Brazzaville has a lively restaurant scene by Central African standards. The French colonial heritage shows in the quality of the boulangeries and the availability of decent wine — rare luxuries in this part of the world. Congolese cooking centres on cassava leaf stew (saka-saka), grilled fish from the river, and nyembwe — chicken or fish cooked in palm nut sauce. The best places to eat Congolese food are in the market areas around Ouénzé and Poto-Poto, where small restaurants serve stew with pounded plantain or rice at low prices.
For a more comfortable meal, the neighbourhood around the Méridien hotel has a cluster of restaurants catering to the city's significant expatriate population. Lebanese restaurants are well represented in Brazzaville, as they are throughout Francophone West and Central Africa, and generally offer good value.