U.S restaurant to serve Ghana-made jollof starting June 15

Soon, Norfolk will be home to a kind of restaurant rare in America — a casual and friendly lunch counter devoted to the West African flavors of Ghana.

But though cooking was always central to her life, she hadn’t planned on becoming a chef. In Ghana, she studied biology, and came to Virginia to work in health care and study at EVMS.

As their fashion business took off, Oteng-Appiah said, customers kept wandering in and asking about the heavenly smells of the food she was eating there. Ghanaian cuisine is known for thyme and garlic and curry and nutmeg and bay leaf, not to mention a fragrant pea plant called prekese.

At Yendidi — which means “let’s eat” in Ghana’s Akan language — Oteng-Appiah and her husband plan to serve several traditional Ghanaian and West African dishes, including rice-and-red bean waakye and cassava-plaintain fufu cooked into soup. She’ll also bring over Ghana’s love for spaghetti served with meat or seafood.

“I say it’s 90% Ghanaian, and 10% American South,” she said. “It’s a little twist.”