What to eat
Food and flavours
The altitude that makes Jos cool also makes it grow things nowhere else in Nigeria will. That runs both ways: the Plateau feeds much of the country its vegetables, and it keeps for itself a grain most Nigerians have never cooked.
Gwate
also Gwote, Gote
The Plateau dish. Acha cooked down with greens into something between a porridge and a stew, and the thing to eat first if you eat one thing here.
- Acha (fonio)
- Yakuwa — sorrel leaves
- Garden egg
- Spinach and spring onion
No confirmed place to eat it
Fatima Bukar · CC BY-SA 4.0 Acha
also Fonio, Hungry rice
A tiny highland grain, one of the oldest cultivated cereals in West Africa and a chief crop of the Plateau. It turns up under almost everything else on this list.
- Fonio grain
No confirmed place to eat it
Balangu
Meat grilled over wood or coal with nothing on it at all. No seasoning is the point — it is a test of the meat, not the cook's spice rack.
- Goat, mutton or beef
- Wood or coal fire
No confirmed place to eat it
Zahraswaty · CC BY-SA 4.0 Kunun gyada
Groundnuts and rice ground to a paste and drunk. One of several kunu preparations you will be offered.
- Raw groundnuts
- Rice
No confirmed place to eat it
Plateau strawberries
The altitude that keeps Jos cool also grows fruit that will not grow elsewhere in Nigeria. Strawberries are the famous one, but the same fields run to cabbage, carrots, cucumber and apples.
- Highland farms around Jos
No confirmed place to eat it
By people
Dishes recorded against a specific culture, from the cultures section. Where a people has no dishes listed, it means the published record is thin — not that they have no cooking.
Sources
- Gwote Acha, the well loved delicacy in Plateau State — Connect Nigeriaread 2026-08-27
- In Jos, Gwote is a delicacy — Salkidaread 2026-08-27
- Pate acha — Wikipediaread 2026-08-27