Skip to main content

Karambezi Caf�: Dar es Salaam Restaurant Review

Picture this - a lovely evening, the sound of waves crashing on the beach, the smell of salt in the air. Already perfect enough, but then you add in a restaurant serving excellent seafood - meet Karambezi cafe. Located right on the ocean cliff, with a gorgeous view of the ocean and the night sky, they definitely get a 10 on ambience.


We got a wine for the table - a lovely Chardonnay that went well with our selected appetiser, as well as all the seafood we got.

For starters, we all opted for the pull apart garlic bread. As they describe it, "home baked loaf served straight out of the oven covered in cheese and herb & garlic butter". Doesn't that make your mouth water?! The flavour more than lived up to the description - it was so good that we had to order more! It was like a cheesy dream - among the top 10 garlic breads I've had. Not only was it perfectly garlicky, but perfectly cheesy too. Don't be surprised if you find me there eating this as a main meal with some wine. The only thing that we weren't too pleased about was the fact that the home baked loaf wasn't as fresh as we'd have liked. 


For the mains, I got the Karambezi fish and chips - battered fillet of fish with peri peri & coconut served with garlic sauce. My colleagues got the seafood platter - lobster, prawns, calamari, line fish, Baby White Snapper, crab claws and other delicacies served with 3 sauces; the classic fish and chips - battered fillet of fish served with homemade tartar sauce; and the king prawns - grilled King prawns served with spicy cajun.

I really liked my fish and chips - however, the portion was HUGE and I wasn't able to finish. A certain garlic bread may have been to blame. The batter was thick and flavourful, and when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to finish, I took to eating just the batter with the garlic sauce, and the tarter sauce, which I'd ordered as an extra.

Verdicts from my colleagues - quoted verbatim.

Seafood platter: GOOD. NICE! 

Seafood platter: The prawns were rubbery, but the platter was impressive. I liked the Tilapia best. The crab was perfectly done - however, it would've been nice to get a hammer.

Classic fish and chips: Well, in the end - I got the fish and chips that I wanted. (Strangely poetic, and we've used this to express our satisfaction in multiple other contexts now!) 

King prawns: Portions were too big. Big prawns aren't usually nice prawns. It was meant to be cajun, but just had a little sprinkle of paprika. 

Seafood platter

Karambezi cafe fish and chips
Overall verdict? I loved the place! I'd love to visit in the daytime, as I bet the view is just GORGEOUS. Have you been? What did you think?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five years of The Kenyan Nomad: Looking back

How time does fly! I can't believe that my little blog is five - what a journey it has been! I thought it would be fun to look back on a few posts I've done over the years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My first post  was an attempt to restart a blog that I had started writing four years ago - back then, it was more of an extended, and public mailing list. This was a week after I turned 20, and I think the 'new decade' brought me some inspiration to write that I'm still going on! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A few months later, I shared some pictures from a trip to the Masai Mara. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During the spring semester that year, I did a few posts from a series I had posted
Post a Comment
Read more

Restaurant Review: Christmas at the Arbor

Happy holidays, everyone! As I write this, I'm sitting in the U.S., having travelled here to spend time with family (and see friends if I get lucky). Saturday the 17th of December, however, found me in a food coma after a delicious Christmas meal with Darshani (of Cupcakes to Curry) at the Arbor in Lavington, Nairobi. The Arbor has a very laid-back, chic outdoor ambiance, well-suited to Saturday brunch or a dinner out with friends. Darshani and I were there to do a review for a podcast, and thus ended up having a multi-course meal at 10 am on a Saturday morning (accompanied by various cocktails, of course, much to the envy of the other diners)! The weather was perfect December weather - warm and sunny, forbidding any sort of indoor seating at all. For my non-Southern hemisphere readers, you'll just have to visit Kenya to know what I mean when I say 'perfect December weather' and 'warm' in the same sentence. It was started about two years ago by Shamini, original
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mayura: Restaurant Review

Happy new year, everyone! It's been a while, so I thought to break tradition and post on a Tuesday this time - I'm sure you're in need of new restaurant recommendations, right? Located in Kenrail towers, the Mayura  is an Indian restaurant that you may not have been to yet. I'd heard about it, but never been, so when I was invited to do a review, I naturally jumped at the chance. Located in Kenrail Towers, the ambience of the Mayura has peacock-themed, warm interiors. There's a lot of space to sit down, both inside and outside. The restaurant is the brainchild of Rajiv Segal, who has a corporate background and being from Delhi, had a high standard of quality and had developed a distinctive palate, which he wanted to bring to the people in Nairobi. The menu was chosen for us by Rajiv (and boy, did we eat a lot!). For starters, we had some paneer tikka, mutton chops, fish amritsari and banu kebab (chicken). The paneer tikka was absolutely amazing! The paneer was fresh
Post a Comment
Read more