Review: Carnivore Restaurant

[Schneier]

The Carnivore Restaurant in Nairobi is the kind of place vegetarians have nightmares about. It's billed as a place where you can get exotic game meats, the very animals you spent the day seeing running around in the wild. I scheduled a stop there immediately.

The restaurant is large, with many many tables and a huge toroid open flame barbecue grill. Large chunks of meat are roasting on spits, definitely a carnivore's dream. A board near the grill lists the meats on the menu: a bunch of traditional items and crocodile, ostrich, and impala.

There's no menu; dinner is fixed. First comes soup. Potato leek soup in our case, and nothing special. Then comes a two-tiered revolving tray of salads and sauces. A waiter described the various sauces to us: garlic sauce for the chicken and crocodile, barbecue sauce for the beef, fruit salsa for the pork, chili sauce for everything, mint sauce for the lamb, and red currant sauce for game.

A waiter brings a hot (and I do mean hot) black metal plate, and then the meat starts coming.

It's brought to the table on spits and carved off directly onto your plate, like a Brazilian steakhouse.

Roast chicken - Good and flavorful, much better than America store-bought chicken.

Barbecued pork ribs - Tasty, but not special.

Barbecued chicken wings - Eh.

Beef roast - Overcooked; only okay.

Ostrich - This was delicious. Rich and flavorful, and not too gamey. Maybe my favorite meat of the night.

Crocodile - Honesty, it tasted like the grill, maybe a little fishy. It probably could have used a more mild preparation.

Lamb - I thought it was pretty perfect, but my wife liked it less.

Chicken gizzards - Man, these were good. They were cooked in some kind of tomatoish cilantro sauce (not on the grill), and totally unlike any gizzards I'd ever cooked.

Chicken livers - Overcooked.

Pork leg - Delicious roast. They left the skin on, which was an extra treat.

Impala - These were spiced meatballs. Honestly, I thought it was a gyp. What does impala taste like? I have no idea. The spiced meatballs could have been anything.

Pork sausage - Eh.

Beef sausage - Better, but still eh.

None of the sauces were really worth it, although the garlic sauce was the best of the lot. The salads--a corn salad, a spicy tomato salad, cole slaw, and a green salad with a nondescript creamy dressing--were unmemorable. (Although you had no choice but to eat salad, as a counterpoint to all the meat.) We also got served a baked potato each.

It's an all-you-can-eat restaurant, but they do their best to control the amount of food you get. Waiters don't continually stroll the restaurant with their spits, offering you more and more food. They come to your table deliberately and in order, offering you a single serving of each meat. You can request more of anything you want, but you have to flag a waiter down and ask. And when you're done, you are supposed to take down the little paper flag on your revolving sauce tray. Then someone clears everything off--and brings your dessert menu.

Dessert is also included. We had some terrible cheesecake and some delicious sorbets. And then the meal was done.

Cost was $25 per person, including everything.

The restaurant claims to have a vegetarian menu, but I can't imagine what they would eat. Carnivore is a tourist trap. It was filled on a weekday night, entirely with tourists. But it's a brilliant tourist trap. I'll bet that most tourists who come to Kenya for safari stop at the Carnivore restaurant either before or afterwards. How could they not?

I'm glad I went there once, but I wouldn't do it again.

Bruce

[Schneier]

BTW, the wine list was terrible.

[hathor]

What no zebra? The zebra was exceptional the night we were there. My husband and son were so enraptured, they truly thought it was a great concept to export to NYC.

I was very impressed by the enormous grill/spit as you walk in. Its quite the place, isn't it.

Left in a meat coma...took a long time before I could look at protein again!

[Matthew Grant]

Second the Zebra - very good indeed. Ostrich was fantastic when we were there, served exceptionally rare. it seems to me that you had an awful lot of 'normal' meat on your vist. Our meal was made up almost entirely of Game (Buffalo, Impala, Zebra, Ostrich, and several other things that I can't remember. They sometimes had Giraffe on the menu!!!! When they carved the meat they carved from the top if you preferred your meat rare and from the bottom for well-done.

[Schneier]

What no zebra? The zebra was exceptional the night we were there. My husband and son were so enraptured, they truly thought it was a great concept to export to NYC.

I was very impressed by the enormous grill/spit as you walk in. Its quite the place, isn't it.

Left in a meat coma...took a long time before I could look at protein again!

Nope. No zebra the night we were there.

And we left in a meat coma, too. Flew back to Amsterdam that night...

Bruce

[PaoPao]

After 22 days exploring the absolutely beautiful country of Kenya we concluded at the "must go" Carnivore in Nairobi.

Our experience was very similar to the review given, except no Impala. Evidently because of the new government in power starting 4 years ago .... no big game is allowed to be served. This was very disapointing as we had just spent the last 3 weeks listening to our guide describe how delicious each of the animals were that we had been seeing.

The basicis were served but they had been cooked way to long and even at the beginning of dinner service were dry and tough.

I wouldn't waste my time there again for such a lousy meal. Too bad as I had really looked forward to it.

[Luham]

We used to be regulars at Carnivore 4 years ago and before. When the government put a ban on game meat being served, Carnivore's reputation, quality and service fast dropped. All safari operators get large commissions on bringing their clients to Carnivore, and the drivers get a free meal. That is incentive enough to make sure all tourists are taken to Carnivore.

Naiorbi has a great restaurant scene.

[Peter Green]

It's sad to hear about the ban on game....still, Farmer's Choice is some of the best pork I've ever had.

Now, my memories are from '96, when we spent a month in Kenya with our friends.

Oft overlooked, Carnivore has a second restaurant around to the left as you enter. Ala carte, and not given over as much to the game and the bbq. Fantastic mushrooms, great dabbas, and a good dance floor for once the dabbas got the better of you.

If I was going back today, I'd ignore the meat fest and go for their restaurant proper.