Biryani and Ukwaju

Back in Narobi, I was hungry one time and in my search for a suitable restaurant, I saw one with a sign that said ‘Swahili dishes served’. My mind was made up immediately. Even before I looked at the menu, I knew what my order would be: biryani with ukwaju. I motioned for the waiter who came and took my order. As I waited, I looked around admiring the interior design done at the establishment.

My eyes lit up when I saw the waiter coming towards me with my order on a tray. A grin flashed on my face as the glass of the brown-coloured juice was first set on the table before the plate of spicy mixed rice and meat followed. Everything went downhill from there. The biryani didn’t have the taste I knew it to be; the spices used were not bringing the aroma I knew so well. The culinary journey just didn’t happen; I was just eating bland food. The ukwaju was no consolation either. I left feeling cheated out of an experience.

How you respect your work should be seen in what you provide to your clients. Your business should be working to provide the best goods and services in line with the best standards you can afford. A culture of self-improvement should endear your staff to give the best of what they can give and a bot more. If you are an employee, it should be that you keep updating your skills and making yourself more efficient. You keep abreast with the developments in your field and grow your expertise.

If your restaurant is serving Swahili food, you should learn all there is to know about it. Practice and be very good at preparing the dishes and how they are served. The people who have tasted coastal food before will be very grateful. Those who will taste it for the first time will go through a ‘culinary experience’ that they will associate with your establishment forever.

#continuousimprovement #personaldevelopment #selfimprovement #businessgrowth #management #business #swahilifood #business #professional #professionalism #skills #quality #customerexperience #customerfocus

My experience with food here in Kenya is that it gets to a whole new level when you eat Coastal food. Coastal dishes make eating cease becoming a necessary function of everyday life to become a delightful culinary journey of tastes, colour and aromas. This brought me back to a specific restaurant in Mombasa that boasts the best ‘biryani’ in town. I made the trip to its location quite often during a 3 month stay to get my ‘fix’ served with ‘Ukwaju’, Swahili for tamarind juice. For the duration of every meal, I was drifting in different culinary worlds as my taste buds exploded, came back together and exploded again.