[Previous entry: "July 24 - Nairobi, Kenya"] [Next entry: "July 25 - Masai Mara, Kenya"]
Rather than going crazy sightseeing on our first day in Africa, we opted to rest up for the rest of our trip, and we didn't go to the museum or Nairobi Nat'l Park as we had talked about. We did however, go to The Carnivore Restaurant for dinner!
This was quite an experience! The first thing we noticed about the restaurant was how smoky it was...not cigarette smoke....grill smoke. There is a central grill in the restaurant with all sorts of meat cooking on it. There is no real menu at the restaurant - you pay a fee and get all you can eat.
Our waiter, Donovan, was very nice. When he first came to the table, he explained to us that we could eat until we were stuffed, but once we were stuffed, we should put the white flag on our table down to "surrender." They started with the soup of the day. Today it was some sort of pea soup that was very delicious and brown bread with butter. Then they brought out the salad/sauce tray....salad with fixings and many sauces for the meats that would be served. Finally, the meat started coming. There were "carvers" that walked around with machetes or skewers of meat. We tried it all! Camel (tasted like beef), Crocodile (white meat that tasted slightly fishy), Ostrich (sort of like pork), Ostrich meat balls, gizzards, chicken livers, Chicken legs, sausages, lamb, pork loin, pork spare ribs, beef....I think that was it. It was all delicious, however I didn't like the alligator too much (that darn fishy flavor!), the liver was a bit dry, and the gizzards, while very tasty were really hard to chew. Mike liked it all!
Finally when we put our white flag down, we were served dessert. I had pineapple pie, which was fabulous, and Mike had vanilla ice cream. Overall it was a really fun time, and Mike did really well practicing Swahili..."jambo" is hello, "deo (sp?)" is yes, and "asanti" is "thank you." Also there was a resident cat that we socialized with for a bit!