Nigeria Food Guide

Most Nigerian restaurants can manage something vegetarian, though the traditional cooking leans heavily on meat. Ask for vegetable soups like efo riro made without meat, bean dishes such as moi moi and akara, plantain, and rice meals. Lagos and Abuja have international restaurants with a wider range. Be clear when ordering that you want no meat at all.

Vegan eating can be tricky at traditional restaurants, since plenty of dishes rely on meat stock, fish, or dairy. That said, a lot of staples happen to be vegan: beans, plantains, yam, cassava, and vegetable soups made without meat or fish. Health food shops and international restaurants in the cities are your best bet. When ordering, spell out that you want nothing from an animal at all.

Gluten-free eating is getting easier, though awareness can still be patchy. Stick to dishes that are naturally gluten-free: rice meals like jollof and fried rice, yam, plantains, beans, and most soups and stews. Swallows such as fufu from cassava, eba from garri, and pounded yam are all fine. Be careful with amala, since yam flour is sometimes cut with wheat, and skip the wheat-based snacks. The cities are where you will find the most awareness.

Halal food is easy to come by, given that Muslims make up roughly half the population, concentrated in the north. The northern states are predominantly Muslim, so halal there is the default. Lagos, Abuja, and the other cities all have plenty of halal restaurants and butchers, and most meat in the country is halal-slaughtered anyway. Pork is around in non-Muslim areas but uncommon. Wherever you travel, halal options are not hard to find.

Kosher food is very hard to find, since the Jewish community is tiny and even Lagos has almost no kosher infrastructure. The obstacles are real: meat is halal rather than kosher, dairy and meat are routinely mixed, and there is no kosher supervision to speak of. What does work is fresh fruit and vegetables from markets, sealed imported packaged goods, and fish with scales such as tilapia and catfish. Jewish travellers are best off bringing their own provisions or leaning on vegetarian and seafood meals.

Groundnuts run through Nigerian cooking, in suya spice (yaji), groundnut soup, the oil used for frying, and a long list of snacks. Anyone with a peanut allergy needs to stay on guard. Explain the allergy clearly, in a local language if you can, and bear in mind that cross-contamination is common at street stalls.

Fish and seafood show up constantly, especially along the coast. Dried fish, crayfish, and stockfish flavour a lot of soups and stews, often where you would not expect them. If you have a seafood allergy, say so clearly and ask whether vegetable dishes were made with fish stock.

Wheat turns up in bread, meat pies, chin chin, puff puff, and occasionally in swallows, since amala is sometimes made with wheat flour. If you are sensitive to gluten, stick to rice, yam, plantain, and cassava-based dishes.