Dinner, Black Lantern, Bujagali

A couple of weeks after trip to Kenya it was about time that I made the most of what was left from my generous leaving gift and the half price offer at Nile River Explorers (NRE) if you go back within three months of first going. All that in mind I finished work a bit earlier than usual on Friday, got a boda downtown and then got into a pretty full matatu that was heading for Jinja. Thankfully since it was pretty full already it wasn't a long wait for it to fill up and I was soon on my way. An hour and a half or so later it was time to jump out of the matatu on the outskirts of Jinja and on to another boda for the long ride from there to the NRE camp at Bujagali. Finally after about two and a half hours after setting out I arrived at my home for the weekend.

I was due to meet up with a friend as we were planning to do the white water rafting on the Saturday. There was no sign of him so I pottered about on my computer at the bar overlooking the Nile, pretty sweet. Eventually he did show up a bit later as he'd gone for the tandem kayaking that day instead of the rafting the next day. I guess I'd be going rafting on my billy now then. Anyway he and a bunch of people that were staying in Bujagali were going to the nearby Black Lantern restaurant and I was welcome to join them.

 This photo of The black lantern restaurant is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Those with a good memory will remember my mentioning a mammoth burger challenge that had recently started at NRE. It was 60,000 UGC (£15) for a massive c. 12 inch diameter burger and a trough-full of chips. If you managed to eat it within 60 minutes then you got it for free. Since there was no way on Earth I’d be able to manage it no matter how long I had, 60k would have to be forked out by me so I wisely decide to join the gang heading to the Black Lantern for dinner.

Pic representative, couldn't resist this classic

The Black Lantern is a fairly fancy small hotel restaurant. It’s located right next door to the NRE reception / shop / bar / restaurant and there is a large locked gate in-between the two properties. You’re meant to walk about a quarter of a mile out of one establishment, down the road and then down the long drive of the other property. We decided to climb over a wall to the side of the gates and walk the remaining 10 yards to the front door instead. We were spotted and got some dirty looks, but thankfully we weren’t booted out and ended up having to get a couple of tables together on the porch for our party of 8 (I can’t remember as it was such a long time ago, sorry).

The ambience was pretty good and this was easily the swankiest place I’d eaten in up to that point in Uganda. Apparently I was crashing a celebratory leaving meal as a few of people were leaving the next day, some the day after and the rest during the week. Since it was a special occasion and I was seriously contemplating wasting 60k to try out enforced bulimia, I decided to push the boat and went for the pork ribs and fillet steak combo with chips and a bit of side salad. Whilst waiting for our food I got part way through my first Nile Special and pre-emptively ordered my second.

Another reasonable length of time later and our meals started to arrive almost at the same time. The combo was massive, four or five big ribs and a few hundred grams of fillet steak. I went for the ribs first and sadly was almost immediately disappointed. They were well cooked the outside was nicely crisp and had a delicate barbeque aroma to it. It was dry rub only though and if there was any BBQ sauce on it before it was all gone now. Still it was fairly tasty as, but that wasn’t the main problem. Sadly the quality of the meat left a lot to be desired as it was practically all fat, there was very little good pork left so by the time I had finished with the ribs there was no indication that I had eaten much of it. The chips I can’t remember, so nothing to set off fireworks for.

Eventually, and by the time most of the others had finished their meals. I was on to the fillet steak. As it was fillet, I’d asked for rare and got it medium rare, still not that bad and far from ruined. Fillet is not normally a cut I go for as I find it too bland compared to the fattier cuts such as my long standing favourite, the rib-eye. Despite that it was a decent piece of meat and pretty good. Plus there was plenty of a wonderful garlic butter sauce that hadn’t been finished by one of the other steak eaters, so smothered in that garlic buttery goodness the steak was pretty damn good. 3.5 out of 5, would just have steak and garlic butter next time. I finished my meal last by some margin and it was at this point that I noticed that some clothed ninja had deposited my bottle of Nile that I ordered ages ago, so on top of everyone waiting for me to finish eating I now had a full bottle of beer to get through. Thankfully getting and sorting out the bill took so long I managed to neck it without too much problem.

All done we took the long road back and I proceeded to drink till the bar closed at around 1am. Last man standing in the bar, but some of the others outlasted me by going in to Jinja. No way that you’d get me drunk, in the dark, on that road, on a boda, plus I had to be up reasonably early for a day of fun on the Nile.