Bernie Whitmore

21 Lovell St. (Coe’s Square), Worcester 508-762-9991 Coes.anokyekrom.com

Each time I’ve gone out for African cuisine I’ve found something that surprised me. The samosas at Fatima’s Café on West Boylston Street were an unexpected item and amazingly delicious. At Anokye Krom the surprises started as soon as my friend and I opened their menu and found multiple double-sided pages of entrées – it may easily have been a bewildering process to plot a dining strategy.

We soon realized that for our first visit we should make a range of selections to provide the widest-possible sampling of the Ghanaian cuisine.

To that end we began with the Fried Chofi appetizer. Chofi, fried turkey tail, is the fatty nub of meat that attaches at the base of the cavity you stuff on Thanksgiving morning. I reckon most people discard them along with the carcass, but I’ve always enjoyed their tender fatty meat. At Anokye Krom you get about a dozen of them; they’ve been fried golden brown with crispy bits of fat along their edges. Some were pure meat, others had a ridge of tiny bones.

What really set them ablaze with flavor, though, was the side dish of shito, a hot pepper sauce condiment. At first taste, Anokye Krom’s shito tested my tolerance for spicy heat but was so compellingly delicious I couldn’t resist it. During the course of the evening I came to love it on everything and would gladly have gone home with a jar of it!

As I said, Anokye Krom has a bewilderingly large menu – I’d recommend you spend some time with their online version beforehand; particularly if you’re not familiar with Ghanaian cuisine. Continuing with our survey, I selected the Waakye & Goat Meat entrée. Sounds simple enough. In practice, it was a mini buffet of dinner items.

For this dish, goat meat had been simmered in tomato gravy that had become rich, deep-colored and thick. Cubes of mild-flavored dark meat plied easily from bone. If you’re apprehensive of goat because of its feared ‘gamey flavor’, don’t be! The flavor of Anokye Krom’s goat registered somewhere between beef and lamb on the red meat flavor spectrum.

A large curl of rubbery hide – having contributed its flavor and texture – was consigned to the butter dish. Nestled next to the goat stew was a chunk of tilapia, tender and easily forked free from its bones. And then there was the hardboiled egg, undressed spaghetti and mound of gari, powdery cassava meal that looked like brown sugar but possessed minimal flavor. 

Soon emerging as my favorite part of this dish, though, was the Waakye; deep-brown rice and beans in a mound that took up half the platter. Its crumbly texture and mild flavor seemed to shout for a mix-in of generous forkfuls of shito.  Waakye and pepper sauce: a combination that proved so tasty we couldn’t resist it and came close to finishing the huge serving.

My friend’s entrée, Grilled Tilapia & Kelewele, was relatively simple in comparison to mine. In this case the entire tilapia, head to tail, had been lavishly seasoned with Anokye Krom’s spice mix and then grilled dark brown and garnished with tri-colored rings of crunchy-fresh sweet peppers. I suspect most people have not tackled a full fish, so make sure you’re ready for this DIY experience. My friend was adept at lifting the sweet white flesh from the frame of bones and dipped forkfuls in little dishes of green and red chili sauces.

Then we turned our collective attention to his Kelewele, fried sweet plantains seasoned with Ghanaian spices. The portion was beyond generous; enough for both of us to enjoy a spicy-sweet ending to our meals.

Save for a constant stream of people picking up takeout, the Coe’s Square Anokye Krom location was quiet on the evening we visited them. Our waiter used that lull as an opportunity to be exceptionally helpful and friendly. Ghanaian beers are offered, as well as some liquor and soft drinks.

The last time I’d been in that dining venue it was a Chinese buffet. Its décor hasn’t changed much since then, but the food couldn’t be more different. Though Anokye Krom’s menu is epic in scope, our meals tasted freshly cooked, were attractively presented and served with pride.