Lie down on the couch / what does that mean?

It's been a while.

So long in fact that I have left Rwanda.

Probably for good.

Again.

Any sensible blogger would have closed the shop by now. Said a final sad goodbye. I might need a little time to work it out though.                                                                      ***

"I like your blog, but I don't understand it sometimes"

Some of the commentariat (damn, I thought I'd invented that word, but Google proves me wrong.) would agree. It's OK though - the enigma is deliberate: contained within each of my posts is a series of hidden messages for specific people around the world. One day, the correct written combination of words will trigger a global uprising of jaded zombie restaurant goers who will take action against the evils of vegetarianism. Seriously, we're a right-click-paste away from Armageddon.

L'il Vegas

Awful name isn't it? What is that apostrophe even for? Surely if L'il is a shortened version of 'little' then it should be Li'l.(1)

Anyway, it has gambling machines, so is like a smaller (little) version of Vegas; where I've heard they also have gambling machines.(2)

We're here for a burger, described on this very good website (3) as "the best burger in Kigali" The gang from Living in Kigali seem to eat a lot of burgers, so I guess they know what they're talking about (4). Now, I'm not one of those hipster bumwipes who thinks a burger is only good if it is made from 21 day aged Aberdeen Angus beef and served with an overpriced mojito mixed with owl tears in an old Vimto bottle (5); it's just that it isn't hard to make a decent burger - it's hardly cordon bleu. If I can make a decent burger at home (6), then surely somebody who is paid to work in the kitchen of a restaurant might be able to manage it.

The Young Ambassador orders something called the "monster massive cockandballs burger"(7), which looks like the hideous aftermath of a matatu accident but tastes reassuringly herby. It comes with an untidy avalanche of chips which threaten to bury the table. Sadly, he reports a case of the thruppeny bits (8) the following morning. My chicken burger is surprisingly good with pieces of actual factual chicken, rather than the usual mechanically recovered chicken ears and noses (9). Onion rings are coated with what appear to be flakes of brioche bread: something I'm still not convinced is a good idea. I haven't yet encountered a portion of onion rings anywhere in the world good enough to serve as my benchmark onion rings (10), which makes me wonder whether onion rings might just be a bit rubbish whichever way you cook them.

The best bit is the floor show, a strange lottery involving numbered tickets and a rotating box. A security guard looms over with his stick, gently twatting anyone who gets too close to the numbered tickets. This is the reason why you should go to L'il Vegas - where else in Kigali can you enjoy a burger and a beer while watching a man being hit in the face with a stick?

                                                                       ***

(1) What I've done there is a little playful introduction. I don't really care what the name of the restaurant is, and the apostrophe doesn't really bother me, I'm just adopting a curmudgeonly character which sets the tone of voice for the rest of the review. I'm actually quite a cheerful bloke.

(2) Obviously I know they have gambling machines in Vegas, and so do you. This is very gentle sarcasm, and implies that L'il Vegas is nothing like Vegas. It also establishes a little cheeky rapport with the reader.

(3) It is a good website. I really do think this.

(4) I don't think this.

(5) This is a bit of knowing humour for people who have eaten at such establishments that are currently popular in parts of Europe and America, or at least read about them. I figure if you're reading this website you might have a passing interest in such things. If you haven't, then you might prefer the website mentioned in (3)

(6) Of course I bloody can. I don't eat out every night. Why have a burger though when you can stuff a whole chicken with an excessive amount of garlic and eat it with greasy fingers?

(7) It isn't really called this, but you get the picture.

(8) Rhyming slang. Google it.

(9) Contrary to what you might think, chickens do have ears. They're not pointy like owl ears though. They have nostrils too, although it's not clear whether this constitutes a nose. I suppose you could count the Parson's nose. If you don't know what the Parson's nose is then you're probably on the wrong blog.

(10) I have benchmarks for all foods except: onion rings, tofu, candy floss and - until recently - cottage cheese (the only cottage cheese worth eating is Ethiopian Ayib, preferably really fresh stuff from the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples region).

I am an Aid Dealer / Injecting charity till your veins cease up

For some time now I've been trying to come up with a pithy blog post which synthesises a lot of what is rotten in this peculiar tropical bubble. A piece of pointless, vaguely arty polemic which punctures the smug, inflated egos of the expat chancers of Kigali.

The problem is: how do I write about the perversity of the self-regarding adventurers enjoying the easy life in the land of a thousand hills, and yet somehow also make it about restaurants?

Well somebody has beaten me to it:

http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Hills-Heaven-Restaurant-Rwanda/dp/0316232912

I suspect this book isn't a satire though.

If this really is a book about how some privileged white guy who edits his own wikipedia entry has managed to save Rwanda from itself, then I'm afraid I might have to end it all. Bring me a bottle of good scotch, a packet of razor blades, and a warm bath.

The irony is, post-harikiri I'd find myself languishing in the flames of hell wishing I was in Heaven.

Fuck. You can't win, can you?

It's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings.

Zen

In some ways Zen is an innovator. When it opened a few people speculated that bringing "sushi" to Kigali was a brave and expensive decision to make. Au contraire my little Kigali chums, it's an almost guaranteed cash cow. Moooooooo.

"You must go to Zen, they have sushi".

Really?

Clean lines are everything with sushi. We eat first with our eyes (OK, sometimes with our nose), and proper Itamae know this. Their precision and attention to detail is about confidence, experience, and an appreciation for the quality of the ingredients. If you're going to eat such delicate meat, plucked from ever diminishing ocean stocks you should want to know that it has been treated with due respect.

You should. Or perhaps you don't care. Perhaps you'd rather go to Zen and stick your dirty middle finger up at twelve centuries of Japanese culinary tradition. Perhaps you really hate marine ecosystems, and are on a personal mission to wipe out every last little fishy bastard in the sea. Fine. We all have our pecadilloes.

The mixed plate of sashimi and badly-packed rolls we're presented with at Zen resembles a drawer full of odd socks, yet… nobody even raises an eyebrow around the table. Do Zen's customers really think sushi tastes like a combination of mirin, cheap bilious-green wasabi, tired ginger, and soy sauce? You could substitute the tiny nuggets of frozen-shitless salmon for chunks of finely-chopped raw owl and no-one would notice so long as the chef remembered to pluck the feathers off. What a brilliant scam. 

Sushi aside, there are plenty of gloopy, directionless 'pan-Asian'  items on the menu. A few things come on those pointless sizzling platters. Onions seem to be a key ingredient as per those cheapo all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets you find in basements in the more studenty parts of London. Just wait until you get home though, when the headache and dehydration hits you in the middle of the night. That will be the salt and MSG pressing their stinky feet on the back of your neck. If you're lucky you'll just have a few interesting dreams about penguins. If you're not so lucky you'll wake up shaking and chasing an imaginary bat around your bedroom with a rolled up copy of the Kenya Airways in-flight magazine.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

They seem to be doing a decent amount of trade though. Yay. 

Zen is in Nyarutarama near the MTN centre. Zen has a Facebook page, but why not look at this instead?

There is a day that is yours for embracing / Everything's nothing, and nothing is ours

The cheerful woman pulls her cardigan tight against the chilly morning air, and whispers with a conspiratorial tone:

"I used to make a bit of extra money from doing research".

"Doing research?" I frown at the translator. "Are you sure?".

"Yes. Foreigners come here from Kigali. They always come to ask us about land, so we go and answer their questions."

I see. Research.

"So what do they ask you?"

The woman pouts and turns her head to one side. "They want to know private things. How many children we have, and if we are poor. Of course we are poor! They ask if we understand that we can inherit land from our fathers."

"Can you inherit land from your father?"

"Yes." she nods "The law says so."                                                                    ****

Pascha at the Aberdeen House Hotel

Kigali has a Turkish restaurant.

"The problem is, when I see the word sumac on the menu, I start thinking 'Mmm... sumac'. When the food comes without the promised sumac the disappointment is doubled."
There is a little bit of sumac on the plate. At least I think it is sumac. It is the merest dusting over a pile of raw onions. The raw onions still taste like raw onions.

Çöp kebabs are presented on their spokey little skewers, but the lamb lacks the smokiness of the ocakbaşı - as if they've been cooked over a gas grill. There is little crunch to accompany them - no parsley or salad veg, just half a grilled tomato, a tiny chunk of grilled pepper, and a pile of rice and lukewarm chips. The onion "sumac" is left untouched. The lavash - what little there is - is soft and fresh. Adena kebab suffers a similar fate - no smokiness, too little of interest on the plate. Just bland cooked meat and carbs. At 8,000 RwF a plate this may very well be the biggest rip-off since Heaven water.

You can't fault the service, which is quick and gently obsequious, and it's nicely laid out for daytime eating, with beanbags for children and a bit of greenery.

The parsimony over the sumac seems to sum up what is wrong with Pascha. The strengths of Turkish cuisine lie in its simplicity and generosity. It should be rugged, driven by fresh ingredients and primal cooking techniques. Pascha takes all the guts and soul out of good Turkish cooking and presents you with a greedy bill.

Still, Kigali has a Turkish restaurant.

Aberdeen House Hotel

Gaculiro
Website                                                                     ****

 
"Why do you think they come here to talk to you?"

"The woman who brings them from Kigali has an Auntie living in this village. She likes to help people here".

"Do they pay you for answering questions?"

"Sometimes. The American people pay the best. Maybe 1,000 or 1,500 francs just for sitting there talking. Sometimes you just get biscuits and fanta and no money."

We pause. The translator is anxious to go. I wonder if the woman hopes I'm going to pay for our chat.

"Are your parents surviving?"

She looks down, smiles. "No. My father passed when I was young. My mother passed last year"

"I'm sorry... Madame, did you inherit their land?"

"No."

I give her a small tray of peanuts from my backpack and we leave for Musanze.

If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more - Anthony H. Wilson.

Look, I know it says "Kigali Restaurant Reviews" up there, but if you've ever arrived here expecting anything resembling a restaurant review you may have been a little bit disappointed. My usual gonzo meanderings even inspired one particularly blockheaded anonymous commenter to register his/her shock and disappointment below the line.

So here's a proper restaurant review. No circular references, wordplay, literary quotes, metatextualising, or dodgy metaphors. I promise.

The Bistro at Urban Hotel

The new Urban 'boutique hotel' has a somewhat polyfillered take on the tropical modernism style that looks so good on Papyrus. The open feel and warm colours seem to embrace both modern and traditional ideas without resorting to hokey safari-chic. If a few more buildings like this go up in Kigali then we might see a bolder, truer, architectural identity taking hold of the city that looks beyond the hideous Dubai-esque monoliths and joyless red-brick bungalows.

(Sorry, I'll get on with the review now)

Tomato bruschetta comes with an unexpected scattering of coriander. Has the kitchen run out of basil or is this a deliberate South Asian touch? Some sort of jazz bruschetta? Either way, it tastes like the kind of half-baked recipe you'd find in a diet book. Something green and red to look at while you wait for something better to happen.

(OK, not bad. Talk about the main courses)

Things improve with the arrival of the main courses.  A handsome fillet steak comes cooked medium rare as requested, tasting a little on the sweet side. The accompanying baked potato doesn't look much like anything I've seen growing in Rwanda - a Kenyan expat perhaps? There's also a coffee-encrusted steak threatened on the menu, but there is no reason ever to order something like that. It's an insult to the fine animal that died for your dinner.

(I don't think anyone will notice the dig about agricultural imports. It's going well.)

Chicken cordon bleu is definitely not from the diet recipe book. Oozing with Emmental, this dish conjures up the kind of heart-attack inducing schnitzel you'd be glad to find waiting for you on the other side of a snowstorm. Sadly the bar at the Bistro doesn't stock Schnapps, which would have rounded things off nicely. Accompanying veg are the neatly carved lozenges popular in the 1980s.

(Inadvertent wordplay. I'm sorry. Too late now, we'll just crack on with the puddings)

A trio of crème brûlée fails to get it right three times over. Vanilla has an almost perfect texture, but an eggy taste, while Amarula balances the flavours well, but has the texture of scrambled egg. Coffee crème brûlée smells like the last flavoured condom in the pack, and is an eating experience not dissimilar to being waterboarded with cold nescafe.

(No! I've fallen right into the dodgy metaphor trap! I can't end the review with that. Perhaps I should talk about drinks and service).

While service is generally fine, cocktails lack sparkle and take far longer than they should to arrive. House red by the glass turns out not to be house red, but the dreaded Domaine Bergon available at all bad supermarkets for half the price.

(Managed to get through that without using the phrase "OK for Kigali". What now? Some sort of star rating? How about a Spoon rating?)

The Bistro gets 3 spoons out of a possible 5.

The Bistro at Urban Hotel

Kiyovu, Kigali

Tel: 0788 304 155

Facebook page

Yo lo que quiero es un burrito / Un burrito que me lleve

Meze Fresh
I asked a Rwandan pal about Meze Fresh:

"Have you heard of Meze Fresh?"

"Who is Mzee Fresh?"

"He's married to Mama Fresh and they live in Nyamirambo."

If you're a mzungu though, you know all about Meze Fresh. 

Just reading the words "gourmet burrito bar" makes me want to remove my own teeth. That dump I did this morning? That, my friends, was a gourmet dump.

Seriously, there is nothing gourmet to see here, so stop dicking around you bloody hipsters.

As burritos go, they ain't too bad. Rwanda has all the main ingredients in abundance, so there really isn't any excuse for a shoddy product. But remember: it's just a burrito.

Meze Fresh is decorated a bit like a sixth-form common room; though it is not clear whether this is deliberate. They serve leffe, and cocktails, which is good. But do I really want to drink leffe and cocktails surrounded by crowds of scruffy, braying American youthshites?

No.

And therein lies the problem; once something new and shiny opens up - maybe a gourmet hotdog stand by the US Embassy - then Meze Fresh will soon start to look a bit old and the aforementioned youth will swarm around the shiny new thing. Perhaps if Meze Fresh can pull in a few high-rolling Rwandans they can keep going.

The owner of this place either has investors with money to burn or a massive swinging pair of balls and a bag full of cash and passports under the bed. Either Meze Fresh is going to continue to be a massive hit with the lunchtime white mischief crowd, or it's going to fizzle out. I hope it's a success - it's good to have some variety in this town after all. 

But remember: it's just a burrito.

Visit the Meze Fresh Facebook page here.

I'm on tonight / You know my hips don't lie

Bamboo Bar and Restaurant, 5th Floor, T2000 building (next to Kigali City Tower)

When I first arrived in Rwanda, Brussels Airlines (then SN Brussels) lost my bags for nearly a fortnight. My visits to their offices served as a daily insult as their indifference to my plight, and to their own incompetent role in events, grew colder. Eventually I needed of a change of underwear so I ventured to the T2000 supermarket to stock up on some fresh y-fronts.

Figuring that the average Chinese gentleman might be somewhat more slightly proportioned than I in terms of arse-o-metric volume, I picked out two packets of five XXL undies with a photograph of a muscular looking chap on the front. Alas, even XXL proved to be tight around my somewhat thuggish physique and the only effective way of removing said smalls without risk to the balls was to bend over, reach between my legs, take a good grip of the rear part of the waistband and tear the polyester bastards off like a hairy unrehearsed Chippendale. The static charge generated by this act was enough to knock an owl out of a tree, but I managed to perfect the technique after a few days and it became an exciting part of my evening routine.

Since then T2000 has moved premises and expanded upwards. Bamboo restaurant is on the 5th floor. You have to go up in a lift. Imagine that.

***

I arrive early and double-fist my mutzig while admiring the view. For some daft reason I'm dressed in a three-piece bespoke suit. The Director arrives, similarly smartly turned out, having attended a fancy function across town.

"Is there anywhere in this town worth dressing up for?"

Vegetable spring rolls are crispy, with plenty of filling. The chicken spring rolls are packed with shredded dark meat with none of the usual nobbly bits that stick in your teeth. Good.

"They remind me of the spring rolls I used to buy after a night on the turps from the late night chinese restaurant in Bangor circa 1995. A tray of chips and curry sauce for 60 pence. Urinating against the back wall of the cathedral. Good times."

Beef with oyster sauce is like swimming through a murky grey pond of mono-sodium glutamate, while tropical pork (very authentic) has delightfully fatty boulders of crunchy pork and a lighter touch with the saucing. Ginger rice pairs well flavour-wise, but has a strange almost risotto-like consistency. All the dishes are brought to the table in cold serving dishes, which combined with the cool breeze in the restaurant means it's all a bit chilly after a few minutes.

We reckon the bar at the Top Tower might be the sort of place where the smartly-dressed might go for a whisky digestif, but change our minds when we hear live music drifting out of fantastically named 'Fantastic Restaurant'. A band is belting out loud Rwandan classics to a seated crowd of coldly indifferent men. Everyone is focused on the main event: Champions League Football showing on a small TV screen in the corner.

"There's nowhere worth dressing up for in this town. That shouldn't stop us though."

Short Calls

Busy busy busy. Some bite size reviews:

Alpha Palace, Remera
I had dinner at the Alpha Palace Hotel with a delegation of visiting Ethiopians for which I am still apologising. A buffet of carbs, carbs and carbs topped with pieces of blackened goat eyebrows, flaccid shitefish and petrified chicken noses. The fancy napery and fish knives laid out on the table added a final touch of unintentional sarcasm.

Still, it's a great place for dancing at the weekend, and they sometimes have wonderfully shambolic bands playing Great Lakes classics rather than the usual ersatz covers of UB40.

-----------------------

The Manor, Nyarutarama
Shortly after this place opened I was singing its praises. The hotel was all new and shiny and promising, with professional management on the floor, a decent chef in the kitchen, and pretty good service all round. I even went as far as to write about it in the Brussels Airways in-flight magazine. Yeah - like some sort of filthy sellout corporate whoremonster.

I spoke too soon though. In a little over two years this place is now completely shagged out and increasingly resembles one of Saddam Hussein's old palaces. The Indian restaurant upstairs under the enormous skanky tent does a decent vindaloo, but the other restaurants are an omnishambles. At least I get to use one of my favourite words to describe the service: "headlessness".

------------------------

Buffalo Bar, Kisimenti, Remera
Shriveled up pieces of goat on a stick. That is all.

------------------------

Hellenique, Kimihurura
Why is this place so consistently empty? The food is great, there is a view, there are proper knives and forks, and it's not far from the Kimi nightlife. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

------------------------

La Classe, Kiyovu
No crime in Kigali? Then you haven't had your wallet nicked at La Classe. I was once thrown out of here for singing the chorus to "Horse with no name" over and over and over and over. The brochettes are pretty good though.

------------------------

Kabana Club, Kacyiru (behind the petrol station next to Umubano)
My hiding place. It smells vaguely of drains and cigarette smoke, but don't let that put you off. Pizzas are so-so, but the garlic and chilli oil is top end. Simultaneously well heeled and rough and ready, like a thug wearing expensive trousers.

------------------------

Normal Jiffling service will resume shortly.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon

A shade before seven in the morning you'll find me trotting through Remera, shoes combed, hair polished, bracing myself for another ten hours of toil. Most days I'm the only muzungu around, weaving through the crowds waiting for the bus, smiling at familiar faces, and saluting the guards as they arrive for the shift changeover at the Lando.

It's the Tuesday morning walk to work I enjoy the most. On Tuesdays there is often another unfamiliar foreign face in the crowd. A young muzungu, sometimes male, sometimes female, dressed in last night's sparkly top/best jeans, blinking owlishly in the early morning sun. The girls are often accompanied by a retinue of curious schoolchildren. The Tuesday morning walk of shame.

Monday night is quiz night at the SoleLuna Italian restaurant. It's a peculiar sight. Look across the restaurant at 8pm and you'll witness a sea of bobbing pink faces, grinning nervously and wondering where their pizzas have got to. It's the place for the new arrival to meet new people, for the certified muzungus to pick-up a new arrival, and for the veterans to avoid like the plague. Occasionally you'll spot one or two bewildered Rwandans in the crowd, unable to assist their teammates with questions about baseball/basketball/NFL/facts about American presidents. They have to wait for the token wikipedia-researched question about the Great Lakes region.

So unless this kind of choppy-choppy colonial club-house crassness floats your boat you should avoid SoleLuna on a Monday night. You should definitely go Tuesday to Sunday though. I'll even stick my hairy neck out and say that this is the best restaurant in Kigali.

"But Jiffler", I hear you ask, "isn't it you job to cut down the tall poppies? To sneer at their success and criticise the bruschetta with a crude simile and a pop-culture reference?" Perhaps it is, but I'm getting old and nostalgic. It may be time to take me behind the barn and put me out of my misery.

The pizzas are the best in town by a mile. There are over 80 on the menu, and I have to confess to having tried at least a slice of every single one of them over the last few years - I've rarely been disappointed (my favourite is the 'Corrado2'). I'd probably pass on the seafood pizzas - we are a long way from the coast - but the rest of them are fair game. You can't go wrong with their generous steaks and salads either. Pasta dishes are consistently good, although a friend (an expert in pastology) reckons the carbonara comes a close second to the one currently being served "off-menu" at Chez Lando.

The lunchtime buffet is pricey, but the owner has recently taken the wise step of hiring in a consultant chef who has introduced some clever new riffs to a daily changing buffet. A perfect lunchtime treat.

SoleLuna has been around for years and will still be here in years to come. Dionigi and Beatrice's passion and commitment to their business is evident in the steady improvements they've made over the years. They're not afraid of innovation, of asking for advice, or of investing in the best materials. Other Johnny-come-lately restaurants in Kigali usually start off with a bang and slowly deteriorate with complacency. Over the years I've watched with a warm respect as SoleLuna gets bigger, smarter and better.

So what makes SoleLuna the best restaurant in Kigali? Love. Apparently it's all you need.

SoleLuna

Boulevard de L’Aéroport

Tel.   +252583062
Mob. +250788859593

Website

Bust out the biscuits / Strike up the band

Papyrus

The old Papyrus was a Kigali institution. I used to swear every Monday that I would never go there again, only to end up slinking back in come Friday night. Dressed like a camp version of Jeremy Clarkson, I'd ponder the perfect moment to put a gun in my mouth. Perhaps during the opening bars of "I gotta feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas?

It was closed down by the authorities and everyone migrated up the hill to Sundowner, which started out as the sort of place Rwandan 30-somethings with a bit of cash would go to enjoy themselves and has ended up as the sort of place where you'd go to have a fight with an idiot in the toilets. What now Kigali nightlife?

Enter Papyrus MkII. According to the "party organisers", Papyrus is now "Four floors of amazing". This description alone makes me want to smoke crack.

***

The Restaurant:

Le Sappeur lifts up his trouser leg a couple of inches to reveal bespoke cuban-heeled python-skin boots.

"Jiffler, if the boots are right, you know you're in for a good night out"

He's right of course, and he will end his evening at 4am, stripped to the waist dancing salsa in a muddy car park in the rain. Right now we're sitting under the downstairs loggia at 9pm sucking on Skol Gatanu.

Our enthusiastic young waiter arrives with a flourish.  Le Sappeur is keeping it simple with a margherita while I take the pizza of indecision: the four seasons. Both are the product of an expensive looking wood-fired pizza oven, and come with a generous amount of Masaka farms mozzarella. The oven needs to be hot enough to make horseshoes to pull off the thin-crust finish though. Ours are slightly too floppy, and the topping has stewed a bit, like a cheap American pizza.

Our attention turns to our surroundings:

"It's much bigger than I expected it to be" offers Le Sappeur.

"Yes. It's a very tropical-modernist kind of building, the likes of which you don't see much in Rwanda. Almost Bawa-esque in the way that the inside and the outside are one continuous experience."

Le Sappeur exhales Dunhill smoke and looks down at my polished two-tone brogues.

"I think you're wearing the wrong shoes tonight"

The Sports Bar:
Ping.

An SMS from The Director: I just made the last bus. Wedged between a dribbler and a pervert.

Jiffler: They're probably on their way to Papyrus.

Ping.

The Director: Is that where you are?

Jiffler: Just leaving the Greek restaurant now. Follow the smell of taramasalata and whisky and you'll find us.

It's a Thursday - a school night - and yet they're all out, old and young. I spend much of the evening gently shoulder-charging old mates who keep popping up with huge swinging handshakes. The Surfer, The Dude and I stay anchored to our table and our Johnny Walker, while The Young Ambassador buzzes from flower to flower.

The scene is both brilliant and depressing. Looking around I can see everyone who goes out in Kigali. There's O'mania, wearing his best waistcoat and trying to chat up Diaspora-girl on the stairs. A few nervous looking VSOs wondering round in a cluster like a gaggle of particularly moronic geese. A cute muzungu blonde is surrounded by a mob of peacocking Rwandan male suitors. They would do better if they paid more attention to the pouting gang of glamourous students from the Kigali School of Finance and Banking. Even that sarcastic British guy is here, all tweedy impertinence and red pocket handkerchief.

"It's the end of gossip as we know it" The Director appears like the Dungeon Master at my right elbow.

There is nowhere to hide in this bar. Any funny business after one Primus too many will be witnessed by all, so all the fun stuff will have to go on behind closed doors. What will we do without the whispered rumours (like the one about the young American intern who got fingered on a bin at Sundowner)? What will we talk about?

"It's not a Bawa, it's a Bentham. We're in the Papyrus Panopticon"

I suppose we could always talk about ideas. That would be a start.

Whisper in my ear what it is you want / Is it to be the bullet or a rich old gun?

New Fiesta

We're still placing bets on what they'll build in the middle of the Remera roundabout. The smart money is on a giant gorilla statue, one hand (or is it a paw? Hoof?) raised in a jaunty salute. I'm advocating a big sign that says "Stop driving like a bloody idiot, you bloody idiot". If you can navigate your way across the roundabout without being run over by an imbecile in a pick-up with Belgian Technical Cooperation written on the side (your card is marked, sonny), it's just a short meander up to New Fiesta.

Way back when Remera was all just fields this place used to be a Bisoke-buffet joint with swing doors and dirty floors (reviewed here). It has since been taken over and utterly transformed by that dude with the dreadlocks who used to drive around the town in a red and yellow monster truck. We need more dudes like him in this town. And more monster trucks. Who doesn't like monster trucks?

New Fiesta is one half mini-market, one half casual diner. The mini-market has fresh bread, and a pretty good German Butchery concession. They also sell bagels, so you don't have to spend your Saturday morning at the earnest muzungu bukkake that is African Bagel Company. At Fiesta the bagels are sold as bread products rather than as an innovative development intervention which when combined with a healthy fear of god will save Africans from sliding into some sort of desolate Conradian inferno. Or something.

The diner is a little gem. The upwardly mobile folks of Remera (by far the coolest neighbourhood in Kigali) congregate here most lunchtimes to tuck into decent sandwiches, omelettes, burgers and juices. The Young Ambassador and I are addicted to the frighteningly unhealthy Croque Monsieurs. Ask about their filling beef and chicken quesedillas too. You'll get your order reasonably quickly, and can enjoy a little freebie appetiser of crunchy little homemade nachos and salsa while you wait. 

Happy days.

New Fiesta
Remera - from the Kisimenti-clusterfuck roundabout, head towards Amahoro stadium. New Fiesta is on the right shortly after Ecobank.

You little sod, I love your eyes / Be everything to me tonight

The Director leans forward and nods toward the crowded bar: 

"You must have seen it all in this place"

I look across at the crowd. A team of crusty foreign aid workers size each other up. A wedding planning committee is having a miserable time. Some sex workers passively hustle, playing the game of eyes with a lonely Chinese engineer (his hands and face are sunburned red, he must be working on the roads). The regulars at the bar are watching French news and reminiscing about the time when they were big men. A few middle-aged gorilla hunters wear special Africa trousers with too many pockets. Two fat Kenyans animatedly talking politics. A lone female NGO worker hides behind a laptop. Broken glass. What are all these misfits doing in my living room?

*****

Dear Chez Lando

You've seen me through the best of times, the worst of times. Wisdom and foolishness. Friday after work beers at table 10. Remember that ugly brawl a couple of years back? There were celebration dinners, commiseration meetings, football matches, noisy tables of eight and intimate tables of two. Mostly it's just you and me and a paperback.

Remember when we met back in July 2005? I'd just arrived on SN Brussels without any luggage. Two big Mutzigs and a poulet bicyclette later and our affair had begun. We were both a bit rough around the edges back then, but we've slowly smartened up our act. My dusty boots and 5-day beard made way for sharp suits and 3-day stubble.  Smart tiles and wooden ceilings have replaced the concrete and mosquitos. We still got soul though. The spark is still there.

Our relationship is complicated. I'm sorry Chez Lando about the one-night-stands with the Umubano and other hotels. They always seem like a good idea at the time. I always come back though, and you welcome me with a hug and the keys to Room 183. You know what I'm like and don't mind.

But this can't go on forever. Big events in my small life mean it's time for me to move on my dear friend. To go to the place where my stuff is, where my real life is. Will you share my last brochette?

Keep on keepin' on

The Jiffler

***** 

The Director looks up from the menu. "You must have tried every dish on here".

True. I even taught one of the chefs how to make mashed potato the way I like it. The way my Mum makes it.

"If you're in Kigali for six months of the year why don't you just rent an apartment?"

I mutter some excuses about this and that, about the location, the per diems, the whatever.

The truth is that Chez Lando is home.

Chez Lando Website