Côte d'Ivoire: Food and the National Dish

A coastal and cocoa-growing West African kitchen

Côte d'Ivoire's food draws on cassava, plantain, rice and fish along its Atlantic coast and lagoons, with peanut and palm-oil-based sauces filling out meals inland. The country is also, by a wide margin, the world's largest producer of cocoa, supplying close to half the world's supply — though most of that goes out as raw beans for processing abroad, and Ivorian food itself makes surprisingly little everyday use of chocolate.

The national dish: attiéké

Attiéké is a couscous-like grain made from fermented, grated cassava, steamed until light and fluffy, with a distinctive faintly sour tang from the fermentation. Most closely associated with the Ébrié people around the Abidjan lagoon, it is eaten nationwide, almost always paired with grilled or fried fish and a spicy tomato-onion garnish — attiéké-poisson is the combination most identified with Ivorian food both at home and abroad.

Kedjenou and the sealed pot

Kedjenou, chicken or guinea fowl slow-cooked with vegetables in a sealed clay or metal pot over a low fire, is Côte d'Ivoire's other major dish. The pot is traditionally never opened during cooking, so the meat and vegetables braise slowly in their own juices rather than any added liquid — a Baoulé technique that produces a deeply concentrated, intensely flavoured stew.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise across Côte d'Ivoire:

• Foutou — pounded plantain, cassava or yam, served with sauce graine

(palm nut sauce) or a lighter sauce claire, part of the same wider West African fufu family.

• Garba — fried tuna served with attiéké, sold cheaply from street stalls

and a genuine working-class food institution, especially in Abidjan.

• Alloco — ripe plantain fried until caramelised, served with a spicy

onion-tomato sauce and often grilled fish or a fried egg.

• Sauce claire — a lighter tomato-based fish or meat sauce, an everyday

alternative to the richer sauce graine.

• Kedjenou d'agouti — the same sealed-pot technique applied to bush rat

(agouti), a traditional game meat in some regions.

Maquis culture and drinks

A maquis — an open-air, informal restaurant serving grilled fish or chicken with cold beer — is a genuine Ivorian social institution, and "going to the maquis" is as much about the evening out as the food itself. Bandji, fresh palm wine, and local beer brands are the standard drinks alongside it.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians can rely on foutou with a vegetable sauce, alloco and rice dishes, though attiéké's classic pairing and most sauces lean on fish or meat. Tap water is not safe to drink; stick to bottled or boiled water. Garba stands and maquis restaurants are both excellent, inexpensive ways to eat the way most Ivorians actually do, rather than seeking out formal restaurant dining.

What to take from the table

Attiéké with grilled fish is the dish to try first, and an evening at a maquis, with kedjenou or grilled chicken and a cold beer, is the best way to see how central eating out socially is to everyday Ivorian life.