The era when Kenya’s staple maize-meal, popularly known as Ugali, reigned supreme in menus here is coming to an end, as cheap foreign culinary delights send locals on spending sprees.
Available in restaurants and supermarkets, and of late in domestic kitchens, exotic cuisines are changing the eating habits of ordinary Kenyans, particularly the youth.
”Meals prepared using styles from Europe or Asia and other regions are being increasingly demanded by native Kenyans,” Aggripa Kirui, a chef at Nairobi’s Hotel Intercontinental, said.
”It’s unlike 10 years ago when only foreigners ordered them,” Kirui said.
Restaurants offering the tastes of specific cultures have come up in major Kenyan towns and in areas frequented by foreign tourists. Chinese, Japanese and Indian restaurants, mostly in Nairobi, provide an ample variety of foods from the East and Far East.
Foreign cuisines seem to have made indigenous cooking less attractive as male cooks, most of them only trained to prepare foreign delicacies, take up jobs in restaurant kitchens.
”These days it’s men who cook, while our cultures left kitchen work to women,” complained Esther Wamaitha, a septuagenarian, who has never tasted any foreign food.
”I will never take the likes of raw vegetable or nasty
sea-foods,” she said, expressing disgust at foreign eating habits.
”These junk foods are not nutritious and are unsuitable for the African body,” said middle-aged school teacher Wilber Onsonti at a backstreet eatery.
”Unfortunately they are on demand,” he added.
Tourism, which earns Kenya some $200-million annually,
has also overseen the decline of indigenous foods.
”Indigenous cuisine has declined because it lacks advanced technology,” said Gillen Kamau of Chinese Foods, a restaurant specialising in Far East foods.
”Instead, we go for what tourists are used to, or do as we are guided by their cookbooks,” Kamau said.
The Internet has also played a role in popularising exotic foods. Hotels and restaurants now advertise on the web. ”I learnt of non-African foods in the website. My curiosity then pushed me to try some. I have not looked back because of the variety,” said communications student Gayo Isalanoh.
Foreign foods previously only available in expensive hotels and restaurants are now within reach of ordinary Kenyans as prices come down with the entry into the market of popular chain restaurants from southern Africa.
A decade ago, Italian pizza cost more than 1 500 Kenyan shillings (about $18), but the price has since fallen to about 200 shillings ($2,5) in low-cost eateries.
Hoteliers say the same trend also applies to famous exotic meals.
”It is when fast-food eateries, Nandos from Zimbabwe and Simmers from South Africa, entered the Kenyan market, many youngsters quit Ugali and fried potato,” Isalanoh said.
”Some of us get recipes and ingredients from supermarkets and prepare the dishes at home. We save lots of bucks,” said 24-year-old office worker Halima Abdul.
”It’s bye-bye to Ugali and greens from the bush,” Abdul said, but insisted that she has ”not been brain-washed, but only styling up” just like many of her age-mates. – Sapa-AFP