ACCRA, Ghana — Fifteen years ago, Otis Ezra Davis — a globe-trotting, scuba diving chef — decided to visit Ghana for a month to assist his dad with his company, Back to the Motherland Tours.
Then Davis partnered with his friend and co-founder Nana-Kofi Appia in 2016 to create One Corner Garden, an organic farm-to-fork restaurant and hospitality venue that also serves its own branded distilled liquor, located in Kokomlemle, a trendy part of Accra.
One Corner Garden evolved from a small bar offering local beer to residents and travelers to a lush, two-story space that provides a sense of comfort and seclusion with its tropical, green shroud that shields visitors from the busy streets and activity found in a sleepless city.
“It was basically a lawn with furniture scattered all over the lawn. That’s how it started,” Appia says.
Appia was originally connected to different business partners and Davis was a guest chef collaborator. They created a new space for their shared vision — a diaspora destination.
“When tourists come to Ghana, there’s very little in between the authentic local experience and what is presented for tourists to enjoy, which is a refined, very nice place and so on and so forth. We figured that there’s a niche to do the authentic local experience, but at a high level of quality, which is what we aspire to do with this project,” Appia says. “There’s supposed to be a cultural center and a platform for creative people to use.”
Most of the venue was built by local craftsmen and the lumber is upcycled from Appia’s grandparents’ house. “It comes from the do-it-yourself kind of background,” Davis says. “It’s all the furniture and everything needed.”
Davis says the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 gave him unexpected free time, leading to the purchase of land for farming about a two-hour drive from the vibrant Osu neighborhood.
“We have peppers, plantain, sugarcane, corn, and cassava,” says Appia, primary caretaker of the farm with help from a handful of locals. “So, because we’ve been focusing on the distillery this year, I’ve done a lot of cassava because that requires less maintenance than all the other crops, vegetables and stuff. I’ve done a lot of variations of vegetables. A lot of them are used to service the restaurant here.”
“We serve oyster mushrooms and fried oyster tempura, which is battered and deep fried, very reminiscent of calamari,” Davis says. “We have black fonio, specifically, which is an ancient green, cultivated over 5,000 years, considered as super food. We have wonderful yam balls. We have local fare and a lot of vegetarian options.”
Davis’ experience as a chef and commercial diver took him all over the world. He spent time in Germany, Japan, Hawaii and Santa Barbara, but as he was deciding to settle outside the United States, he felt Ghana resonated most with him because it reminded him of his hometown, New Orleans. “They call it okra, we call it gumbo; what they call jollof, we call jambalaya. People in my family reminded me of people here,” Davis said. . “Everything is soul based. Nothing really kind of works, but that’s kind of the beauty of it. So I was up for a challenge. And I felt like if I could do something in Ghana, I could pretty much do something anywhere.”
The space currently offers artist-based events and hosts small musical performances. One evening a couple discussed their experience biking the continent of Africa, stopping in Ghana while waiting for a bike part before they pushed on to Cape Town, South Africa.
The following week a small stage was set up for a reggae performance.
One Corner Garden is enhancing the space around its distillery, Davis says before he explains how the Czech-made system works from fruit to bottling.
“This is a full copper column distillery,” he says. “It’s a triple distillation. The copper helps take impurities [and] enhances the aroma. The triple distillation then also increases the alcohol in the flavors.”
A challenge the owners face is expressing the craft because they offer a one of a kind process. “There’s not a lot of distillers like us,” Davis says. “We’re actually the only proper distiller in the entire country. And most of the other manufacturers are using ethanol that they buy from outside. So we have to educate people also that this isn’t ethanol that’s been flavored with fruit but [that] we’re actually extracting the alcohol from the fermented fruit.”
Appia adds, “One thing that he’s not saying is that because there’s so much education that’s required, a lot of people don’t understand the real significance of this project and how it’s different from all the other things that are here. So we have a challenge of showing people why it’s great.”
Appia and Davis feel they are on to a strong product. “Anytime you have a birthday, a wedding, a baby-naming ceremony here, you’re pouring libations to your ancestors,” Davis says. “We wanted to create a spirit that pays homage to that because we’re drawing all this knowledge from our ancestors. It’s an ancient craft, and this first product is our way of honoring that — something people can be proud of.
“Here it’s a blank canvas. If you can imagine it, you can start taking the steps to do it. It takes time, but once the ball starts rolling you see the progress, you see the people you’re working with, and you see the impact you’re having. That keeps you going.
“You can take a bottle anywhere in the world and people will taste the fruit, taste this place, and learn about the culture.”