Senegalese
Thieboudienne, yassa, peanut stew — West African cuisine's most cosmopolitan kitchen.
Thieboudienne
Fish and rice cooked together in a tomato-onion-tamarind broth. The national dish of Senegal — UNESCO heritage.
View page →Senegal is West Africa's culinary capital. The Wolof teranga (hospitality) tradition centers the meal around a single large platter set in the middle of the room; everyone gathers and eats with their right hand from their own section. Thieboudienne — Wolof for 'rice and fish' — is the national dish: red rice tinted with tomato, palm oil, fish, cassava, carrot, eggplant, and the dried-fermented-fish funk of guedj and yet, all simmering together for hours. Yassa is grilled chicken or fish drowning in onions cooked down in vinegar, lemon, and mustard — sour, savory, and unmistakable. Mafé is West Africa's peanut stew. The cuisine is generous, communal, and built on rice, peanut, fish, hibiscus, and the deep Lebanese-French-Portuguese trade-route influences that still shape Dakar today.
The Palate
Start Here
Red rice cooked in tomato, palm oil, and fish broth, layered with stuffed fish, cassava, eggplant, carrot, and the salty-fermented guedj. Eaten communally from one platter.
Why start here · Thieboudienne is the dish around which Senegalese cooking organizes itself. Once you cook this, you understand teranga — Wolof for radical hospitality.
Marinated chicken grilled then slow-stewed with mountains of onions cooked down in lemon, mustard, and vinegar until the onions become a tangy-sweet jam.
Why start here · Yassa is the Senegalese answer to 'what do you do with onions?' — and the answer is: you turn them into the sauce that flavors the chicken.
West Africa's peanut stew — beef or chicken simmered in a deeply rich tomato-peanut-butter broth with cabbage, sweet potato, and okra. Served over rice.
Why start here · Mafé is the dish that travels — across West Africa, into the African diaspora, into Senegalese restaurants worldwide. Peanut sauce is the language; every region writes a different dialect.
The Pantry
See all 90 ingredients›
Grains & Staples
Three Regions
Three regional kitchens — Wolof Dakar canon, palm-oil Casamance south, pastoral Toucouleur-Fulani north. Tap a region to see its table.
The dominant Senegalese kitchen — thieboudienne the national dish, mafé peanut stew, the rice-fish-tamarind backbone of Dakar.
Southern palm-oil and mangrove-seafood kitchen — yassa was born here, fermented oyster rice riz au yet, palm-oil curries that distinguish the south.
Northern pastoral kitchen — Senegal River fish curries, Fulani fermented milk drinks, millet-and-dairy meals from cattle-herding communities.
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
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Kindred Kitchens
Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients
Signature Dishes (40)
Browse all 40 dishes›
Drinks
7
Mains
18
