious policy area, not just a trend.

The RCA Argument

African Food as a Tourism Strategy

Africa is sitting on an underpriced asset. The continent’s food diversity is extraordinary, with over 3,000 distinct ethnic groups, each with its own culinary traditions, ingredients, and techniques. Yet the global restaurant industry has monetised only a fraction of that catalogue. Jollof rice and injera carry the brand weight. The rest of the continent’s food, Malawian nsima, Cameroonian ndolé, Zimbabwean sadza, and Senegalese mafé, remains largely invisible outside diaspora circles.

Competitors will fill the gap between what Africa has and what it exports through food if Africa does not fill it first. Korean food, not so long ago a regional cuisine known mainly to Koreans, is now a global phenomenon, driven by a government-backed cultural export strategy, content creation, and a relentless push to open Korean restaurants in every major city. The Korean Tourism Organisation actively integrates food into its inbound tourism marketing. Africa’s tourism bodies, with some notable exceptions like Morocco and Ghana, have not yet made that connection at scale.

The playbook is available. It requires five things: government-backed food tourism infrastructure, including destination kitchens, culinary trails, and international chef exchange programmes; diaspora restaurants as embassies, treating African restaurants abroad as cultural outposts that deserve state recognition and occasional support; continent-wide food branding that gives African cuisine the same unified messaging that “French cuisine” or “Japanese cuisine” enjoys globally; content investment, funding food documentaries, YouTube series, and TikTok campaigns that show African food being made by Africans, for the world; and training and certification to raise the technical floor so that the quality of African cooking abroad is consistently high enough to sustain the brand being built.

Africa in Focus: Nigeria’s Culinary Tourism Story

Nigeria accounts for 0.59% of the global gastronomy tourism market, a figure that will read as either embarrassing or exciting depending on your disposition. Given what Nigerian food has achieved without a coordinated strategy, the upside case is considerable.

The signals are promising. The African Food & Drinks Festival, held annually since 2021, drew over 30,000 attendees at its October 2025 Lagos edition and expanded to Abuja in November 2025. The Naija Food Festival, held in the same month, drew record crowds, with organisers describing the event as “a joyous explosion of flavours, aromas, music and culture.” The Lagos Food Festival 2025, themed “Taste Beyond Borders” and held at Muri Okunola Park on Victoria Island in December, went further by explicitly positioning Lagos as a culinary tourism hub and drawing both domestic and international visitors.

But events alone do not build a tourism sector. Nigeria’s culinary brand abroad is currently carried almost entirely by the diaspora. Chishuru in London, arguably the most critically acclaimed Nigerian restaurant in the world, was founded by a self-taught chef from Kaduna who earned a Michelin star through personal vision rather than institutional support. That is both remarkable and damning evidence of the absence of infrastructure.

What would a coordinated Nigerian culinary tourism strategy look like? It starts with recognition. The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation and the Ministry of Tourism need to treat restaurants abroad as cultural assets, tracking them, connecting them to government trade missions, and celebrating their achievements domestically. It extends to domestic investment: creating food tourism routes that connect Lagos’s buka culture with the pepper soup tradition of Port Harcourt, the kilishi of Kano, and the ofe onugbu of the southeast. And it requires training, raising the technical quality and presentation standards of Nigerian cuisine so that the gap between what a tourist eats at Chishuru in London and what they might find on arrival in Lagos is not so wide that the in-country experience disappoints.

Nigeria’s food has already done the hard work of building a global audience without government help. The sector could scale significantly with it.

Africa’s tourism story does not begin and end with safaris and beaches. The continent’s food, aviation, hospitality, and culture are writing new chapters every week. Read more of our coverage on Africa’s growing travel and tourism sector, and stay ahead of the stories that matter.

FAQs

What are the best African restaurants in London?

The highest-rated African restaurants in London include Ikoyi (two Michelin stars, 180 Strand), Chishuru (one Michelin star, Fitzrovia) and Akoko (one Michelin star, Marylebone). All three serve West African-inspired cuisine at a fine dining level. For more casual options, Little Baobab at the Africa Centre in Southwark offers Senegalese cooking in a community-rooted setting.

Is there good African food in New York City?

New York has a well-developed African dining scene concentrated in Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Ethiopian restaurants, particularly Awash and Queen of Sheba, are the most established. West African options, including Farafina Cafe & Lounge (Senegalese) and Cafe Rue Dix (French-Senegalese), are worth visiting. Lagos restaurant delivers Nigerian fine dining with a nightlife atmosphere.

Where can I find African restaurants in Dubai?

Dubai’s best African restaurants include Enish at The H Dubai (Nigerian), Tribes at the Mall of the Emirates (pan-African), Tagine at the One & Only Royal Mirage (Moroccan), and Zagol in Downtown Dubai (Ethiopian). The city also has several budget-friendly spots serving Nigerian and East African dishes in International City and Deira.

Which African country has the best food for tourists?

Morocco has the most developed culinary tourism infrastructure, with Marrakech in particular offering food stall experiences at Djemaa el-Fna, cooking classes, and riad dining. Ethiopia offers unique, deeply ceremonial dining, particularly through its coffee culture and injera tradition. Ghana and Nigeria are rapidly building food tourism infrastructure backed by festivals and government investment.

Why is African food becoming popular worldwide?

African food’s global rise is driven by several factors: the growing economic and cultural confidence of African diaspora communities, the critical recognition of African chefs at the highest levels (including Michelin stars), sustained social media engagement around dishes like jollof rice and suya, and a broader consumer appetite for authentic, non-European culinary experiences. The food’s complexity, nutritional depth, and communal eating traditions also resonate strongly with contemporary dining values.

African Restaurant Dining in London, New York and Dubai: Where to Eat the Continent’s Best Food Abroad