New Ghanaian restaurants in Toronto: 1 have been licensed in the past year, tracked daily from the City of Toronto business-licence registry (chains excluded). The most recent is ACCRA RESTAURANT, first seen 3 months ago.
Jollof rice (the perennial Ghana-Nigeria debate continues), banku with tilapia, waakye. A small scene anchored along Jane and Finch and pushing west along Eglinton.
The biggest overlap is jollof rice — both Ghana and Nigeria claim the superior version (Ghanaian jollof uses long-grain rice and is typically smokier from cooking over wood fire, Nigerian jollof is often saucier with more tomato). Beyond jollof, the cuisines diverge: Ghana leans on fermented and starchy staples like banku (fermented corn-cassava dough), kenkey, and fufu made from cassava or plantain, paired with light soups and stews. Nigerian cooking has its own fermented traditions but the everyday carbs skew more toward pounded yam, eba, and amala. Ghanaian groundnut (peanut) soup and palm nut soup are national staples with no real Nigerian counterpart.
Start with banku and tilapia — the fish is grilled whole and served with pepper sauce and a side of the fermented corn-cassava dough for tearing and dipping. Waakye (rice and beans cooked together with sorghum leaves, giving the dish its distinctive burgundy colour) is the other must-order, usually served with a tangle of spaghetti, fried plantain, egg, and a choice of stew on top. If the menu has fufu with light soup, order it: the light soup is a clear, peppery broth with tomato and scotch bonnet, and the fufu is dense enough to hold up to it.
Toronto's Ghanaian restaurant scene is small but growing. The current verified-open listing in NowServingTO's directory is Accra Restaurant at 3300 Dufferin St in West Toronto — Ghanaian take-out serving the local diaspora community with soups, stews, and starch-based dishes rooted in Accra home cooking, first seen 59 days ago. The broader Ghanaian-Canadian community in Toronto is concentrated along the Jane–Finch corridor and parts of Scarborough; Eglinton West is also a corridor to watch for new openings.
Waakye (pronounced waa-chay) is rice and beans cooked together with dried sorghum leaves or stalks, which turn the dish a deep reddish-brown and add a subtle earthy flavour that plain rice can't replicate. It originated in northern Ghana but is now the country's defining street food — sold from early morning by waakye sellers who pile the rice-beans base with spaghetti, hard-boiled egg, fried plantain, avocado, and a choice of meat stew or fish. The combination of textures and the fermented shito (black pepper sauce) spooned over the top makes it one of the more complete one-dish meals in West African cooking.
Ghanaian cooking uses scotch bonnet peppers and fresh chilies liberally, so the baseline heat level is medium to high by most standards — similar to Jamaican cooking, noticeably hotter than typical Nigerian restaurant food in Toronto. The heat is built into the soups and stews rather than served as a side condiment, so it's harder to dial down once ordered. Shito, the dark fermented pepper sauce that comes with many dishes, adds another layer on top. If you're heat-sensitive, tell the kitchen when you order — most spots will adjust the pepper in a sauce or soup.
"First seen" reflects when each restaurant first surfaced in our combined evidence — City permit, public-health inspection, social media — usually within a few weeks of opening, but a permit can lead actual opening by months. How we verify ›
Ghanaian take-out on Dufferin St in West Toronto serves the local diaspora community with soups, stews starch-based dishes rooted in Accra home cooking.
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