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EATING AND DRINKING |
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Not surprisingly, perhaps, Kenya has no great national dishes. The
living standards of the majority of people don't allow for frills, and
food is generally plain and filling. Eating out is not a Kenyan
tradition. Still, in the most basic local restaurant, decent meals can
be had for less than Ksh100 (£1/$1.30). For fancier meals in touristy
places, expect to pay up to Ksh1500 (£14/$19) - rarely more - for a
large meal of international-style dishes. For culinary culture, only the
coast's long association with Indian Ocean trade has produced
distinctive regional cooking, where rice and fish, flavoured with
coconut, tamarind and exotic spices, are the dominant ingredients
Breakfast
The first meal of the day varies widely. Standard fare in a hoteli (a
small restaurant) consists of a cup of sweet chai (tea) and a chapati or
a doorstep of white bread thickly spread with margarine (on both sides,
and often the edges too). At the other extreme, if you're staying in a
luxury hotel or lodge, breakfast is usually a lavish acreage of hot and
cold buffets that you can't possibly do justice to. In the average mid-priced
hotel , you'll get "full breakfast", like something from an English B&B
- greasy sausage, bacon and eggs, with tea or instant coffee (in a pot)
and soggy "toast" (which is rarely in fact toasted).
Home-style cooking
If meals are unlikely to be a lasting memory, at least you'll never go
hungry. In any hoteli there's always a number of predictable dishes
intended to fill you up at the least cost. Potatoes, rice and especially
ugali (a stiff, cornmeal porridge) are the national staples, eaten with
chicken, goat, beef, or vegetable stew, various kinds of spinach, beans
and sometimes fish. Portions are usually gigantic; half-portions (ask
for nusu ) aren't much smaller. But even in small towns, more and more
cafés are appearing where most of the menu is fried - eggs, sausages,
chips, fish, chicken and burgers.
Snacks , which can easily become meals, include samosas, chapatis,
paratha, miniature kebabs, roasted corncobs, mandaazi (sweet, puffy,
deep-fried dough cakes) and "egg-bread". Mandaazi are made before
breakfast and served until evening time, when they've become cold and
solid. Egg-bread (misleadingly translated from the Swahili mkate mayai )
is a light wheat-flour "pancake" wrapped around fried eggs and minced
meat, usually cooked on a huge griddle. While you won't find it
everywhere, it's a delicious Kenyan response to the creeping burger
menace. Snacks sold on the street include cassava chips and, if you're
very lucky, termites (which go well as a bar snack with beer).
The standard blow-out feast for most Kenyans is a huge pile of nyama
choma (roast meat). Nyama choma is usually eaten at a purpose-built
nyama choma bar, with beer and music (live or on a jukebox) the standard
accompaniment, and ugali and greens optional. You go to the kitchen and
order by weight (half a kilo is plenty) direct from the butcher's hook
or out of the fridge. There's usually a choice of goat, beef or mutton.
After roasting, the meat is brought to your table on a wooden platter
and chopped to bite-size with a sharp knife. Kuku choma is roast chicken.
Restaurant meals
Indian restaurants in the larger towns, notably Nairobi and Mombasa, are
generally excellent (locally, there's often a strong Indian influence in
hoteli food as well), with dal lunches a good stand-by and much fancier
regional dishes widely available too.
When you splurge, apart from eating Indian, it will usually be in hotel
restaurants , with food often very similar to what you might be served
in a restaurant at home. It will rarely cost more than Ksh1000 a head,
though there's a handful of classy establishments in Nairobi and on the
coast which take delight in charging, for Kenya, outrageous prices for
lavish meals - up to Ksh3000 - generally with some justification.
Kenya's seafood and meat are renowned and they are the basis of most
serious meals. Game meat is a bit of a Kenyan speciality, supposedly
farmed on ranches, though there is a fair amount of illegal poaching
still going on to supply the trade. Giraffe, zebra, impala, crocodile
and ostrich all regularly appear at various restaurants, and often on a
weekly basis in hotel buffets. Gazelle and impala is especially good, as
is zebra; not the horse meat you might imagine. Carnivore in Nairobi is
one of the best places to try game meat.
The lodges usually have buffet lunches at about Ksh800-1000, which can
be great value if you're really hungry, with table-loads of salads and
cold meat. Among Kenya's exotic cuisines, you'll find Italian
restaurants and pizzerias, various Chinese options, and French, Japanese,
Thai, and even Korean food.
Vegetarians
If you're a vegetarian staying in tourist-class hotels, you should have
no problems, as there's usually a meat-free pasta dish, or else the
usual omelettes. Vegetarians on a strict budget don't have an easy time
because meat is the conventional focus of any kind of special meal - in
other words, any meal not eaten at home - and hotelis seldom have much
else to accompany the starch. Even vegetable stew is normally cooked in
meat gravy. Nor are salads and green vegetables served much in the
cheaper hotelis (and if they are, make sure they're fresh). Eggs, at
least, can be had almost anywhere, and fresh milk is distributed widely
in wax paper tetra-packs, as well as UHT or fresh in thin plastic packs.
With bread and tinned margarine, two more staples available everywhere,
you won't starve. Look out for Indian vegetarian restaurants where you
can often eat remarkably well at a very low cost.
Fruit
Fruit is a major delight. Bananas, avocados, pawpaws and pineapples are
in the markets all year, mangoes and citrus fruits more seasonally. Look
out for passion fruit (the familiar shrivelled brown variety, and the
sweeter and less acidic smooth yellow ones), cape gooseberries, custard
apples and guavas - all highly distinctive and delicious. On the coast,
roasted cashew nuts are cheap, especially at Kilifi where they're grown
and processed (never buy any with dark marks on them), while coconuts
are filling and nutritious, going through several satisfying changes of
condition (all edible) before becoming the familiar hard brown nuts.
Drinking
The national beverage is chai - tea. Universally drunk at breakfast and
as a pick-me-up at any time, it's a weird variant on the classic British
brew: milk, water, lots of sugar and tea leaves, brought to the boil in
a kettle and served scalding hot. It must eventually do diabolical
dental damage, but it's addictive and very reviving. Instant coffee -
fresh is rare - is normally available in hotelis as well, but it's
expensive (ironically, as the country is a large coffee producer), so
not as popular as tea. The main tea-producing region is around Kericho
in the west, but the best tea is made on the coast. Upcountry it's all
too often a tea bag in a cup of vaguely warm water or milk.
Soft drinks (sodas) are usually very cheap, and crates of Coke, Fanta
and Sprite find their way to the wildest corners of the country where,
uncooled, they're pretty disgusting. Krest, a bitter lemon, is a lot
more pleasant. Krest also makes a ginger ale, but it's watery and
insipid; instead go for Stoney Tangawizi (ginger beer) which has more of
a punch. Sometimes you can get Vimto (a mixed-fruit concoction), and
occasionally plain soda water. There are fresh fruit juices available in
the towns, especially on the coast (Lamu is fruit juice heaven). Passion
fruit, the cheapest, is excellent, though nowadays it's likely to be
watered-down concentrate. Some places serve a variety: you'll sometimes
find carrot juice and even tiger milk - made from tiger nuts (which are
actually a type of tuber). Bottled Picana mango juice is also available
at some shops that sell sodas.
Bottled mineral or spring water is relatively expensive but widely
available. Mains water may be drinkable, but it's safer to stick with
bottled.
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