Kampala Restaurant Reviews

This is late again but I should know by now that power is a fleeting luxury on the weekend… I was planning on having this up on Sunday but to no avail. Hopefully Independence Day is not a day without power and this will be able to be uploaded!

 

We are limited in our travels away from home because we always need to be driven to and from by our wonderful driver Apollo. He is a school driver so he is bound by his work schedule but can take us anywhere between 9:30 and 12:30, then again after 4:30. On the weekends, we can ask him to drive us at any time. However, we don’t want to have him sitting around waiting for us for hours at a time while we sit and enjoy a meal out somewhere. What we normally do is add the meal to another excursion and just let him know when to pick us up. He is then free to get his meal (he prefers local food as he tells us each time we try a new restaurant!) and comes back to collect us at the appropriate time. The only exception to that rule is Cassia Lodge that we can walk to “easily” by climbing the mountain and descending the other side. The walk home is always easier than the walk there!

So here is my review of some of the restaurants we have tried. These are from most expensive to least expensive…

Le Chateau (Quality Cuts Butchery) – Ggaba Road, Kabalagala www.qualitycuts.net/LE%20CHATEAU.html

The first time I went to this restaurant was the third time I was in Kampala. The team had left for safari and the two of us left in Kampala to do admin work decided that we needed to have a treat. This restaurant fit the bill perfectly. I have returned every year since.

Le Chateau has an excellent wine list (for my limited wine palate) and a range of menu items that doesn’t seem possible for a sub-Saharan country. New Zealand lamb, beef, pork, chicken, duck… all cooked to perfection and beautifully presented. And make sure you leave room for dessert. They are worth the trip alone. My favourite is the crepes with ice cream and chocolate hazelnut sauce.

Costly meal, the most expensive I’ve had in Uganda. Our anniversary dinner cost over 250,000USh. That’s over $100Cdn.

Cassia Lodge – Buziga Hill – www.cassialodge.com

Apart from my mother’s, the best mushroom soup ever! This restaurant serves a variety of dishes from fish and chips to samaka wa nassi (fish in coriander and coconut sauce) to Mexican chicken. Everything we have eaten has been delicious and slightly different than what we would expect. The club sandwich, for example, is bacon, cheese, fried egg and pickles. Yum! 

The view is spectacular and there are few bugs. It does get cool when the sun sets so I have to remember to bring a sweater. There is a taxi service that drives us home if we are there after dark because the walk home would be treacherous. For 10,000USh (about $4) I can use the swimming pool. That is a wonderful added bonus and I plan on swimming every Sunday.

Fish and chips, club sandwich, two beers and an Africa spiced tea – 67,000 (about $30)

Piato Restaurant – Lumumba Avenue next to the French Embassy - http://www.piatokampala.com/

We only just discovered this restaurant this past weekend as Corey had a meeting with the HR manager there about staff training. We decided to go for lunch before the meeting to see what it was like. If Corey starts to do the training there, it’s important for him to see what the service and food is like before they get to know who he is!

We planned about 2 hours for the meal which is a bit long but not that much too long. The service was excellent which is a real treat here in Uganda! We sat on the patio, under a giant umbrella, and enjoyed a yummy lunch. I had a pineapple, lemon and mint slush before enjoying a bowl of sunshine soup and a chicken kebab. Corey had grilled tilapia with pepper sauce. We were talked into a slice of cake each as well. Worth walking to from the downtown core. I would go again to try more on the menu.

Two waters, a beer, a slush, soup, kebab, tilapia, 2 cakes, coffee – 112,000 (about $55)

Ethiopian Village – Tank Hill, Kabalagala - www.ethiopianvillagerestaurant.com/

After having eaten amazing Ethiopian food in Gulu, we hoped the food at this restaurant would be of the same caliber. While very close and very good, it was just a hair below Gulu but Gulu is 8 hours away so this restaurant will do as a substitute! We ate here with the visiting vOs and Andrew after our day trip to Jinja. There were very few people in a large restaurant which was a bit of a worry but it was a Monday night so we decided to try anyway. Glad we did.

You have to be prepared to eat with your hands, using the injira (Ethiopian pancake) to scoop up the food. The stews and veggies are actually served on the injera and you tear off a piece, scoop the main dish, and shovel it into your mouth. Not a lot of elegance involved but amazing flavours.

Can’t remember how much it was to eat here but it wasn’t expensive. Plus we were a large group so that skews my costs.

Little Donkey – Kisugu Road – no website, only a facebook page: www.facebook.com/littledonkeykampala

This is a little hole in the wall on a street with nothing to offer except a few shops like any other street in a regular neighbourhood. It is very popular with mzungu though and was filled on the Wednesday night that we went. There is a patio with picnic tables, two tables by the entrance (where we sat) and several tables inside.

The food was tasty and the service was good. Apparently the margaritas are delicious as several were ordered by the tables around us. The only thing I didn’t like was that it was 100% mzungu. I know that if I am there then it shouldn’t surprise me that other mzungu will be there too but there were no locals there at all. I didn’t like that and unless the desire for Mexican food hits again, I doubt we will return.

Two beers, a juice, nachos, mini-burritos, enchiladas – less than 50,000USh (about $20)

I Feel Like Chicken Tonight – Ggaba Road, Kabalagala, next to Kampala International University (KIU)

This is a fast food place that serves great chicken but mediocre fries. The chicken is hot and tasty, deep fried but not in batter. We’ve eaten there four or five times so far and the meal has always been great. The chicken costs 5,000USh a piece and you get a full leg or half a breast as a piece. I like to stop on the way back from town and take some chicken home for lunch. Because it’s next to the university, it’s always hot and fresh because there is a rapid turn-over of the food.