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.

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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".

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.