The food that Zara Tours provided us was not terrific. Most nights it wasn’t bad and one night it was even pretty good. Some dishes were utterly inedible though, and some of those dishes were served to us at nice hotels, not dinners at high altitude when everything made us feel nauseous. What was annoying was that most of the dishes were local interpretations of Western-style food. Most of the tourists were American or German and they seemed to be okay with pizza topped with sardines and the same vegetable soup every single night. What’s wrong with you people? We had been hoping for some African food. We like it! And we also had our hearts set on amazing coffee, but the coffee served by Zara, even in the hotels, was dishwater.
So on our very last day in Tanzania we went back into Moshi in search of coffee and African food. Our safari guide pointed out a restaurant and we had seen and heard of a couple others we wanted to check out. First, coffee. We had been in search of coffee the last time we were in Moshi but every coffee shop we passed was closed. The same was true on this day. What’s up with that? Finally we were driven inside by thirst, heat, and visions of ice cream at an Indian restaurant called Deli Chez. (Yeah, and remember the Salzburger Café was full of Volkswagen iconography.) First we each ordered a milkshake. Milkshakes! It had been ages since we’d had milkshakes. Mine tasted like strawberry Quick rather than strawberry ice cream, but I didn’t care. I loved it. Then I ordered a hot coffee and Mike ordered an iced coffee. It wasn’t the best Tanzanian coffee I’d ever had, but it was a million times better than what I’d been drinking for the previous two weeks.
Milkshakes at Deli Chez
We still wanted African food, but we were full of beverages so we decided to walk for a bit. We found some relatively quiet and shady roads leading away from the crowded downtown area and just wandered around. When we finally got hungry, we walked back into town to the restaurant our driver had pointed out for local food: Central Garden.
Central Garden
We still wanted African food, but we were full of beverages so we decided to walk for a bit. We found some relatively quiet and shady roads leading away from the crowded downtown area and just wandered around. When we finally got hungry, we walked back into town to the restaurant our driver had pointed out for local food: Central Garden.
Central Garden
We got the African menu, but the muzungu prices. (It was still pretty cheap, but no matter how much long we live in Burundi, we will never get the local prices.) Mike ordered ugali with beef and I ordered ugali with chicken. (Actually I ordered bananas, but they were out of bananas!) The food was okay. It wasn’t the greatest but it was a nice change from the hotel food we’d been eating. And the mango-passionfruit juice for dessert was yuuuummmmmeeeeee.
Eventually we went back to the hotel for the night. We had to leave at 4 am the next day to make a 6 am flight. We skipped the hotel’s dinner, preferring to snack on Lara bars rather than face that food one last time.
We had an uneventful trip home. And that about brings us up to speed.
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