Angola
Palm-oil stews and grilled Atlantic fish over cassava funge — Lusophone Africa cooking with a Portuguese accent.
Angola cooks in red palm oil and Portuguese memory. The plate to know is muamba de galinha, chicken stewed with okra, chilli and deep-orange dendê palm oil until it's rich and glossy, ladled over funge — a smooth, almost elastic porridge of cassava flour that soaks up every drop. It's the national comfort dish, and Angolans will tell you theirs is the original.
The long Atlantic coast piles on seafood — mufete of grilled fish with beans, sweet potato and raw onion; lobster; palm-oil fish stews. Five centuries of Portugal show up in cabidela and in coconut-and-egg sweets like cocada amarela. To drink, a cold Cuca beer or, from the southern highlands, the fermented-maize kissangua. Just know that Luanda is one of the world's priciest cities to sit down and eat in.
- Muamba de galinha (chicken in palm-oil stew)
- Funge (cassava-flour porridge)
- Calulu (fish or meat with greens stew)
- Mufete (grilled fish platter)
- Cabidela (chicken cooked in its blood)
- Cocada amarela (coconut-egg dessert)
- Cuca (national lager)
