Situated on the Grand Concourse, with another location in Morrisania, Papaye (“doing good”) is a Ghanaian spot that landed on our latest update of the Eater 38. Owned by Osei Bonsu and managed by his nephew Kwame Bonsu, nearly everything on the large menu can be made on request, in contrast to the three or four dishes available at any given time at many other West African restaurants. Try the mashed rice called omo tuo, along with a stew of goat in peanut butter sauce. Jollof rice is another well-liked choice.

This small, rustic establishment features the cooking of Ivory Coast, including attieke, a coarsely textured cassava stodge with a delightfully sour flavor. It’s served with a relish or two, a cube of salty Maggi, and fried fish, which comes smothered in a mustard mince of onions and tomatoes. Fried chicken and roast lamb are offered, and a stew or two is often available, thickened with okra and palm oil. Grin also serves espresso, a ubiquitous vestige of French colonialism in Ivory Coast.

Located in the Soundview section of the Bronx, which is now home to many West African immigrants from Senegal and Guinea, Fouta’s halal menu combines dishes from both cuisines. The interior has a clubhouse feel, and men sit around in robes and skullcaps eating bowls of fluffy white polished rice and sauce de feuilles made with sweet potato leaf, or lamb mafe decorated with a single scotch bonnet pepper. First-time visitors are made welcome, and French and English are readily spoken.

On the fringes of Mott Haven in the south Bronx, Balimaya (“kinship”) features the food of Ivory Coast front and center, and other West African cuisines at the whim of the cook. Attieke served with fish — fried whole fish on a bed of fermented manioc meal — is always available, and there are also Guinean leaf-based sauces and peanut stews from Senegal with lamb or chicken. Balimaya is a nice casual place on a major thoroughfare.

Located in Central Harlem, Accra is a Ghanaian restaurant owned by Ayesha Abdullah, done up in colorful cafeteria style. Much of the food is served from a steam table, but the kitchen staff is adept at whipping up dishes. The spacious dining room is lined with photos of African politicians like Kofi Annan and entertainers like Angélique Kidjo. Go for the goat pepper soup or the mixed meat in okra sauce with pounded yam fufu.

A decade ago Pierre Thiam operated a tiny Senegalese restaurant and jazz club in Clinton Hill. In the interim, he established a formal restaurant in Dakar and published a series of West African cookbooks. Now he presides over a pair of cafes in downtown Brooklyn and in Harlem that have reformulated the collected cuisines of West Africa for contemporary tastes, concentrating on salad and rice bowls with yassa and beef suya. Beer, wine, and cocktails are available.

The celebrity chef Kwame Onwuachi, who has worked in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., now has a New York restaurant that begins with Nigerian, French, and American food and then adds startling touches. There’s a chopped cheese sandwich shingled with shaved truffles and a pastrami suya deploying an entire beef rib, served with German purple cabbage and a mustard sauce. Other dishes show Jamaican and Chinese influences, and you can’t beat the view of the Lincoln Center fountain.

Named after the cultural capital of Nigeria, Lagos TSQ is a glitzy combo of restaurant, nightclub, and sports bar that recently opened at the northern end of Times Square. The menu from chef Ayodeji Adeosun runs from standard tourist fare to some very serious updates of Nigerian dishes. The menu lists jollof rice with red stew chicken and a super spicy goat pepper soup, alongside a smash burger and an excellent chicken shawarma sandwich.

This fast-casual newcomer south of Grand Central comes from owner Foluso Salami, who takes the greatest hits of Nigerian food and packages them in lunch bowls for takeout. Choose from several categories to assemble your meal, but don’t miss the jollof rice and the bean fritters called moin moin, both of which lend themselves to the habanero hot sauce. No indoor seating.

B&B Restaurant is a steam-table, pay-by-the-pound buffet founded in 2009 in Chelsea. Typically, it offers dozens of recipes adapted from several West African, North African, and Middle Eastern countries. Sometimes African American, Jamaican, and Haitian food is included, as well. This sort of place can’t be beat for a taste of the West African diaspora, even though the quality and heat level vary. Limited seating is available.

Africana is located in Jamaica, close enough to JFK to catch the traffic. Unlike neighboring Tropical Grill, Africana seems like a small cafe rather than a nightclub. The classic beans with dodo (fried plantains) make a nice meal, with or without fried fish, or you might explore the multiple leaf- and seed-based sauces. They include egusi (made with melon seeds) and edikaikong (waterleaf and pumpkin). A range of mashes like fufu (white yam) and amala (cassava flour) are available to go with the sauces. This is real homestyle Nigerian cooking.

Joloff refers to a historic West African tribe (usually spelled jollof) and its recipe for cooking rice. It’s also the name of one of the city’s oldest Senegalese restaurants, founded in 1995 by the Diagne family. Appetizers include fataya jeun (mackerel turnovers), boulettes djeun (fish balls), and nem legumes — spring rolls brought to Dakar by Vietnamese refugees in the 1950s. Main courses include dibi (lamb chops) and yassa (chicken with mustard-flavored onions).

This rollicking 14-year-old Nigerian restaurant in Clinton Hill, founded by Lookman Mashood and Nat Goldberg, recently moved into stylish new quarters, still on Fulton Street. (There’s also a new branch in the East Village.) The menu makes few adjustments to perceived American taste, from gluey cowfoot stew and rubbery land snails to fiery goat and fish pepper soup. A first-timer could do worse than a serving of beans and dodo (fried plantain) or boiled yam and egg, both tasty but relatively unspicy. Drinks include palm wine and African beers.

Many Nigerian restaurants cluster in Jamaica, Queens, making them easy destinations for travelers coming to and from JFK. Owned by Abimbola Jawo, Tropical Grill affects a nightclub demeanor and is one of the few West African restaurants in town to offer a full bar. It also has a very long menu that reflects several styles of regional Nigerian cooking. From the north, it serves peanut-dusted suya kebabs and the doughnuts known as puff puff. The fiery goat pepper soup is a favorite, laced with a West African spice called grains of paradise.