What I'm been eating in Togo
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The food
I love to eat, I also love to explore new foods. Luckily for me, I don't have any food-related allergies, and I am very, very curious and open to discovering new things.
The first thing I liked to take regularly was fruit juices. I love fruit juices. All kinds of fruit juice. With the cocktails you can get by mixing them.
This is a juice cocktail of pineapple, carambola (it was the first time I heard of this fruit ?) and orange. It was too good. I think during the week I spent in Lomé I drank about ten of them, and there was always some in the fridge of the Airbnb I was in.
Next is the "Adokougbi". This is my favourite meat in Lomé ??. Well…. until a nutritionist friend of mine told me that it's full of fat and that I should eat less of it.
It's actually turkey rump. Which is fried in oil. It is eaten with a tomato sauce that is actually too good. The sauce is called "dja", and it is basically seasoned tomato sauce cooked in oil.
A real delight in the mouth.
Next discovery, a classic dish that I like to eat every time I go to a restaurant: french fries, alloco, meat.
Well, everyone knows french fries I guess. The alloco is what you see in pieces in the middle in yellow there.
It's a dish of Ivorian origin which is also very popular in other countries of the West African sub-region. Basically, it's plantain banana fried in palm oil or peanut oil (a matter of preference).
I ❤️ the alloco. When I go for the first time to a restaurant that offers African specialities without alloco, it's next, directy. I won't come back to it again ?.
Next to the alloco and french fries you have beef skewers. And to accompany it all, a tomato sauce and chilli pepper.
You should also see on the picture a fruit cocktail. I think it was pineapple, grenadine, passion fruit.
Here you have a variation of the same dish with lamb instead of beef skewers.
The next discovery is khom. It is a kind of dough, made from corn flour with a mixture of tomatoes and chilli pepper, with fried fish, sardines and thinly sliced onions. It is usually eaten very hot. And as I like to say, it's a dish that is good for the stomach ?.
Another photo of a dish of khom that I took at another place. I think we were at the market there.
Well, now we move on to the climax of the show. The dish I'm going to present now is numéro uno on my list of favourites. It's pounded yam. They call it foufou in Togo, and in my mother tongue it's called agoun.
For me, eating agoun is a noble activity that everyone should do at least once in their lives. I was born and grew up in a region of Benin where agoun is the basis. We eat it regularly and it is found everywhere.
In this photo, the agoun is accompanied by a clear sauce, which is a tomato sauce (a Togolese speciality); clear as its name suggests. It is also eaten with peanut sauce.
This is it Francesca. What I have been eating in Togo. I hope you like it. I will take care next time to make prettier pictures ?.
And if I have enough time, maybe I'll publish regular posts with photos of meals or travels.
My friend, colleague and team lead at Yoast, Francesca recently asked me to share photos of foods I've been eating when I was in Togo last week. So I decided to quickly set up this site so that I can share both pictures and descriptions.
The food
I love to eat, I also love to explore new foods. Luckily for me, I don't have any food-related allergies, and I am very, very curious and open to discovering new things.
The first thing I liked to take regularly was fruit juices. I love fruit juices. All kinds of fruit juice. With the cocktails you can get by mixing them.
This is a juice cocktail of pineapple, carambola (it was the first time I heard of this fruit ?) and orange. It was too good. I think during the week I spent in Lomé I drank about ten of them, and there was always some in the fridge of the Airbnb I was in.
Next is the "Adokougbi". This is my favourite meat in Lomé ??. Well…. until a nutritionist friend of mine told me that it's full of fat and that I should eat less of it.
It's actually turkey rump. Which is fried in oil. It is eaten with a tomato sauce that is actually too good. The sauce is called "dja", and it is basically seasoned tomato sauce cooked in oil.
A real delight in the mouth.
Next discovery, a classic dish that I like to eat every time I go to a restaurant: french fries, alloco, meat.
Well, everyone knows french fries I guess. The alloco is what you see in pieces in the middle in yellow there.
It's a dish of Ivorian origin which is also very popular in other countries of the West African sub-region. Basically, it's plantain banana fried in palm oil or peanut oil (a matter of preference).
I ❤️ the alloco. When I go for the first time to a restaurant that offers African specialities without alloco, it's next, directy. I won't come back to it again ?.
Next to the alloco and french fries you have beef skewers. And to accompany it all, a tomato sauce and chilli pepper.
You should also see on the picture a fruit cocktail. I think it was pineapple, grenadine, passion fruit.
Here you have a variation of the same dish with lamb instead of beef skewers.
The next discovery is khom. It is a kind of dough, made from corn flour with a mixture of tomatoes and chilli pepper, with fried fish, sardines and thinly sliced onions. It is usually eaten very hot. And as I like to say, it's a dish that is good for the stomach ?.
Another photo of a dish of khom that I took at another place. I think we were at the market there.
Well, now we move on to the climax of the show. The dish I'm going to present now is numéro uno on my list of favourites. It's pounded yam. They call it foufou in Togo, and in my mother tongue it's called agoun.
For me, eating agoun is a noble activity that everyone should do at least once in their lives. I was born and grew up in a region of Benin where agoun is the basis. We eat it regularly and it is found everywhere.
In this photo, the agoun is accompanied by a clear sauce, which is a tomato sauce (a Togolese speciality); clear as its name suggests. It is also eaten with peanut sauce.
This is it Francesca. What I have been eating in Togo. I hope you like it. I will take care next time to make prettier pictures ?.
And if I have enough time, maybe I'll publish regular posts with photos of meals or travels.