Founded 2019 · Osu, Accra

A grill built around one fire.

Olive & Ember began with a two-metre olive-wood hearth shipped from Athens to Tema by container ship, then trucked to a quiet side-street in Osu. The brick took six weeks to lay. We opened in October 2019 with eight tables, three staff, and one printed menu.

Five years on, we have forty-eight seats, twenty-two staff, and a guest book full of regulars. The hearth is unchanged. Most of the menu still cooks on it. So does most of what we have to say.

The Olive & Ember dining room with warm lighting and our signature wood-fired hearth in the background

The founders

Kofi Mensah & Lina Petropoulos.

Kofi grew up in Cape Coast and trained as a chef in London — fifteen years between Trullo, Brawn, and a brief, formative stint at Moro. Lina is from Thessaloniki. She ran a wine shop in Athens for nine years before moving to Accra in 2017. They met at the Accra Goethe-Institut book club. Neither of them denies that they bonded over a shared opinion that most restaurants in both their home cities had stopped trying.

Olive & Ember is the restaurant they kept describing to each other on long walks along the Labadi beach road — somewhere a single hearth would do most of the work, where Ghanaian produce would meet Mediterranean technique, and where the wine list would actually have a point of view.

"A neighbourhood place," Lina says, "with international ambition." Kofi nods. "And a really, really good lamb shoulder."

Close-up of fresh seasonal produce being prepared at the Olive & Ember kitchen pass

Sourcing

Where the food comes from.

We buy from sixteen producers across Ghana. Our tilapia comes from a small farm on Lake Volta we have visited four times. The lamb is from a Bolgatanga co-operative whose owners we know by name. Herbs grow in an acre garden in Aburi tended by two friends of the family.

Olive oil, sumac, za'atar, and a few cheeses ship from a Greek importer in Athens — there is no Ghanaian substitute we have found that we are happy with. We're working on it.

If you'd like a complete supplier list, just ask. We're proud of it.

Recognition

A few of the kind words.

"The best dining room in Accra and it isn't close."

— Accra Food Review · 2024

"A wood-fired temple to slowness in a city of speed."

— The West Africa Magazine

"Kofi and Lina are doing something very rare: cooking with patience."

— Travel + Leisure · 2023

Come see for yourself.

Stories are nice. Dinner is better. Book a table and meet the hearth.

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