Nyama choma can only be nyama choma when it is made on a dingy downtown Nairobi Street under the dimming evening lights of a December weekday. 

The culture of meat that has so much permeated the national identity of our East Africa’s neighbor is most understood not in the highest echelons of social class, but in the ordinary places, where men with expensive ties and exquisite cars, assemble at lunchtime to enjoy a cup of thick meat soup made out of bones or otherwise, ugali and various forms of roasted meat.

On an ordinary Nyama Choma street, men in white aprons spend their time by a local charcoal grill onto which leg full’s of enticing meat are given tender loving care, all lined up in a sort of butchery arrangement waiting for eager customers. As soon as they spot a potential ‘choma’ client, they persuade, tease and cut small pieces of the enticing delicacy for testing.

For a while, I am tempted to just test a small piece from the several meat sellers and get away with it, with a full stomach, a thought  which silently embarrasses me. In the Kamba-dominated area, south east of Nairobi, the meat vendors begin to accost me in the local dialect so much so that am forced to save my grace by abandoning my disgraceful version of the language, for the more comfortable street version of Swahili.

I settle down on half a kilo of the most favourite part of a gleaming steak and walk into the adjoining bar, a waitress following me closely to note my preferred sitting position in the noisy joint. The Christmas mood makes the Tuesday evening before the big day look like a Friday night out.

Patrons are galloping down their favorite lager – overwhelmingly Tusker – with a few sprinklings of Pilsners and Smirnoff Ice for the ladies, who hunched together, are sisters on a night out fashion or often accompanied by a male friend or lover, depending on the attention divide between the choma and the girl.

The music is predominantly the local ‘old school’, Swahili hits from decades ago both from Kenya and Congolese Rumba which sounds unflinchingly local.

A few minutes later, the dish arrives on a wooden chopping block. A sharp knife does the justice and alongside, an embarrassing slice of Ugali and a dish of Kachumbari – a fresh condiment consisting of chopped tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers, other ingredients lemon juice, dhania, parsley, avocado to complete the damage on one’s salivary glands. The rest as they always say is history – for the digestive enzymes especially.

The local Nyama choma experience in Nairobi is one a guest must experience, not for purposes of taste only but the experience of roast meat as a cultural phenomenon.

Ends