Kasoa African Market

I stopped in yesterday for palm oil and Shito and they hooked me up with both. I found the owner to be super helpful and friendly and we had a short chat about Kwame Nkrumah.
The owner told me that he’s in the process of renovating a larger space at (I believe he said) the corner of Ellsworth and Platt, which would give them a higher profile location and I hope the opportunity to stock a wider variety of items.
I agree with the previous commenter that they specialize in West African products, but since West African was what I was looking for it worked out for me well.
So no reason to be intimidated. Seek them out, stop in, look for the poster of Nkrumah on the wall and ask about it. That should get the ball rolling.

I have met closets bigger than this grocery. It was so tucked away that we weren’t sure we were even in the right place, and opening the door did not convince us much. Somehow my friend and I managed to squeeze in with approximately three other people who were also accompanied by a stroller, but at that point you were pretty much confined to turning around in circles while standing in one place.
I normally love places like this (the kind that give a newly literal meaning to ‘hole in the wall’), but we were rather disappointed by the selection. They specialize in West African goods (we were looking for ingredients for Ethiopian food), and most of their products seem to be in cans. The owner was not what I would call helpful, and seemed to be patiently waiting for us to leave. All of that said, it’s the only African grocery in Ann Arbor, and another friend of mine says that they have much of what’s needed for West African cooking. Since I’m the first reviewer I probably shouldn’t pan them, so I’ll just say that they didn’t have what we needed.