Throughout Africa, chefs are getting creative. From Ghana to Namibia, they're tweaking traditional recipes, or reaching into the past to revive ancient dishes.
Courtesy reubens restaurant & bar
One chef dazzling local taste buds is South Africa's Reuben Riffel. He's putting his hometown of Franschhoek on the map thanks to his inventive menus. Pictured spicy beef tartar, egg yolk, parsley and caper salad, Parmesan custard, pickled butternut discs.
The South African chef is definitely one to celebrate his own roots and he suggests others to do the same.
"You need to look inward. You can learn from international chefs and international cuisines but I think it's time that (Africans) create," he says.
"We have amazing chefs that can cook beautifully but I'd like to see us leading the way at some stage as well."
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One of Riffel's most sought after dishes is braised lamb neck with masala curry sauce, served with compressed pineapple, tumeric mash and tempura fine beans.
Margot Janse is another chef making waves. Originally from the Netherlands, she has spent the last two decades in South Africa. During that time, she's served as executive chef at Le Quartier Francais, where she has demonstrated a panache for giving local flavors a haute makeover (including a dish where she combines fermented turnip, linseed cracker and smoked honey).
Courtesy Jean van der Walt/Le Quartier Français
Janse's unique approach to food is to embrace change for phenomenal results. Her gastronomic approach is brave, experimental and unrelenting. This snow globe dessert -- served with rice crispies and a local shrub called, fittingly, num num -- is one example of her ingenuity with food.
Courtesy Jean van der Walt/Le Quartier Français
The restaurant ranked 88 in the San Pellegrino "50 Best Restaurants" list. Undoubtedly, items like this baobab fruit dish, embellished with coconut, honeybush and caramel, have helped put the restaurant on the map.
Courtesy Jean van der Walt/Le Quartier Français
The Test Kitchen in Cape Town is another restaurant thrilling diners with its flair for the dramatic. One bold dish (pictured) includes barbequed langoustine "en gele" and langoustine tataki with liquorice powder.
Even more wholesome, less high-end establishments are getting in on the act. One local chef is updating fufu, a popular staple dish found in many a Ghanaian home. Typically, the dish is a mixture of cassava and plantain. It is boiled and then pounded together vigorously using a pestle and mortar.
Courtesy Tuleka Prah/My African Food Map
Accra restauranteur Raja Owusu-Ansah opened The Republic Bar and Grill with his brother, Kofi, back in 2012. The half-Ghanaian, half-Indian duo serve up their own version of fufu.
"Sundays was fufu afternoons," recalls Owusu-Ansah. "You have to be careful because (fufu) can make you gain a lot of weight if you do it everyday. But otherwise, it's a delicacy. It's a time for family to get together, to eat together."
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Another popular spot in the Ghanaian capital is PaJohn's. Run by PaJohn Bentsifi Dadson, the restaurant served up unpretentious but high-quality food amid a laid-back lounge atmosphere that has proved popular with locals.
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Dadson says: "We try to make the original thing but give it a twist. For instance, what you have here, this is a jollof with pineapple... Initially when I wanted to add on to jollof rice, I thought 'sacrilege,' but times are changing!"
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Antica Restaurants & Farm in Addis Ababa is one institution that has started experimenting with Ethiopian ingredients. Chef Yohannes Hailemariam has created several fusion dishes, including a lasagne made from teff.
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But it's not just dishes that are getting a modern makeover on the continent. Cocktail menus are taking advantage of local produce. Enterprising Ghanaian businesswoman Yaganoma Baatuolkuu has spent the last several years taking locally-sourced ingredients, like hibiscus and tamarind, and transforming them into syrups to use in cocktails. Find out more about Baatuolkuu's superfruit cocktails here.
Courtesy Wanjo Foods
Akpeteshie is a local Ghanaian liquor made from sugar cane. And while it might have been banned during the colonial era, today it is the trendy new tipple everyone is ordering.
