Mauritania

🇬🇼Guinea-Bissau

Accara

Black-eyed peas peeled, ground and whipped with onion and chilli, then dropped into hot oil and served in bread with pepper sauce.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Al-Aïch

Chicken and bean stew flavored with dried fish, served with aïch couscous — small balls of maize or millet flour cooked in the stew broth; a complete one-pot meal that combines protein, starch, and the umami of dried fish in a single dish.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Al-keçra

Flat galette of wheat or barley flour cooked in an oven or buried in hot sand (hofra); the everyday bread of Moor nomads, eaten torn and soaked in meat sauce or stew; the sand-baking method gives a distinctive earthy flavour.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Attaya

Ataya

Chinese gunpowder tea brewed three times in succession, each round stronger, sweeter and more mint-heavy, and poured from height to build foam.

🇲🇦Morocco

Baghrir (Thousand-Hole Pancakes)

بغرير

Yeasted semolina pancakes cooked on one side so hundreds of tiny holes open across the surface.

🇲🇷Senegal River Valley (Trarza / Gorgol / Guidimaka), Mauritania

Banaf

Meat and vegetable stew of lamb, potatoes, carrots, and turnips cooked in peanut oil; a Wolof-influenced dish from southern Mauritania, simpler than mafé but using the same peanut oil base.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Baobab Leaf Powder

Lalo

Powdered dried baobab leaves used as a thickening agent in Mauritanian and Senegalese sauces; gives ngomou and other couscous dishes their characteristic dark green colour and slightly mucilaginous texture; a staple ingredient in Pulaar cooking.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Bonava

Lamb and potato stew with onions, bay leaves, white vinegar, and peanut oil; optionally spiced with chili; sometimes cooked buried in desert sand; a nomadic Moor dish eaten across Mauritania.

🇪🇭Adrar-Tagant (Date Oases / Taguella), Western Sahara

Boulghmane

Dgig lmegli

Boulghmane is toasted barley flour mixed with sugar, salt, water, and clarified butter or camel-hump fat into a dense paste or hand-formed balls, a western-Sahara pastoral travel food.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Bouye

Buy

Baobab fruit pulp soaked, strained and blended with milk and sugar into a thick, tart white drink.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Camel Chubbagin

One-pot stew of camel meat, rice, and vegetables in a stock flavored with oil, tomato purée, chilies, dried fish, and bissap leaves

🇲🇷Eastern Mauritania (Hodh / Assaba Pastoral), Mauritania

Camel Milk

Lebben

Lebben is the named Mauritanian camel-milk drink: fresh or lightly curdled milk with a thin, frothy texture, slightly salty-sweet flavour, and a tangy fermented form served in pastoral communities.

🇲🇷Nouakchott, Mauritania

Camel Milk Cheese

Caravane

Soft cheese made from pasteurized camel's milk; white bloomy rind, creamy interior with a slightly salty and delicately sweet flavour; created by Nancy Abeiderrhamane in the early 1990s at the Tiviski dairy in Nouakchott; one of the very few camel milk cheeses produced commercially in the world.

🇲🇷Eastern Mauritania (Hodh / Assaba Pastoral), Mauritania

Carow

Light porridge of large-grain millet or sorghum couscous served with milk; a festive dish among the Soninké community, eaten at celebrations and as a sweet breakfast; the grains are steamed until fluffy and served in a bowl of fresh or curdled milk.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Cherchem

Millet cooked with a savoury vegetable sauce of tomatoes, carrots, sweet potato, bell pepper, and spices; a one-pot millet dish eaten across Mauritania, simpler than ngomou but a daily staple in the south and central regions.

🇲🇱Mali

Dibi

Lamb cut on the bone and grilled over wood in a dedicated dibiterie, then served on paper with raw onion, mustard and chilli.

🇸🇳Senegal

Fataya

Thin dough parcels filled with spiced fish or minced meat, folded into half-moons and deep-fried.

🇸🇳Nouadhibou, Senegal

Guedj

Gejj

Fish salted and left to ferment and dry in the sun until hard, then broken into stews for depth.

🇲🇷Senegal River Valley (Trarza / Gorgol / Guidimaka), Mauritania

Hakko

Latchiri Haako

Sauce made from leafy vegetables — bean or cowpea leaves — served with beans over couscous, drizzled with peanut sauce and olive oil; a Pulaar and Soninke dish of the Senegal River valley, the dark leaf sauce contrasting with the white couscous.

🇪🇭Western Sahara

Harira

حريرة

Tomato soup thickened with lentils, chickpeas, herbs, and sometimes vermicelli, finished with a little flour.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Hibiscus Juice

Bissap

Dried hibiscus calyces steeped with sugar, mint and sometimes orange-blossom water into a deep red drink served ice-cold.

🇲🇷Northern Mauritania (Nouadhibou / Tiris Zemmour), Mauritania

Imraguen Women's Mullet Bottarga

Poutargue Imraguen

Salt-cured mullet roe produced by Imraguen women on the Banc d'Arguin coast; the roe pouches are extracted from golden mullet, salted, pressed, and sun-dried for weeks; a traditional coastal delicacy undergoing GI registration; one of the few preserved-fish traditions of the Atlantic Sahara.

🇸🇳Nouadhibou, Senegal

Kéthiakh

Ketax

Sardinella salted, smoked and dried into stiff, oily fillets used in rice dishes and bean stews.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Lakh

Laax

Coarse millet porridge cooked thick and served cold under sour milk and sugar, sometimes with a peanut and baobab sauce.

🇲🇷Adrar-Tagant (Date Oases / Taguella), Mauritania

Leksour

Lamb stew with tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers served over thin millet-wheat pancakes; the pancakes are torn and rolled by hand to scoop up the stew; a Moor specialty of the Adrar region.

🇬🇲The Gambia

Maafe

Sauce d'arachide

Beef, lamb or chicken stewed in a groundnut paste and tomato sauce with cassava, carrot and sweet potato, served over rice.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Marolaym

One-pot dish of lamb or goat meat with rice in an onion base; a variant of chubbagin with a lighter sauce and no tomato; flavored with onions, oil, and mild spices; a simple, everyday rice-and-meat dish across Mauritania.

🇪🇭Western Sahara

Maru we-llham

Marou wa lham

Maru we-llham is rice cooked slowly in a lightly salted meat sauce, with the meat arranged at the centre; Sahrawi and Mauritanian versions commonly use camel or other meat.

🇲🇷Adrar-Tagant (Date Oases / Taguella), Mauritania

Mauritanian Dates

Tamr

Dates grown in the oasis regions of Adrar, Tagant, Assaba, and Hodh; over 100 varieties harvested during the Guetna season (July–September); a staple energy food, eaten fresh, dried, or pressed into skins as paste for long-term storage; the date palm is central to oasis agriculture and Mauritanian hospitality.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Mauritanian Fish and Rice

Chubbagin Lélé et Raabie

Fish and rice cooked with vegetables in a tomato and chili sauce; the Mauritanian version of Senegalese ceebu jën, adapted with local fish from the Atlantic coast and Mauritanian spice preferences.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Mauritanian Harira

Moroccan-inspired soup of meat, chickpeas, lentils, tomatoes, and herbs; the traditional Ramadan iftar dish in Mauritania, adapted from Moroccan harira with local spice preferences; served with dates and bread to break the fast.

🇲🇷Mauritania

Mauritanian Pepper Steak with Coconut

Thinly sliced beef steak fried with garlic, black pepper, bell peppers, chilies, and Tabasco, finished with shredded coconut, coconut water, soy sauce, and bouillon; a modern urban dish reflecting Creole and Asian influence in Nouakchott restaurants.

🇸🇳Senegal

Mbakhal

Mbaxal

Rice cooked with groundnut paste, dried fish and vegetables into a thick, savoury one-pot.

🇪🇭Western Sahara

Mechoui

مشوي

Whole lamb slow-roasted over coals until the skin is crisp and the meat pulls away from the bone.

🇲🇦Morocco

Msemen

مسمن

Square layered Moroccan flatbread made by stretching, folding, and pan-frying oiled dough.

🇸🇳Senegal

Ngalakh

Ngalax

Millet couscous mixed with baobab fruit pulp and groundnut paste, sweetened and eaten cold.