EYW Blog

Disclosure: Amarula sent us an at-home safari “care package” in return for helping to raise awareness of the company’s latest elephant-saving initiative. We think this is a great cause.

Like Baileys? Kerrygold Irish cream? Here’s one for you to try: Amarula. The traditional South African cream liqueur, made from the fruit of the wild marula tree—which grows only in subequatorial Africa—is velvety and rich, a little butterscotchy and sweet from the hand-picked, fermented fruit. As the temperature (finally) starts to drop here in New York, Amarula on the rocks is becoming our new favorite after-dinner drink—a deliciously creamy finish to the evening. But there’s a nobler...

In this special guest post, we hear from Laurie Vaquer, founder of soon-to-be-launched Take Me Cooking, a platform that will enable local cooks to share their cooking with travelers around the world. Her inspiration comes from a particularly special trip to Zanzibar. (Bonus: She shares some of her favorite Zanzibari recipes.)

Ingredients for a Zanzibari feast. All photos by Laurie Vaquer.

In the past few years, I’ve gone to Zanzibar three times, and I’d return in a heartbeat. My second visit was in December 2015; I was staying with friends in the capital city, Stone Town. As I wandered the narrow streets and admired some beautiful typical Zanzibari wooden doors, I thought of...

Some background on Tunisian food—and what to eat in Tunisia.

A market in Kairouan. All photos by Giulia Blocal except where indicated.

Thanks to its strategic position at the crossroads of southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East, Tunisia has always been a hub for spices, which have been traded in its suks for centuries. Cumin, curcuma, saffron, ginger, cinnamon—Tunisian food is quite spice-forward; even salads have a strong taste. As the saying goes, a man can tell if his wife loves him from the amount of spices she puts in the food: If the food isn’t hot, her love isn’t strong.

Tunisian cuisine is based on typical Mediterranean ingredients: cereals, vegetables,...

Contributor Adam Corre gets stuffed on Addis Ababa’s only guided food tour, a three-restaurant spree that may challenge your perceptions of Ethiopia.


Addis Ababa photo by neiljs

It’s impossible to finish this meal. I feel as though I’ve eaten a lot, but a cursory glance at our large, still-full tray of injera, Ethiopia’s staple food, suggests otherwise. The food has barely diminished. To avoid causing offense, the hosts have been informed this is not an indication of customer dissatisfaction. My insightful guide today is Xavier Curtis, who grew up in Washington, D.C. and became actively involved in the Slow Food movement while studying at the University of Wisconsin. Curtis is...

We never said ravitoto was pretty (credit).

Though relatively unknown in the West, cassava, also called manioc or yucca, has long been an important staple food throughout much of Africa (and elsewhere), including Madagascar and the rest of the sub-Saharan region, showing up in restaurants and markets, and on family’s tables, nearly as often as french fries in the U.S. (see also: cassava leaf stew in Sierra Leone). Widespread as it is, however, this potato-like tuber is nothing special in a culinary sense: It has a starchy, slightly bitter taste and, if not prepared correctly, contains traces of cyanide. So why on Earth would so many people eat this plant?

Cassava’s many...

Piment, in Réunion. Photo by Jessie Beck

Mention Réunion to most Anglophone travelers, and they’ll shake their heads: “Where?” Do the same at a dinner table full of travel-savvy French and you’re more likely to evoke a chorus of oohs before the conversation turns to tropical weather, volcanoes, and—most important—la cuisine creole.

Île de la Réunion, a little island outpost of France, sits in a lonely spot in the Indian Ocean, far from any mainland but comfortably nestled between Madagascar and Mauritius. Though technically considered an African island, visitors would be hard-pressed to identify the island’s personality, culture, and cuisine as purely African. Instead, its unique...

Nem, a spring roll-like street food in Madagascar.

Near the daily market of Antsirabe, the pleasant hillside town of Madagascar’s highlands (and third-largest city in the country), women with enormous bowls of batter sit next to sizzling pots of oil over low charcoal stoves. While crouching or sitting on wooden stools, they fan their flames and plop their freshly fried goods into mountainous piles of steaming fresh snacks. Also lining the streets are small display boxes filled with bowls of breads, noodles, salads, even spaghetti. Other vendors mingle with the crowd, hawking their wares to shoppers while balancing plastic containers atop their heads. While the Malagasy staple...

Contributor Jessie Beck hunts down Ethiopia’s favorite raw-beef dish.

Photo by Jessie Beck.

Before I landed in Ethiopia, my knowledge of Ethiopian food went no further than a few dinners on 14th Street in Washington D.C., where a large diaspora of Ethiopians and Eritreans have set up shop and, accordingly, some great Ethiopian restaurants. I only vaguely knew the ingredients of what I was eating. I became familiar with injera, the spongy fermented bread used to soak up and grasp other foods, but what were those little piles sharing the platter with it? Lentils? Beans? Cabbage? Even in my ignorance, I still loved trekking out to those places to get my hands messy dipping injera...

A city spotlight on Dakar, Senegal’s sultry capital city, where French, Wolof, and North African influence meets local ingredients in the kitchen—and on the street.

Hand-carved pirogues on the beach in Ngor, in Dakar

Perched on the edge of West Africa, Senegal has long gone quietly about its business while its neighbors get into all sorts of trouble. Quietly, of course, is a misleading word in the context of Dakar, the sultry capital city and dust-ridden domain of all-night music clubs, infamous traffic, relentless hustlers, and nonstop construction, where the dead silence of night is regularly punctured by soaring muezzin calls to mosque.

And then there’s the food. Among other...

Our immediate impressions of Tiwai Island, a wildlife sanctuary/research facility and community-led conservation initiative in Sierra Leone’s southeast, weren’t the best: Here we found ourselves on a hot, buggy tropical island in the isolated Moa River, with two very quiet nights ahead. The common area for guests, a large domed, open-sided solar-powered hut in the middle of a forest clearing, offered little distraction other than an information board and a few wooden tables. Same for the simple wood-roofed platforms, each holding one or two tents, dotting the clearing’s perimeter. Scott and I had been relatively unplugged since arriving in Sierra Leone a week and a half earlier, but...

Everywhere I turned in Dakar, there was something colorful (albeit often covered in dust) to admire: Art, like crunchy baguettes and good music, seems to be everywhere in Senegal's capital city. Some of it we purchased and brought home with us, but most of it we had to be content with photographing. Here are a few shots of Dakarois art.

A quick sketch maybe, but this wall was part of Village des Artes, a peaceful yet abundant artist community that is a must-visit.

I saw this image often, but here on this turquoise wall in the Ouakam neighborhood, it was most vibrant and beautiful.

Another beautiful painting from the Village des Artes. This African woman's profile...

We first arrived to Freetown via water taxi from the airport, a bumpy adventure in the pitch-black night. Our brief drive through the western part of town revealed a city in full Friday-night revelry: unruly streets, overflowing clubs, and candlelit food vendors, their flickering orange flames extending down the road before us. After 10 days of travel, we returned to the capital via car in the middle of the day and witnessed another, equally chaotic Freetown. On Kissy Road and Sani Abacha Street, the cars compete for space with a smattering of motorbikes and loads of merchandise, but mostly just an inordinate amount of people, going about their daily business. We captured some of it...

Maggi stock cubes—rich with sodium, MSG, and hydrogenated fats—are ubiquitous in West African cooking. Meet the nutritious traditional seasonings they’re replacing.

Groundnut soup, Sierra Leone

At a beautiful eco-resort on Sierra Leone’s Freetown Peninsula this spring, Scott and I were invited to tag along for the weekly run to the local market. On the shopping list was everything from groundnuts (peanuts) and pineapple to bread and eggs, and Maggi. I didn’t think anything of the flavoring agent, figuring the stock cubes were thrown into a few of the local stews as a base. But a large pack was purchased for the week, and at the market, it was clearly a popular item. We soon...

View from the road in Popenguine

When Scott and I travel for Eat Your World, it’s hardly relaxing. Before even getting to a destination, our minds are already swimming with loads of pre-trip research, we know what foods we’re tracking down and where, and we have a game plan—a soft itinerary of sorts, which always changes upon arrival—of how we might go about squeezing it all into our limited travel time. Once in town, we run around eating and drinking and writing and hiking as much as humanly possible. Sure, it’s the best kind of stuff to busy yourself with—and, in truth, we’d be doing it on a smaller scale even without the website—but it’s also pretty exhausting.

Which is why...

After a full day village-hopping along the Freetown Peninsula’s beautiful coastline, we hit our last stop, Bureh beach. We didn’t plan on saving the best for last; it just happened. On this idyllic stretch of palm tree-studded sand—with a river flowing directly through it, emptying into the sea—not another soul was in sight. Laura, Mark, and I jumped into the warm waves and washed off the dirt and sweat from the day’s journey. It was just us three; our guide for the day, Daniel; and a Bureh local named Tom, who found us within seconds of our arrival.  

Tom, clearly the town proprietor of goods of all kind, shot off a verbal menu of local fish, oysters, art, and illegal substances...

Somewhere between waking up to peaceful lagoon views; swimming in a warm, empty sea before breakfast; and feasting on spicy pumpkin stew at lunch, I started to wonder: Why isn’t this place swarmed with tourists?

View of lagoon from bungalow, Tribewanted, John Obey beach

I could guess the answer—this was Sierra Leone, the tiny corner of West Africa best known for an ugly slavery history, a decade-long civil war (1991-2002), and the violent thriller Blood Diamond—but it still didn’t make sense. As I surveyed pristine John Obey beach, where Scott and I stayed our first few nights at eco-tourism venture Tribewanted, the word “paradise” easily sprung to mind.

John Obey beach,...

One of many temples to dibi, or grilled meat, in Dakar, this dibiterie boasts a cult-like status in the capital: It’s said to be musician Youssou N’Dour’s favorite, dispensing inexpensive, expertly prepared food at all hours in suitably questionable hygienic conditions. After hearing the place reverentially spoken about by more than one trusted expat, we knew we had to find it.

Problem is, nobody had any clue where it was. Armed with limited directions— “somewhere near the Sandaga bus station”—and even more limited French, we wandered the dusky streets around the area marché, or market, where hours earlier we’d elbowed our way through crowds of sellers. Now it was quiet, empty but...

What happens when Team EYW shows up to a fancy eco-lodge with the best restaurant in Senegal? They wind up eating at the bar man’s house.

Every friend of ours who has been to Senegal recommended we go to a hotel and restaurant in the Sine Saloum region called Lodge des Collines de Niassam. Besides having beautiful eco-friendly bungalows built into baobab trees and overlooking a bird-filled lagoon, the property is notorious for having the best French-inspired fare in the country. It was a big splurge for us, especially after three weeks of pricier-than-anticipated travel around West Africa, but we decided to go nonetheless, calling it an early seven-year wedding anniversary...

We're stuck in Dakar's airport, waiting for our delayed flight to Freetown, and thought we'd use the opportunity to share the Q&A we recently did for journalist Cyrus Farivar's blog. The task proved harder than we'd thought: After a wasted $4 and half-hour of struggle with the French keyboards in the main lounge downstairs, we realized that our business-class seats--the last two seats available on this flight when we purchased them last week--entitled us to the "Prestige" lounge upstairs, where free wireless internet, food, and drinks await. Prestigious indeed!

So here we are in the lap of luxury, with A/C, cushy chairs, our iPad hooked up, and all the apples and peanuts, local...

After just three days, dusty Dakar has drawn us in with its street-corner baguettes, mellow fishing villages, surf-friendly beaches, and mad markets. A highlight among our explorations thus far has been the fish market at Soumbedioune, a cove on which the men's brightly painted pirogues, or canoes, are pulled from the water each evening, and the day's haul of seafood put out to sale. One side of the market is crowded by grill stations, manned by women cooking fresh fish over hot coals.

Between about 4pm and 6pm, the boats are lugged in, requiring a team of heaving men and two logs (or big empty metal canisters) to facilitate movement. The shore is crowded with onlookers,...

Tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The vaccines have been given, the bags (almost) packed, the subletter for our New York apartment is in place. We should already be there—we pushed back our trip partly to avoid Senegal’s protest-riddled presidential election on February 26, only to have it go into a runoff election happening smack-dab in the middle of our visit there (March 25). Hopefully we’ll be in the area during a positive historic moment, when peace and democracy win the day. According to friends in the area, that is what should happen.

In recent weeks we’ve been asked “why there?” a few times, either in the context of “how do you choose where you...