Who we are

A dark room off Oxford Street

Fifteen years of cooking Ghanaian food over charcoal for whoever walks in — students, ministers, and the whole of the barber's shop next door.

Book a table

The long table in the yard, laid for a party of forty

A plate going out to the yard on a Friday evening

The room

Sixty-four seats, and a yard for the rest of you.

Inside is dark, low and deliberately loud — bare walls, candles on every table, and a pass you can see straight into. Outside, the yard runs back under netting and takes another thirty when the evening is dry.

There is no dress code and there never will be. People come here from the office, from church and from the beach, and the kitchen cannot tell the difference from where it stands.

15

Years in Osu

64

Seats, plus the yard

22

People on the payroll

6am

When the market run starts

House rules

Three things that have never been up for discussion.

Rule one

The market before the menu

Nii goes to Makola at six and the board is finished by nine. If the tilapia is wrong that morning, tilapia is not on the board that night.

Rule two

Charcoal, or don't bother

No gas grill has ever been through that door. It is slower, it is hotter to work over, and it is the only reason any of this tastes the way it does.

Rule three

The pepper is ground fresh

Every afternoon, by hand, by whoever is on early. A week-old grind is a different ingredient and everyone in the kitchen can taste it.

We are a chop bar. That is not a modest word here.

A chop bar feeds people properly, quickly and without ceremony, and it has done so in this country for a hundred years. We have added candles and a wine list. We have not added airs.