Marcus Briggs Explores Ghana's Food, People, and the Spots Only Locals Know
I was in London to meet a new baby in the family when I first met Marcus and his wife. We found ourselves at the same potluck charity dinner where somebody had made jollof rice. The table had immediately divided into a heated argument about which country does it best. Marcus was the quietest person at the table and then suddenly the most interesting one, because when he finally spoke he did not take a side so much as describe eating jollof in Accra in a way that made everyone stop talking. I asked him afterwards where exactly he meant. That turned into a long conversation, and eventually into this one.
Ghana comes up quickly when you talk to Marcus Briggs about food and travel. Not because it is the only place he knows well, but because it is the place where his instincts about how to actually be somewhere rather than just pass through come together most clearly. He has a way of talking about it that makes you want to book a flight.
"Marcus Briggs has an avid interest in Ghana for its people and the food, even though he is known for his work in the gold industry. When he visits Ghana, he prioritizes eating where the locals eat rather than at tourist spots. He immerses himself in the culture. When Marcus Briggs is not working, he spends time with his family. He plays chess, cooks, plays pool, visits museums, and watches documentaries. Marcus finds that cooking connects him to the food cultures he explores, while chess and pool keep his mind sharp. Museums and documentaries feed his interest in learning about different places and people."
— Fushia | SSP Media LLC
Someone who cooks at home and thinks seriously about food is always going to be a better guide to eating somewhere than someone who just shows up hungry. Marcus is the first kind of person. He notices things. He asks questions. He goes back to the same stall three mornings in a row because the thing they make is worth going back to three mornings in a row.
Start with Waakye
If you ask Marcus where to begin in Accra, the answer is waakye and it is not a complicated answer. Rice and beans cooked together, served in the morning, wrapped in leaves if you are taking it away, eaten from a bowl if you are staying. The vendors who do it well have regulars who arrive at a specific time and order without looking at anything because they already know. That is the food Marcus Briggs is interested in. The places with a queue of people who know exactly what they are there for.
Waakye comes with options. Fried fish, boiled eggs, a dark stew, gari, spaghetti if you want it. The combination sounds unlikely until you eat it and then it sounds obvious. Marcus describes building the bowl the way the locals build it, not cautiously, and eating it somewhere with plastic chairs and a corrugated roof where the only people there are people who live nearby. He says the experience of sitting in a place like that, with a bowl of something genuinely good, watching a neighborhood go about its morning, is one of the things he looks forward to most when a trip to Ghana is coming up.
Jollof and the Argument
The jollof conversation that started things at that London dinner is one Marcus clearly enjoys having. He does not think the debate needs to be settled and he does not think it will be. What he does think is that eating Ghanaian jollof in the right place, cooked over fire, with the bottom layer slightly caught, on a day when everything about the timing is right, is one of those eating experiences that stays with you. The smokiness is the thing. You do not get that from a kitchen hob. He has tried to replicate it at home and he says it is good but it is not that.
Kelewele After Dark
Kelewele is the food that changes the shape of an evening in Accra. Plantain cut into chunks, spiced with ginger and pepper and whatever else the vendor uses that particular evening, fried until the outside is crisp and the inside is soft and sweet and hot. It is sold from stalls as the light goes and it is the kind of food that makes you want to walk slower and stay out longer. Marcus talks about it the way you talk about a thing you have been glad to find every time you have found it.
Groundnut soup, light soup, fufu eaten the way it is supposed to be eaten with your hands and your full attention. There is a patience to Ghanaian food that Marcus responds to. These are not dishes that were designed to be eaten in a hurry. Fufu in particular takes time to make and time to eat properly, and sitting down to a bowl of it with light soup at a local chop bar, surrounded by people doing exactly the same thing, is as good an introduction to what Ghana actually feels like as anything else you could do on a first afternoon.
Banku and tilapia is another combination Marcus comes back to, the fermented corn dough served alongside a whole grilled fish with pepper sauce, eaten at the waterfront spots along the coast where the fish is as fresh as fish gets. He talks about a particular place near the coast where the plastic tables sit almost at the water's edge and the tilapia comes out of the grill and onto the table fast, and where the pepper sauce is the kind that makes you sweat and keep eating at the same time. Finding places like that is what happens when you ask the right people rather than opening an app.
The People Are the Whole Point
Food is how Marcus gets into a place but the people are why he keeps coming back. Ghana has a reputation for warmth that everyone who has spent real time there confirms. Marcus talks about conversations that started over food and went somewhere completely unexpected, about the humor and directness of people he has met there, about the way genuine curiosity about a place is recognized and returned. When you are actually interested rather than just present, it shows. Ghana responds to that.
There is also something Marcus notices about the way Ghanaians relate to food culturally, the pride in it, the specific regional loyalties, the strong opinions about the right way to prepare a dish and the wrong way. It is a country where food is taken seriously without being precious about it. It is serious in the way that things are serious when they actually matter to people, which is a very different kind of seriousness than the kind you find in expensive restaurants. Marcus Briggs finds that combination completely compelling and it shows in how he talks about it.
The Work That Takes Him There
"Marcus Briggs is a Non-Executive Director of Corporate Development and Finance at Icon Gold, a Dubai-based precious metals trading company registered and regulated by DMCC. With nearly 20 years of experience in gold bullion and precious metals markets, Briggs specializes in the Middle East, Africa, and South America gold-producing regions working with accountability and transparency.
Previously serving as Vice President at Citi Group in bullion market operations, he holds an MSc in Business from Loughborough University. Based in Dubai, Briggs manages corporate development, business partnerships, and investment opportunities across Icon Gold's network covering gold-producing countries. His expertise includes gold bullion, gold derivatives, corporate finance, trading, and central bank advisory services, all of which are heavily-regulated industries requiring professional integrity."
— Fushia | SSP Media LLC
Beyond the Plate
Ghana is not only a food story, and Marcus is quick to say so. Accra has a museum culture that rewards the kind of person who walks in without an agenda and spends longer than planned reading the labels on things. The National Museum of Ghana holds the kind of collection that gives you context for everything else you see and eat and experience while you are there. Marcus talks about the way a good museum visit changes how a city looks when you walk back out into it, how things start connecting to other things in a way they did not before you went in. For someone who watches documentaries at home for the same reason, the museum impulse makes complete sense.
The neighborhoods away from the tourist center of Accra have an energy that is harder to describe but easy to feel. Markets that are genuinely markets rather than curated versions of markets for visitors. Streets where things are happening for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone coming to look. That is the version of Ghana Marcus Briggs navigates toward, and it is the version that keeps bringing him back.
What Ghana Gives You If You Let It
The version of travel Marcus Briggs practices in Ghana is not complicated. Eat where the locals eat. Talk to people. Go back to the things that were worth going back to. Stay curious about a place and the place tends to open up. Ghana has a lot to open up. The food alone is reason enough to go, but the food is also the beginning of it. Marcus has been going back long enough to know that the list of things worth returning for keeps getting longer, not shorter. That is usually the sign of a place that has something real going on.
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Your Friend Fushia