Dakar for The Food Pilgrims: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

The iron-and-brick halls of 1910 sell fruit, spices and dried fish; try a bissap or ginger juice and look for the baobab-fruit pyramids.

Pastries and a café touba, Senegal's spiced coffee with grains of selim, at a counter where the regulars drink standing.

Cape Verdean and Senegalese cooking side by side: thieboudienne, the national rice-and-fish dish, and a cachupa on the side. Book at weekends.

Pirogues landing at dawn: heaps of sardinella, barracuda and lobster, with buyers shouting prices; go early, wear closed shoes and expect to be splashed.

Order the grilled catch of the day by weight and share a plate of fried plantain on the pier.

Dakar's biggest fabric market, with wax prints and bazin by the metre, tailors waiting nearby to cut a boubou the same day.

The ferry to Gorée; the island's cooks make a good yassa poulet, and the crossing sets up an appetite.

A long lunch of yassa or grilled fish with fresh bissap in the courtyard; a stone's throw from the ferry quay.

Dinner on the seafront terrace, a modern take on Senegalese flavours: a serious meal to end the weekend's eating, with a sea view.

Buy bags of dried hibiscus, baobab powder and fonio to take home, then ask for one more café touba.

A final bowl of mafé or thiou before the flight, served fast at lunchtime.