Dining Out: Kenya Style

When eating out in Kenya, you have two choices: go to a mzungu restaurant and pay prices more expensive than in the US or go to a local restaurant and order carefully. We usually chose the latter. M eats out every lunch since there’s nothing to bring from home and I’ve been joining him now that school is over and I’m helping him out in the lab.

I say you have to order carefully because there are some things that we simply shouldn’t eat. Mostly fresh, unpeeled veggies (tomatoes are a common one) and anything made from untreated water (juice, water, cold soup, etc.). We eat the salads that Lucy serves because frankly we can’t afford to lose one of the five dinner options that we get and we haven’t gotten sick yet. We don’t usually risk it when we’re outside the house.

The other interesting aspect of Kenyan restaurants is the menu. There is generally a printed or posted menu. This menu has little to no relation to what they actually serve. So, when foolishly trying to order from a menu that has been handed to you, there is often a complex series of exchanges to try and figure out what they actually have. This is made more complicated by the fact that they often substitute things on the menu for unlisted and unfamiliar items making it the equivalent of dining roulette. You’re never really sure what you’re going to receive, and whether it will make you ill.

There are positives to this scheme though (everything is a scheme in Kenya in local English vernacular). The other day, we went to a place for lunch which had a menu of about 20 items including fish, chicken, and beef. When we got to the ordering process though, we discovered that they actually had chapatti, ugali, and wali (coconut rice) as their only options (remember when we said that Kenyans often will eat just one of these items for a meal? Baffling.) I admit it, I balked. Maybe it’s not polite but I said discreetly to M, I am not eating straight, unflavored carbohydrates and calling it a meal. When they saw we might leave, they promised us that they could have fish for us in 10 minutes. Now, we knew this would be Kenyan pole pole 10 minutes but we weren’t in a big rush and Msambweni is a fishing village so we decided to go for it. Within 25 minutes (actually faster than expected!), we were each served a small reef fish that had been pan-fried over coconut rice. It was absolutely delicious and obviously pretty fresh. We were delighted.

I have a feeling that the reasoning behind this menu scheme is that the average Kenyan doesn’t mind eating just ugali or whatever for lunch so they don’t sell much chicken, fish, etc. This, combined with a real lack of refrigeration, makes it unprofitable to carry a lot of proteins each day. So they use just-in-time sourcing, also known as paying a fishermen to get a fish right quick, delicious!