← Back to globe
Grilled · Peri-Peri Chicken

Frango à Zambeziana (Piri-Piri Chicken)

Frango à Zambeziana (Piri-Piri Chicken) — street food from Mozambique
📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

The chili sauce that made this dish world-famous isn't even native to Africa — it crossed the Atlantic with Portuguese traders.

Chicken is split, marinated in a fiery piri-piri (bird's-eye chili) sauce built with garlic and lemon, and grilled over charcoal at simple grill shacks and roadside barracas. It's usually eaten by hand with rice, fries, or bread.

Why it's made this way: The dish blends three histories: the small fiery piri-piri chili carried into Africa by Portuguese traders, the colonial-era love of grilling with garlic and lemon, and Mozambique's own coastal grilling traditions — making it the country's best-known culinary export.

Roughly what's in it

500kcal
42gprotein
4gcarbs
34gfat
Estimated per typical street-vendor portion — not lab-tested.
Read it in context →

More from Mozambique

🍺 2M (Dois M) LM Prawns Chamuças (Mozambican Samosas) Matapa
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries. Something wrong here? Tell us in the comments below. Photo credits.