Kenya Travel Guide

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Cuisine

Meat in Kenya is outstandingly good, as are tropical fruit and vegetables. Inland, a local freshwater fish, tilapia is popular and tasty. On the coast Swahili cuisine features fragrant rice, grilled fish and seafood curries with coconut milk. Indian and Middle Eastern food is available in most areas, and there is a wide range of international restaurants in Nairobi and Mombasa. Tourist hotels provide buffet meals. Hotels in smaller towns offer a dish of the day, such as chicken and chips or stew and rice.

National specialties:
• Game park lodges serve game, which may be marinated in local liqueurs and berries or garnished with wild honey and cream.
• Nyama choma (barbecued meat served with a spicy tomato relish).
• Ugali (maize meal porridge).
• Mandazi (doughnuts).

National drinks:
• Tusker and White Cap (locally brewed beer).
•Kenya Cane (spirit distilled from sugar cane).
•Kenya Gold (a coffee liqueur).
•Uki (traditional beer made with honey).
•Changaa (locally made spirit distilled from maize).
• Chai (tea boiled with milk and sugar)

Tipping: Optional. Most hotels include a 10% service charge in the bill; if they don’t a small tip is customary.

Legal drinking age: 18.

Nightlife

Most of the major hotels in Nairobi and the vacation resorts along the coast have dancing with live bands or discos each evening. There are also a few local nightclubs in Nairobi and Mombasa that stay open until dawn; these can get very crowded and prostitution abounds - go in a crowd and take a taxi.

Increasingly, modern multi-screen cinema complexes are appearing in Nairobi and Mombasa, which show mainly Hollywood movies, while in the smaller towns are old colonial-style cinemas showing old Kung Fu or Indian films. Theater is popular in Nairobi. There is a National Theater and several small groups of dramatic companies; probably the best-known is the Phoenix Players. Quite often, traditional tribal dancing and drumming is performed in the game lodges and beach resorts.