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

What did you learn / locked away all on your own / chance and your head all blown

"Are you going to start doing your restaurant review thing again?"

"Probably not. The time for sarcastic remarks about Indian restaurants and mudslinging at Heaven has probably passed. Time to let the new blood take the reins"

And the new blood are a rather serious bunch. Check out the Living in Kigali website, which gives you practical advice about restaurants. They tell you useful things like prices and how clean the toilets are, like in a proper restaurant review.

"Besides, I'd feel obliged to go and review 'Mickey Mouse' in Kimihurura. Can you imagine the indignity of going to such a place?"

The truth is: my laptop (and a half a dozen pre-written reviews) - was stolen, my life got busy; I moved house twice (am now a resident of Colombo) and worked in some other places that are hard to find on the map.  I'm not sure I still have it in me to plunge into my deep and poisoned well of misanthropy to find mean things to say about restaurants.

But feck it. Why not eh?

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

Le Chateau

According to the drunken Belgian owner of Le Chateau in Nyarutarama, I am a "Shitting fack". After identifying this fairly obvious character flaw, he gave me a $10 bottle of imported Kwak, invited The Dude to kiss him on the lips, and offered to take the Young Ambassador out for some "sexy dancing". 

Pork chops come with thyme or rosemary depending on which menu translation you read, but arrive at the table with neither. Not that additional herbage would have helped much, as eating said pork chops was an experience akin to being repeatedly struck in the face with a greasy leather belt. And I don't mean that in a good way.

The Young Ambassador had something resembling a pizza that had been left out in the rain, The Dude some flaccid pasta, and The Surfer a Deathstar-grey chunk of beef ring-piece. Our table's sense of disappointment was overshadowed only by our collective awe as we were dazzled by the Belgian's tour de force display of swearing ("fack, fack, shitting shit fack") and his subsequent spiral into a silent vin triste, swaying from side to side and staring vacantly into the middle distance like an undergraduate with meningitis.

Avoid Le Chateau.

Le Chateau

+250 785 823 772

Nyarutarama, along the road adjacent to the golf course

Rwanda News

Hello once again. It's been while, but I wanted to spread the word about some Rwanda news.

Jay Rayner - one of my favourite food writers - and baker Ruth Clemens are coming to Rwanda with Save the Children UK to raise awareness of childhood hunger and malnutrition.

You can find out more here.

You can also follow Jay's visit on Twitter @jayrayner1

In the meantime, I'm currently blogging at nairobichoma.blogspot.com. I'm still in Kigali fairly frequently, and hope to tie up a few loose ends on Kigali Restaurant Reviews soon.

"Dr Cat is disillusioned with / a new cloud arriving"

Indian Chef
For work reasons, I used to live in Hemel Hempstead. For those unfamiliar with 'Hemel', it is one of those joyless over planned Home Counties bumhole towns. The natives - Hemeloids - like to spend their time shrieking at each other, fighting outside pubs, and eating at Indian Restaurants. Hemel has more Indian restaurants than trees, and they seem to multiply faster than rabbits. Some are good, mostly they're bad.

Kigali isn't a joyless over planned bumhole town. The planners haven't quite finished yet. However, it still has more than its fair share of Indian restaurants. According to one Ugandan Asian of my acquaintance this is because East African Asians are better at doing business than they are at making pizzas. From what I've tried at Kigali's various Indian restaurants, they're better at doing business than they are at cooking curries too.

Indian Chef has a pleasant enough setting behind the Diplomat hotel, snuggled in the valley behind the parliament. The Surfer and I sit outdoors and are immediately surrounded by a circle of hovering obsequiousness. This is increasingly common in Kigali restaurants as owners and managers overcompensate in an effort to overcome Kigali's reputation for crap service. The result is that diners feel pressured into ordering quickly, ruining the relaxed flow of a good restaurant meal.

Like other Indian Restaurants in Kigali the menu here is too long, and includes some unlikely dishes which you just know the chef can't manage. Chinese dishes creep in at the edges, and cock-a-leekie soup even makes an appearance.

Sweet Jesus. Cock-a-leekie soup? At which stage in the writing of the menu did the chef sneak this one in?

Poppadums and so on are fairly run of the mill, and for some reason we're plied with salt and vinegar crisps. The Surfer orders a vegetable curry and asks for a little additional heat. I write 'vegetable curry' as the finished result is so generic that it is hard to remember what the original order was. The 'additional heat' comes in the form of raw green chillies stirred into the cooked curry at the end. They impart little of their heat to the sauce, but deliver eye-watering explosive surprises.

My chicken biriyani looks promising, but is spoilt by a slightly rancid flavour (bad ghee or cooking oil?) permeating the dish. The accompanying yoghurts and pickles are OK, but do little to hide the problem.

Oddly enough, the side dishes that The Surfer and I share are top notch. Garlic nan is light and fresh out of the oven, and cumin rice is well cooked and perfectly seasoned and spiced - we even decide to box up the remains for dinner the next day. I order a kulcha, but am eventually served something else entirely. This doesn't prove to be a problem, as the something else entirely is a feather light flatbread, slightly moist and flaky, tasting somewhere between a roti and a chapathi. The staff insist it is a kulcha, even though it is nothing of the sort.

Staff are friendly and attentive. Our young waiter engages us in a bit of chat about our time in Rwanda. Asked if we've learned any Kinyarwanda words, The Surfer leans over and whispers "Amabere" in his ear, and we watch him go spinning and giggling in embarrassment across the restaurant.

The owners hover a bit at the end, chatting about football and food. They keep shaking my hand and fishing for opinions, and it dawns on me that I've been rumbled. This happens occasionally, and is always a bit awkward. They hand me a suggestions book, which I sign as The Jiffler.

Diplomat Hotel Website

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs

The Don leans over and expels smoke from the side of his mouth.

"This is no place for men like us to talk. I know somewhere we can go and have rotating chicken".

A taxi ride away in Kimironko, we draw up outside the Bloom Hotel. The restaurant has a tin roof that rattles loudly under the rain. We won't be overheard. The Bloom Hotel does a 6,000 RwF rodizio menu at the weekends. Good Idea.

With Waragi procured, the Don grunts at the waiter "Bring me that Kenyan". The Kenyan arrives and we negotiate ugali and sukuma wiki on the side to keep The Philosopher happy.

"This is Brazilian Nyama Choma" I explain to general indifference.

It's not bad to be fair. The place is scruffy and simple enough to resemble a proper churrascaria and the grill is a fairly authentic looking piece of kit. There are no feijao or farofa though, and the choice of meat is limited to goat, chicken and cubes of lovely salty beef. We finish with huge chunks of grilled pineapple covered in cinnamon and lean back in our chairs to pick our teeth.

"I think I'd like it in Brazil" muses the philosopher.

Bloom Hotel Website

Yeah, there's a great truth you should know

Select is a proper restaurant. It is a cocktails in the bar, lashings of red wine, three courses, cigars and brandy restaurant. It is also, for Kigali, a bit on the pricey side (read: London mid-range pricing). If anything this improves the place somewhat, as it keeps out the young-gifted-&-white riff-raff who think it's acceptable to go out to dinner wearing flip-flops and a t-shirt with writing on. Instead you'll find senior civil servants, perhaps a politician or two, sharp-suited business men, and clean-shirted expats who don't wear baseball caps at the table.

There is a nice view of the city, as is compulsory these days, and the whole place is comfortably elegant. You know you're in a serious restaurant, but there is none of the stiff formality.

Most of the food is sourced locally, but a fair bit is air-freighted from Europe or the Swahili coast. I know this is naughty, but look at the menu: monster prawns, scallops, sea bass, Dover sole... and if you want to be really naughty you can order melt in the mouth foie gras.

Most dishes on the menu are European classics. Goat cheese tart is far better than it should be, and beef carpaccio is precise but perhaps a little too delicate on flavour. Did I mention the foie gras? Mains are pretty robust - how about a fatty, juicy heft of pork shoulder that is practically hanging of the plate (according to the owner, this is rapidly becoming Select's signature dish)? Coq au vin is traditional and without a trace of poulet bicyclette, and prawns comes as big as your hand. Oh yeah - the chips are good too.

The staff are charming and efficient. There's no need to double fist your Mutzigs here as the service is prompt and attentive without being pushy or lurking. The owner, Michel, has run restaurants around the world and welcomes you self-deprecatingly, while the head chef acts as his foil, making sure no lady's hand goes unkissed. A tour of the impressive kitchen reveals a relaxed and smiling team who believe in what they are doing.

Book a table. Go. Wear your best shoes.

Select Website