Kenya has its fair share of South Africans and when one has a craving for boerewors, koeksisters and melktert, one can head straight for Gail’s Kitchen on the outskirts of Nairobi.
South African-born Gail Unsworth says she has trained a team of Kenyans to make food ”the South African way”.
Nairobi’s substantial South African expatriate community soon started flocking to Unsworth’s Kitchen and her restaurant Baraza Grill which is in the same complex.
At Baraza South Africans can have bobotie, a Sunday roast or a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.
But it is not only South Africans enjoying the fare at Baraza and Gail’s Kitchen. Kenyans, who had their first taste of melktert or boerewors, keep coming back for more.
”It is wonderful having people from such diverse backgrounds meeting at my place,” Unsworth says.
Unsworth also has standing orders to regularly send huge amounts of biltong to clients in the remotest parts of Kenya and Tanzania.
”I guess a good product sells,” she says.
Unsworth started the business after meeting her husband John, a Kenyan businessman, in an internet chat room.
After a year of corresponding in cyberspace, he flew to South Africa to meet her. After a few more months of courtship, Unsworth left South Africa to marry John.
It was then that she started the business based on South African home industries. Three years down the line, Unsworth’s business is going strong.
”It was John’s idea. He was taken with the tuisnywerhede he saw in South Africa and encouraged me to set up something similar in Nairobi,” Unsworth says.
South Africans can support national sports teams at Baraza and can even drown their sorrows with a brandy and Coke when the results go the wrong way. – Sapa