Let’s say you just arrived in Lagos, or Abuja, and your stomach is already beating the drums of war. You know no one and have no idea where to get good food. What do you do? Do you go out and wander around, looking for whom to devour where to get a good meal? Or will you, like me, take the easier but more painful option of sleeping hungry?
Enter Ofadaa. No, not the rice. Duh.
Ofadaa is a Nigerian restaurant discovery platform. For now, the service only covers Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan and Port Harcourt. On the website, there’s a list of restaurants in each of those cities. These restaurants are grouped into different categories. There’s a list of the best buka joints (local restaurants), best rooftop bars, and shisha joints. The average cost for each of the restaurants is listed there too so you have an idea how much the food costs.
To make it easier for you, the restaurants are grouped into areas, i.e. in Lagos, you have Ajah, Agege, Yaba, and so on. So even if you don’t know the name of a particular restaurant, at least you know the name of the area you find yourself. You can also browse restaurants by the types of cuisine they have. So, if you’re looking for good suya spots, bakeries, Indian/Chinese food restaurants, African cuisines, you are good to go.
There’s a customer feedback platform on Ofadaa where you can write reviews and rate the places you have visited, for the benefit of others. There’s a feature on the website for ‘Trending restaurants’ but I don’t know how it works.
If you own a restaurant in any of the four cities Ofadaa covers and are interested in listing it, you can do that here.
I must say, Ofadaa is a good idea. The website is simple and easy to navigate. It’s not heavy and it produces search results quickly.
However, there are not enough restaurant options yet. The fact that there are almost no pictures to show what the restaurants really look like, is a drawback for me. There aren’t many reviews on the website at the moment, but I reckon that will change for the better as it becomes more popular. I also noticed that there are no detailed descriptions for the restaurants; that is disappointing. The details are supposed to help visitors who come on the website make well informed decisions.
I’ve already discovered, through Ofadaa, that there’s an amala joint in my area. I’m definitely going to check it out this weekend. I’m always looking for more places to find good food so I’m pretty sure I’ll be consulting the website again in the nearest future.
Photo Credit: …-Wink-… via Compfight cc
