Boma Gastropub; a work in progress

Boma Gastropub is located between Papyrus, the Mamba Club, and Mr Chips in Kimihurura’s main hospitality hub. There are a number of reasons to visit. The first is that this is Kimihurura, known for its dense concentration of food and beverage businesses. You could be that bar-hopper who wants to drink beer from five different venues before finally calling it a night. Plus the name Boma seems to have its own pulling power. For instance, people looking for roast meats know from just that name that meat is on the menu; nyama choma, to be precise. That is mostly for its regional clients who are well-versed with the terms “Boma” and “nyama choma”. And Boma is big on Nyama. The “Gastropub” bit of the name ensures that the mzungu part of their clientele is well-catered for. And what do we know gastro pubs for? Well, food that is a little more classy and fancy than the usual pub grub –like chips and brochette. A gastro pub as we know it distinguishes itself from the other drinking places primarily on account of its superior food, and that is what we were looking out for when we hit Boma. But what hits you first on walking into this residential house-turned bar is that it is a work in progress. The kitchen is a work in progress, in that it only comes to life when you place the order for your brochette, and be prepared to embark on the inevitable long wait. And far from expectation, the only semblance of variety happens over the weekends, when the morning hangover crowds begin to trickle in. For zingalo, akabenzi and any other meats good for hangover. The building in which Boma is housed had a few walls knocked down in that one sees the entire kitchen’s operations before even entering the building. Straight ahead to the left is the bar, whose sitting area overlaps into the main dining hall. Walk right through the bar, and a sliding door will usher you into a small outside terrace that is sadly littered with old, rickety and weather-beaten plastic garden chairs. Formerly, the owners of Boma used to run the Executive Car Wash bar a stone’s throw away, until a fire gutted the facility down in May last year. While the pub boasts a huge array of board games hardly to be found in any other local bar, these have been stashed away neatly in the store. The few that are on show are equally redundant and it is not clear if the Darts board in the bar is just part of the wall art.