–with mouth-watering original West African foods

AS Guyana joined several former European colonies across the Caribbean on Saturday in celebrating Emancipation, popular local eatery, Bettencourt’s paid homage the best way they know how by offering customers a choice of various authentic West African dishes at its D’Urban Street, Wortmanville outlet.
Company Deputy CEO John Raymond told the Guyana Chronicle that the idea behind the choice of foods that day was to treat customers to a Taste of Africa with a decidedly Ghanaian twist. He stated that after realising that COVID-19 was going to put a damper on things somewhat this year, the company decided that they would play a part in ensuring that the show goes on.

Raymond, who also doubles as chef occasionally, stated that he decided to base all of the dishes off of one West African nation, and after some research for availability of ingredients here, he decided on Ghana. Among authentic Ghanaian dishes the restaurant had on offer on Saturday were Banku, Red-Red, Ochro Soup, and Red Chilli with Beef.

Giving a little insight into the dishes and how they are made traditionally, Raymond said that Banku, for instance, is made by cooking a proportionate mixture of fermented corn and cassava dough in hot water into a smooth, whitish paste, and serving with either soup, Okra Stew or a pepper sauce with fish.
He said that because some of the ingredients are not readily available here, they had to use cassava and cornmeal instead.
Red-Red Stew is primarily black-eyed peas cooked in preferably palm oil to give it its signature red colouring, or alternatively vegetable oil, and eaten with fried plantains.
In addition to traditional West African dishes, Bettencourt’s also prepared several of the traditional local African foods such as Cook-up rice, Metemgee, Cassava Pone and even thirst-quenching Mauby for the observance of Emancipation.

Raymond stated that the company is elated to have had the chance to bring this type of authentic African food to their menu especially for Emancipation Day. “We knew that there was going to be a need for this kind of celebration, so we decided that we are going to fill this need by creating an African buffet,” he said.
In addition to the Emancipation Celebration, Bettencourt has also been playing its part in the COVID-19 fight by preparing meals for frontline workers through its ‘Feed our Frontliners’ project, which was launched in April, and has been daily providing frontline workers at the Georgetown Public Hospital Cooperation (GPHC) with meals and snacks.

He said they have since extended the service to include ranks of the Brickdam Police Station, thanks in no small measure to the generous donations of loyal Bettencourt’s customers.

“Largely, donations are made by customers to facilitate this effort,” Raymond said, adding: “Persons have been making donations from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, sending their money by CashApp, MoneyGram and so on. So we have a lot of persons responding to the need that we have seen and wanted to be a part of.”