Nigeria Dining and Restaurant Guide

Try dodo, or fried plantain, often sold as a snack at roadside shacks. In the south, there are excellent spicy fish dishes, but we must confess we've never been able to get accustomed to traditional northern Nigerian food, which often consists of slimy balls made from yams or stiff maize porridge, dunked into different (often fiery) sauces. In small cities, the only alternatives to Nigerian food are greasy and/or bland imitations of English-style food. Large cities, however, offer a wide variety of cuisines, including Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and Continental. Lagos, especially, has an excellent, albeit expensive, range of restaurants. In general, be choosy about restaurants—the sanitation standards of some can be dangerous. The tropical fruit in markets is truly excellent (just be sure to wash the fruit with bottled or boiled water and peel it).