Ghanaian restaurant Yendidi is an infusion of spice

Its chicken is some of the tastiest you’ll eat — in Norfolk or elsewhere

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t notice Yendidi from the outside. The restaurant in Norfolk’s Norview Heights neighborhood is backed off of a flyby stretch of Chesapeake Boulevard, nestled into a mini-mall next to a church and a hair salon. Its parking lot amounts to a ribbon of rough pavement against the roadside.

But the second you walk into the 2-month-old Ghanaian spot, it announces itself more loudly. The first thing you will encounter is the spice. It will always be the spice — the wafting scent of aromatic herbs, pungent ginger, garlic and fennel seed, the earthy spike of Scotch bonnet peppers. Those aromas from the kitchen amount to a promise: Flavor lives here, in heartening complexity and variety.

THE’ N. PHAM/STAFF The chicken isn’t the only draw at Yendidi, on Chesapeake Boulevard in Norfolk. Here’s the grilled mackerel. Ghana-born chef and owner Josephine Oteng-Appiah sees her restaurant as a bit of a cultural bridge, an opportunity to teach Americans about Ghanaian foods. During the weekdays she cooks more casual fare.