Will African cuisine ever reach the world stage? More Michelin-starred fine dining restaurants embrace it while the first Middle East & North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurant awards just took place

French cuisine has long epitomized the ideal of fine dining, with Japanese food increasingly revered for the purity of its ingredients, technique and flavor. European, North American and Asian dishes in general are largely familiar to a global audience, and Latin American cuisines have won growing global acclaim. But African food?

“It’s pretty much the last frontier. The other continents have been heavily explored at the gastronomic level for generations,” says Ghanaian chef Selassie Atadika, who runs Midunu, a nomadic private dining events enterprise in Accra.

Atadika, who has taken what she calls her “new African cuisine” to the US, the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa, says she has seen increasing interest in African food over the last few years.

It is a sentiment shared by 50 Best, the organization that runs the World’s 50 Best awards, and presented the first Middle East & North Africa’s 50 Best Restaurants in February. “African and African-inspired cuisine has definitely started gaining greater presence on the global gastronomic stage,” says William Drew, 50 Best’s director of content.

Many international cities outside the continent have long boasted authentic, casual and often small restaurants offering the African diaspora a taste of home. North African cuisines – especially Moroccan – are also generally familiar beyond the region’s borders.

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