Chakula cha Njia (street food)

I love street food. It’s a fact. Were it socially and gastronomically acceptable, I would take all of my meals in the form of street food. When on our honeymoon in Thailand, E had to literally drag me away from the street venders and into proper restaurants, which was probably a good thing for our overall health. Thailand is very well known for all of the delectables available on the street, but what about Kenya?

I have to say that the street food scene here is not quite a vibrant as Thailand, but it does have some bright spots, nonetheless. Let’s start with mahindi choma, or roasted ears of maize. These are usually grilled with the husk peeled back over charcoal, the grill fashioned out of a discarded car wheel rim and some salvaged wire. After grilling, a half of a lime is dipped into “masala”, which is salt and cayenne pepper, and then rubbed on the corn. Like E mentioned before, the corn is not sweet, but is rather a firmer maize, and after being grilled, has a distinctive popcorn flavor. It’s really pretty tasty, and at 10 shillings (12 cents) per ear, a good deal. A typical maize hawker below:



Since were on the coast, the coconut is omnipresent. Actually not native to the Kenyan coast, it was introduced a few hundred years ago, and, like exotics are apt to do, flourished. There are actually two names for coconuts in Swahili. Mdafu is a young coconut, and nazi is a mature coconut. Street venders often sell both. Kenyans prefer the milk from the young coconut, but E and I both agree that the mature coconut is tastier. They chop off the top of the coconut with a panga, or machete, and you drink out of it like a cup. A few weeks ago, a man came into the OR with a bloody rag on his hand, and when he took it off, it revealed the stump where his thumb used to be. He was a coconut vender who got distracted. Apparently this is not uncommon, which is kind of terrible.

When getting off of the ferry in Mombasa, you can go up Mama Ngina Drive which follows along the water, and this place is lined with vendors selling cassava chips. These are made as you would expect, with thin shavings of the root dropped into the cooking oil, and then salted and served while still hot. They are delicious. I believe that Terra Chips have cassava in them, so you can pick those out and have a little taste of Kenya.

In Lamu, we came upon a vender who was being overrun by a mob of children and their parents. We were on our way to dinner, but I didn’t want to miss out on top-shelf street food. He was selling fried cassava chunks, over which he squeezed lime and added some masala. The result was amazing. Hot, tender, flavorful. We haven’t seen it since, but hopefully we will meet again.

Mandazi is fried, slightly sweet dough; a dead ringer for beignets if they had some powered sugar. Very common and popular in Kenya, as they are quite cheap, at five KSH or so. They’re pretty tasty, but we don’t really seek them out.

Sugarcane is served in little chunks with the tough outer covering cut off. I had never had sugarcane before, so didn’t know what to expect. You can pop the chunk in your mouth and chew to release all of the juice before spitting out the fiber. It’s very refreshing!

Samosas are just like the samosas that many people have tried in Indian restaurants back in the states (the little triangles of deep-fried, meat and veggie-stuffed goodness). We don’t really see them in Ukunda, as many people are from upcountry, where the Indian influence is not as strong, but they’re all over the place in Mombasa. When we took the bus up to Lamu, samosas helped to tide us over, as there were samosa hawkers at every stop. E looked around in vain for a vegetable of any sort on the bus ride but I was happy as a clam with my fried street food.

Some vendors sell nyama (meat) on a stick with some unknown sauce, but we’ve been warned by several sources that the safety of this particular food is suspect, and it just doesn’t feel safe, so I can’t comment on how it tastes. With street food, I feel like it’s good to “trust your gut”. I have a little routine at lunch with an older gentleman who’s trying to sell me his nyama: He puts the plate under my nose, and I say “si leo, labda kesho”, or “not today, maybe tomorrow”. Literally, this occurs five days per week. There’s a cultural thing here where you can’t really say “no” outright, you have to say “not today”, or something similar.

Though not technically “street food”, much mobile food in Kenya is purchased from small kiosks (see below). E and I decided that “small kiosk” was redundant, as I’ve never come across a massive kiosk, but it’s how all Kenyans refer to them. Anyways, they generally sell things like water, milk, fruit, biscuits, and groundnuts, or peanuts. Biscuits are a very popular snack here, thanks to the British. They’re basically sweet little buttery cookie crackers. I’m not certain, but I think that a cookie is called a biscuit here. They’re very cheap, and thus, very popular. Also, E informs me that it’s pronounced “bisk-weet” [the end rhymes with tweet] by the kids at school and it’s accompanied by juice, pronounced “ju-eece” [the ending rhymes with Greece].



Often found at kiosks, and by far the strangest street food of all, is small bags of rocks. That’s right, rocks. They even have them at Nakumatt. We’re still trying to understand their use, though we think it may have something to do with correcting mineral deficiencies.



The final street food that I’ll mention is the ephemeral sim-sim, or sesame ball. It’s held together by a small amount of sugar (obviously at one point melted sugar), and has a great nutty and slightly sweet taste. There is one woman in Msambweni who sells them for two KSH each, and whenever I see her, I buy her out, but for some reason, she is not frequently around. I think she’s underestimating her market. This scarcity lead me to the cockamamie scheme of making my own sim-sim, which will be a subject of another blog.

All in all, the street food here makes decent snacks, but you’d be hard-pressed to put together a meal. The maize is hardy and tasty, and I’ll often pick up some peanuts to tide me over, but our overall street food to normal meal quotient is quite low.