Soul'd Sundays
A house party with a kitchen at its centre, in Tse Addo
At Villa Veghana in Accra, Ghanaian electronic producers play the living room while the host, a plant-based chef, is billed to cook live with every set.
The DJ stands under the sign. "Villa Veghana" runs above her, a turquoise painting hangs beside it, and she holds one headphone cup to her ear while her other hand works the controller. She wears a yellow patterned outfit with a matching headwrap. At the left edge of our frame, somebody else's camera flash cuts in.
That was Soul'd Sundays at Villa Veghana in Accra on Sunday 13 September 2026. The room was small and it was full. Our second frame turns to the crowd. People are packed into dim, greenish light, most of them seen from behind, all facing the DJ under a ceiling fan, phones up to film the set.
What our two frames do not show is the other half of the idea. Soul'd Sundays is a house party with a kitchen at its centre. The organisers pitch it, on their events page, as "a sensory feast with Ghana's top electronic producer DJs paired with live cooking by an award-winning chef every set". The chef is the host, and the house is hers.
The earlier editions on that page show how the format is built. The 12 April edition ran from 2pm to 10pm at GH₵350 a ticket, billed as "Four live DJ sets from some of the continent's best DJs" side by side with four courses of plant-based Ghanaian food by the chef. On Sunday 12 July, from 4pm till late, the line-up was Que Soundz, We Dey, Safo NP and Khxn, with the chef cooking live with each set and Ess Thee Legend as special guest, performing from her EP, Bloom. That day Sara Abdou led a flow dance workshop in the garden, and Faith Pottery Ghana ran a pottery class in the Red Room. A pottery class is not the usual item on a party flyer. Here it had its own room.
The host is chef Nana-Serwa Mancell. Her host page names her as the founder of three ventures, Veghana, Caped Coast and Soul'd Sundays, "all rooted in sustainability, culture and intentional experiences." According to the same page, her early career was in London, with NGOs and government institutions including the Office of the Mayor of London. She is a mother of three and lives between Ireland and Ghana, after 20 years in the UAE.
Veghana began in Dubai. A 2021 profile in Entrepreneur Middle East described it as a Dubai-based business serving plant-based West African cuisine, and reported that Mancell, born and raised in Ghana, used the food she grew up with to explore and express her identity while studying in the United Kingdom. "Veghana is not just about food, but also art, culture, music, and conversation," she told the magazine. Five years on, that sentence reads like the floor plan for a Sunday in Tse Addo.
Veghana says she was named Plant-Based Chef of the Year at the Pro Chef Middle East Awards in 2025, with a dish of Plantain Cake and Mince Roulade. The awards' own page lists Nana-Serwa Mancell of Veghana under Plant-Based Cuisine.
Villa Veghana itself is at 17 Welbeck Street in Tse Addo, near Cantonments, Osu and the beach. The organisers describe it as her home, "an experience of African design, decor, and craftsmanship". By their account it has six bedrooms, five living areas, an office and a kitchen that opens onto the garden. They also say it runs on solar power, reuses water, and is furnished by hand by Ghanaian artisans, with a chandelier made of bicycle parts.
A kitchen that opens onto the garden matters more than it sounds. When the cooking happens in the same flow as the dancing, dinner stops being an interval and becomes part of the set.
Sundays are not the whole calendar. On Thursday 3 September, the villa and The High-Life Collective hosted a sold-out listening party for Finding My Rhythm EP 1, the debut collaborative project from Abrantie Simms and Ess Thee Legend. A press release published on 17 September said the four-track EP had been released. The events page also lists Living Room Cult, a DJ gathering on 18 April 2026 from 4pm till late; The Fitting Room, a fashion pop-up party on Saturday 20 June with DJs Tuntumthedj, NY Trouble and Sky Gee; a BWB African Electronic Music Production Camp planned around a 10-track instrumental album in four days; and a fonio cooking class with Mancell on 8 August 2026 at GH₵950 a person. Separately, the Veghana Experience runs "twice monthly or on private group request", and its GH₵1,000 Afternoon Joy package has a dinner edition "with DJs + curated music sets".
For the Sunday party itself, the next date is Sunday 15 November 2026, from 4pm to 10pm. The events page lists early bird tickets at GH₵80 until 6 November, regular tickets at GH₵100 from 7 to 15 November, and GH₵150 at the door.
Mancell's host page says her work is about "proving that businesses can thrive without losing their cultural soul." In September the soul was not hard to find. It stood under the sign, one hand on the headphones.
“A pottery class is not the usual item on a party flyer. Here it had its own room.”
- Villa Veghana: Events
- Veghana: About Your Host
- Veghana: The Veghana Experience
- Veghana: Retreats and Events
- Entrepreneur Middle East: In Good Taste, Nana Serwa Mancell, Founder, Veghana
- The Pro Chef Middle East: Inside the Pro Chef Hospitality Awards 2025
- The Upper Ent: Abrantie Simms and Ess Thee Legend unite on new Finding My Rhythm EP 1
