Where to eat CAMEROON 🇨🇲 Zürich: Cindy's Bistro Afro Deli

Cindy's Bistro Afro Deli

Kanonengasse 9, Zürich

Published April 1, 2025 · by Amanda Rivkin Häsler

What we ordered: For two people, one order of ndolé and one jollof rice with goat meat. To drink, two Cameroonian Castel beers and an order of poffpof with habanero sauce was complimentary as a starter. Both dishes also came with a side of habanero sauce.

Cost: 77 CHF / €81 / $87

Cindy’s Bistro Afro Deli is actually the first occasion we have had to try a restaurant as the result of an Instagram follower as we had previously sought out a Cameroonian restaurant but the only place we had located was in far-away Geneva, so we opted to give Cindy’s Bistro Afro Deli a try for convenience reasons. It was a good choice to follow our account as being pro-active, especially in the restaurant industry when recently opened or renovated, is always a wise call and to be honest we were not disappointed.

Everything you could want in a restaurant was inside their doors from nice people to nice music and foremost, great food. We visited on a random Tuesday at the start of the year and while there were not too many people the night we went, there was a great warmth inside, even though we sat ourselves by the door on a cold night. January is notoriously slow around the world for restaurants so always a good month to dine out. The restaurant was clearly ready for bigger groups and families.

First for the décor. It was a combination lounge and restaurant, very African, with a music video channel showing pan-African beats and flyers for an Afrobeat festival in February on the window ledge. While modest, it was lively, some plants, some red arm chairs and more traditional dining room tables. On the weekends, one can see the space easily giving way to a lounge vibe.

We were greeted not by Cindy of the Instagram profile at first but by an acquaintance in the restaurant who told us we could sit anywhere and were in for some really great African food. This was not at all wrong and shortly Cindy and I believe her husband who she would tell us is Nigerian, materialized to take our orders, pour our beers and generally provide warm and friendly as well as prompt service.

The menu was a giant tablet, a reminder that the earliest and most versatile adapters of cellular technologies in the new millennium were always Africans. Any questions we had were answered and while the menu might not have been a tactile experience for the customer, it was an interactive one as we had the chef and host at our table ready and willing to discuss options, steer us one way or the other and encourage rather than discourage adventure.

When we asked about Cameroonian beer, her face lit up and we were offered one large bottle to split. We ended up sharing two. With our drinks and while we waited for our mains, a complimentary dish of poffpof, a beignet-like doughy ball, came along with some spicy hot habanero sauce. It was perfect for whetting the palette and also a bit spicy enough to prompt the ordering of a second beer—smart for business.

When the food came it was really extremely excellent and unique. I confess to being very unfamiliar with African cuisines beyond the most popular ones in the West, namely Ethiopian, Moroccan and Algerian. We all know couscous, some of us know injera. West African food is nothing like either, but its own flavor palette that has some francophone influences but really comes down to staple crops and colorful combinations that are delicate if not sensitive. The closest thing I knew to it before is a cousin, Creole cuisine in New Orleans.

I ordered ndolé, the unofficial national dish of Cameroon. When it came, I did not know what to expect. It looked a bit like creamed spinach and I was told there would be meat and shrimp in it. It was wildly more unique than anything I tasted before, with a bit of a smoky taste. Is this the bitter leaves? How is this effect achieved with just some meat and greens? Perhaps the seasoning? I cannot say really but it was fantastic. It came with a side of fried plantains which were a sweet punctuation mark on the savory. With a bit of habanero as I love spicy it very much popped. Clean plate club all the way.

Georg had jollof rice with goat meat. As a friend of Africa, Georg said the jollof rice is representative of the culinary light of Africa. Personally, he is not a fan of goat meat but he believes Africans are dealing with goat meat better than anyone so he opted to try it. In Europe, it is often gummy and chewy but at Cindy’s Bistro Afro Deli, it was tasty and tender. With the goat meat, he felt he could test the kitchen to see how quality it truly is. He was not disappointed and found it tasty and done with a lot of love.

Another discovery was the Castel beer. While admittedly not an Africanist but aware of broader trends of the colonial and postcolonial order, I did not realize the Germans had ever been present really in Cameroon. But their presence explains why the Castel lager was so refined.  

How to get to Cameroon from Switzerland:

By car, it is a 97-hour odyssey through France and Spain, a ferry from Alicante to Algiers, then across Algeria, Niger and Nigeria on the Trans-Sahara from Switzerland. Perhaps not the safest journey by road but definitely one for the daring adventurer at best or the foolhardy at worst.

There are no options by rail.

From Zurich, the best route currently is via Brussels to the Cameroonian city of Douala on Brussels Airlines, which also operates an onward flight to the capital, Yaoundé. Air France also operates a route with connections in Paris and N’djamena, the capital of Chad. All the preferred routes clock in at between ten to fifteen hours and a minimum of two connections is necessary. 

How many Cameroonians are in Switzerland: Approximately 4,500

Distance between Bern and Yaoundé: 6,920 km

Distance from Cindy’s Bistro Afro Deli to Yaoundé: 7,016 km

Come Friday: learn how to make Cameroon's national dish, ndolé, and about its origins.

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