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There are a great variety of delicious local dishes to be tried in Ivory Coast, although it can be a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. We found that in general, hotel restaurants are over-priced and the food is not that great, especially if they try to cook French dishes.

Let's Eat

Ajcairns
2005-11-04 20:48:05

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being allowed to choose the best bits like the legs or the wings, and even then someone would sometimes take my left over chicken bones to crunch on.

In the village, nothing is wasted. People don't go hungry or die of starvation, at least not in the villages we were in. However, some people, particularly the children, do lack meat, protein and vitamins - we saw some young children with swollen stomachs from eating mainly rice all the time.

People typically eat with their hands (cutlery is a bit of a luxury), washing them in a basin first, although when several people wash their hands in the same basin of water, hygiene takes a bit of a nose-dive. I usually tried wherever possible to wash my hands by pouring on clean water from a basin which no one had used yet or from a bottle of water filled from the pump.

We knew that drinking water from pumps, taps, or else where was inadvisable, so we tried to stick to mineral water, although it wasn't available in some places. We added the anti-bacteria tablets that we'd brought with us to bottles of water from the village pumps (you're supposed to leave the tablets dissolve for at least an hour before drinking).

Despite all our precautions we both had diarrhea quite a lot (especially me - I had one bout in the village which lasted three days with fever, vomiting, etc., so bad that I had to get medicine and an injection from the village nurse).

One unusual aspect concerning food in Ivory Coast, is that it is often served or stored in containers that you wouldn't expect. Water, juice, milk and ice-cream are commonly served in knotted plastic bags, which you can either un-knot or simply bite a hole in to get at the stuff inside. Water is also stored and served in old engine-oil bottles - imagine going into a restaurant and having plonked on the table in front of you two grimy glasses and an engine-oil bottle which looks like it's just been used by some mechanic to top up a car with oil. Food, such as Atikée, is often served in a big green leaf, sandwiches are wrapped in paper ripped off an old potato sack, peanuts are stored in old whisky and wine bottles and kids stick chewing gum behind their ears to be chewed on again later.

All in all, though the 'food experience' was a good one - where else would you get to try things like cocoa and coffee beans (surprisingly sweet), and sugar cane (deliciously sweet and crunchy) cut straight from the plant. Ivorian beer (Flag or Bock) was good and very cheap - as little as 600 FCFA for a litre bottle. They also make Guiness there under licence, but it's not as good as the real stuff back home. Strong alcohol is made locally from sugar cane (coutoucou), or from palm oil (vin de palmes - palm tree wine). I didn't think much of vin de palmes, but coutoucou was quite nice. I would have liked to have brought back a bottle, but we had too much luggage as it was. We did bring back some fruit and dried fish though, which Rocheline bought on our last day in Abidjan.