Day 17 - Dinner, Fasika Restaurant, Kabalagala, Kampala

Suitably bored with the cuisine at the hostel, although the pizza chef is back after a week off so it'll be pizza for dinner tonight, Olly and I decided to try something new, and we'd heard good things about Fasika, an Ethiopian restaurant in a lively suburb of Kampala.

We shared a boda for the 25 minute ride to Kabalagala, which isn't as bad as it sounds. I've got more accustomed to it after the past few days of house hunting. The house hunting isn't going great as I've now seen several more properties further from the city. All nice big houses and well within budget, but miles away from where I am now and even further from the centre of Kampala. Yesterday was particularly thrilling as we spend most of the time standing round as the group of 5 or 6 brokers rambled on. Seeing all bar the driver pile into the back of the car was bizarre, and the time that the car gut stuck on some track, interesting. In order to get out of the situation we went through a fair bit of rubber and almost lost the rear bumper.

I'm pretty comfortable at the hostel so there's no massive rush, plus I may be going away from this weekend on 10-day field trip to the Amuria district in the North East of Uganda. I'll hopefully be helping out in the base-line surveys for a number of projects in some of the sub-counties and, once I've digested a document on the subject, see if there's anything that we can do in the area on conflict resolution. Apparently there's an issue with cattle. Even if that isn't suitable in this area, it may help with other lower-level land conflicts that arise in the Mpigi and Wakiso districts. If this visit doesn't pan out, I'll probably head up there for a couple of days for the quarterly review in June and there's work to be done suggesting improvements on the now expired 5-year strategic plan.

Anyway back to Fasika, 7,000 UGX lighter at the busy and noisy area of Kabalagala we found the restaurant pretty much where we were told it was, which is surprising in itself. 

Fasika Ethiopian Restaurant

The restaurant was a pleasant leafy courtyard area, surprisingly quiet given how close it was to the busy crossroads. I went for a Nile Special to drink and given this was my first experience of Ethiopian cuisine, I went for the Mixed Dish Special so I could try a bit of many of the dishes on offer. Olly, recovering from a bad case of food poisoning played it safe and went for a veggie dish. Immediately after ordering the power went off. Thankfully the generator kicked in after a few minutes.

For the names of the dishes I'm going from the menu which might not be proper spelling of the dishes

A short while later our food arrived on massive 12 inch diameter platters. The base of the platters is covered in Injera. Injera is a yeast-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture (thanks Wiki). There's no cutlery so you tear off pieces of the Injera and use it to scoop up the food. My Mixed dish had 8 different things on it. There were two cold veg dishes, one of greens (the bitter green variety) and another that was thinly sliced cabbage and carrot. Both good accompaniments.

There was another veggie dish of K'k Wott, which was a mild split pea curry and very tasty. I could happily have had a dish of that on its own. On to the meat of the review and there were 5 meat dishes on offer.

• Alicha - A spiced goat curry dish, not too bad, and my first taste of goat. It's not the greatest, but not too bad and something a bit different every now and then.
• Kayi Wott - A slightly hotter minced goat curry, much better and nice to have a bit of heat.
• Kayi Minchet Abish - Same as above, but with minced beef and just a good.
• Alicha Minchet Abish - A slightly milder, but just as tasty and well spiced minced beef curry.
• Doro Wott - The same hot spiced curry, but with chicken on the bone and a hard boiled egg

I particularly enjoyed the Wott dishes especially when I mixed one of the meats with the split pea curry. I really liked the food, it was great to eat something nice and tasty for a change, the heat was quite mild, but the spices had depth and subtlety reminiscent of North African and Middle Eastern cuisine. A very enjoyable meal, a steal at 15,000 UGX (£3.75) and a solid 3.5 out of 5. Would go back and would eat more Ethiopian food in the future, although the similar Eritrean may be on the cards next time.

Carl on the way back was a menace, no finessing of the throttle led to a very jerky ride back and I have to give the name of the day to 'Jack Bauer Season 4' in the blog as well. Such a great name for a matatu that it deserves a second mention.

P.S. Uganda named as the most ethnically diverse country in the World, but probably some dodgy popsci journalism from the Hate Mail