CROC 'N ROLL

Marcellus Baptista relishes some crocodiles in Nairobi

The star draw at Carnivore is the crocodile. The creature may disgust you but just a few bites into it and you will start relishing the pleasure of corroding the capricious crocodile. So, game for a wild bite?

Touted as “Africa’s greatest eating experience” offering a “beast of a feast”, Carnivore is Kenya’s most talked about restaurant. It even featured among the top 50 restaurants in the world declares a recently conducted survey.

Carnivore, as the name suggests, will truly give you a ‘taste of Africa’. The restaurant showcases the wildest of game meat and like its unique cuisine, it also has unique styles of presenting the fanfare. Your order comes to you on a skewer, or rather a traditional Maasai sword, after it has been roasted over a charcoal pit that dominates the entrance of the restaurant. But you must have plenty of patience. It takes a bit for that bite of crocodile. Before that it’s a medley of morsels as various meats are served to you with a flourish and announcement.

Sticking to the sword are a whole herd of other game meat. The menu differs from day to day. You may get ostrich, zebra, giraffe, impala, hartebeest, eland, wildebeest, Thomson’s gazelle, oryx, buffalo. You must have a huge appetite to go through the entire fare laid out for you. For it also includes other meaty delicacies like rump steak, lamb chop, pork spare ribs, beef and pork sausages, chicken yakitori, among others. Evidently,Carnivore favours the thorough non-vegetarian, and an adventurous one at that, however, the vegetarians will not be disappointed with a vegetarian menu also on offer.

While you’re tasting the local flavours, try the local Tusker beer and Kenya Gold liqueur. Better still, try Dawa, the cocktail prescribed by the ‘good doc’. It comprises vodka, sugar and quarters of lime on ice. You pound the lime with a wooden stick, sip and savour. But most of all, it’s the experience that matters. You are in a 380-seater restaurant that exudes the rustic feel of rural Africa juxtaposed with the medieval ambience of the banquet hall.

Rough hewn beams, local woods, streams, waterfalls, gardens, lend to the restaurant the aura of a grand spectacle.