A little while ago one of my friends from Backpackers went
away for a couple of weeks for a research project in the forests near Kabale, a
small town in South Western Uganda no too far from the border with Rwanda and
DR Congo. It’s also the end of the tarmac road if you’re heading to Bwindi
Impenetrable Forest NP to see the Gorillas. I’ll get to them at some point, but
the permit is expensive. It’s $500 for a one day permit, and if you’re lucky
enough to see a pack, herd, gaggle, pod, whatever of Gorillas you get one hour
maximum with them. In May and October it’s only $350 as it’s wetter.
After two weeks in Kabale and nearby districts, Olly was
back in Kampala and we’d arranged to meet up on Wednesday evening to catch up
and have something to eat. I’d heard some good things about a South Indian
place downtown near Parliament and opposite the National Theatre, so we decided
to give it a go.
I was late on account of having to put the last episode of
Game of Thrones on a USB stick for Olly. After the excitement of the
penultimate episode of the series he’d yet to see how it was resolved or not.
Anyway, it didn’t take long to get there only about 10 to 15 minutes as there
wasn’t much traffic.
It was dead, we were the only ones there, and it was hot.
The ceiling fans were trying their hardest but in vain. Interestingly if you’re
in Kampala and you want to get your Bollywood, sorry Tamil movie fix, this is
the place to go as they have thousands of DVDs for sale. Apparently the place
has been going for donkey’s years, so the owners must either have somehow
managed to stick around or were one of the first Indians to move back to Uganda
after Amin’s regime forced them out of the country.
Anyway on to the food and Olly went for a Paneer Masala and
some (tiny) Chapatis. I being the greedy sod that I am went for the South Indian
Mini Thali. It wasn’t mini. Whilst we were waiting for our food we were brought
the staple of poppadums sprinkled with red onion and accompanied by various
chutneys and pickles. A nice familiar appetiser. Another respectable amount of
time later our food arrived. My Thali came on a large metal platter similar in
size to the one that I had at Fasika, the excellent Ethiopian place in
Kabalagala.
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| Picture representative of my Thali |
Unfortunately I didn’t make a note of the menu so will
undoubtedly have missed something off the list of what I had to eat. There was
rice, pretty standard. A potato based dish a la Bombay Potatoes, a lentil based
dish a la Tarka Daal, a couple of other sauce heavy veggie curry dishes, an
Uttapam, which is kind of like a pizza, but not quite, and a couple of Idli, a
savoury lentil and rice ‘cake’. This was all topped off with a massive plain
Dosa (12 inches long) and its accompaniments of the traditional hot chutney and
sambhar vegetable dips. A dosa
is a fermented crepe / pancake again of lentils and rice. You can get all sorts
of dosas at Masala Chaat and I’d be very tempted to try one next time I'm in the area.
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| South Indian pizza |
Overall the food was excellent, there wasn’t anything I
disliked, the idli were probably the lowest point, but as a sauce carrier they
were excellent. Overall 4 out of 5, and a bargain at 18000 UGX (£4.50).
Afterwards we headed up the road by shared boda to Mish Mash
as Olly was supposed to be meeting some people there, it was on my way and I
was told that they were showing The Untouchables. Since I hadn’t seen it in
years and fancied a bit of old school Connery badassery I came along. The
friends weren’t there, and the movie was Intouchables which I have to see at
some point, but the bottom row of subtitles were cut off on the outdoor screen.
On the plus side it took less than 10 minutes to head home by boda.
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