I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Jiko Restaurant at the Tribe Hotel. The invitation had promised an evening celebrating Kenyan food heritage, with age-old ingredients and cooking traditions taking centre stage.
That didn’t prepare me to find, let alone enjoy, a six-course meal built around foods our grandparents would recognise – traditional staples such as njahi (black beans), nthoroko (cowpeas), kunde (cowpea leaves), thafai (stinging nettle), musherekha (natural food tenderiser from the Luhya community), and mursik (Kalenjin fermented milk). Not even the spicy malenge (pumpkin) dessert.
The perfect teaser
To get our salivary glands going, the Executive Head Chef at Jiko, Chef Mohamed Yakat, started us off with cassava chips topped with achari ya ndimu salsa and hummus made from baobab (mbuyu) and bambara (njugu mawe). It was the perfect mouth teaser, if ever there was one; a crunchy, flavour-packed bite that disappeared faster than my neighbour could say, ‘That was fire!’
But like any good player, Chef Moha, as he preferred to be addressed, knew better than to let our anticipation die down. He sent out the first of many drinks, in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic forms.
This was the Kijabe Gimlet, made with Procera African gin, fresh juniper, mutatia (mountain basil), and lemon. Its non-alcoholic version, Kijabe Fresh, had everything but the gin, with wild honey and soda added to the mix.
Our drink captain of the evening, Tribe Hotel Group’s Food and Beverage General Manager, Richie Barrow, was quick to explain that the Procera gin, which is distilled right here in Kenya, is made from juniper berries grown in Kijabe Forest.
It was a bright and refreshing drink, but knowing that it was homegrown somehow made it go down even smoother, setting the stage for the soup that came next.
Soup made with njahi, kunde leaves and nthoroko beans served at Jiko Restaurant at the Tribe Hotel.
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Made from njahi, kunde, and nthoroko, this was vibrant green in colour, its velvety surface dotted with a few roasted nthoroko beans. The soup was smooth and hearty, and while you could taste the greens, the telltale bitterness that keeps many children from enjoying a serving of kunde was conspicuously missing. And being used to nthoroko that had been boiled until soft, finding them roasted and crunchy was an unexpected change of texture, albeit a welcome one.
The show stealers
As soon as the soup bowls were cleared, a second round of drinks was passed around. This one was made with guava-infused vodka, or guava cordial for the non-alcoholic version, along with lemon, gum Arabic and honey gomme, and a topping of baobab foam. But before anyone could really indulge, the starters came out and stole the show.
Looking too pretty to eat, the non-vegetarian version came in pairs: soft finger-millet taco shells filled with pressed, grilled, and spiced strips of ox tongue and dotted with vibrant green dollops of a puree made from thafai and mursik.
The ingredients were familiar to us. Finger millet, as our dining captain mentioned, is an ancient heirloom grain that was domesticated in the country thousands of years ago, with evidence of its cultivation found in the East African highlands, including Migori County. Some of us even mentioned having finger millet and thafai at home, but presented as they were here, these familiar ingredients were an adventure waiting to be had.
The dining setup at Jiko Restaurant at the Tribe Hotel on September 10, 2026.
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So when Richie said we could dig in, I was not the only one who put modern propriety aside, leaned into tradition, and reached for the food with my fingers. The little tacos melted in my mouth, their rich, satisfying flavours making a surprisingly strong case for ingredients we thought we already knew.
By the time we had polished off the tacos, we were all in agreement. Rather than the foreign cuisine, this was the kind of menu that belonged not only at State House, but at street level too, replacing the ubiquitous sausages and chips.
Before we could wonder what else could possibly be done with everyday ingredients, a palate cleanser arrived, offering a cool, refreshing pause before we moved on to the main course. This was a watermelon sorbet sprinkled with muthiga (Ugandan greenheart).
Described by Richie as the Kenyan wasabi, a little of the muthiga went a long way. It was spicy, with a lingering herbal kick, yet it provided an interesting contrast to the sweetness of the watermelon.
Ostrich skewers, munyu musherekha sauté osuga, pounded pumpkin seeds and fermented milk, njugu mawe and baobab hummus, served at Jiko Restaurant at the Tribe Hotel.
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The main course
Then came the main course, and with it, another round of familiar ingredients transformed into something I would not have expected to find on a fine-dining table. There were ostrich skewers, alongside osuga (managu/ African nightshade) sauteed with munyu musherekha, sitting on a shallow pool of pounded pumpkin seeds and fermented milk. On the side was the hummus made from baobab and bambara.
At this point, I was already feeling like I might need to pop open a button and measure my spoonfuls, but the tenderness of that ostrich meat had me temporarily throwing caution to the wind. Besides, the man to whom we owed the dinner, Dr Patrick Maundu, had been instrumental in introducing managu into supermarkets back in the 1990s. If only in honour of his efforts, I took more bites than I’d originally intended.
The course also came with accompanying drinks, which were a modern take on the Kamba traditional brew, kaluvu. The Kaluvu Pinot Noir, an alcoholic option, was made with Baobab hibiscus and kaluvu wine, hibiscus baobab triple sec, and beetroot water, and was served alongside a shot of the original kaluvu brew in its unadulterated form.
Spicy malenge, cinnamon and nutmeg ice cream served for dessert at Jiko Restaurant at the Tribe Hotel.
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Malenge dessert
For those not imbibing, there was the Blackened Hibiscus Spritzer, made with hibiscus cordial, blackened local lemon and beetroot water. For a meal this adventurous, it was the perfect thing to wash it all down.
And then there was dessert. Spicy malenge, cinnamon and nutmeg ice cream, accompanied by the Madafu Tamu Tamu, a delicious blend of fresh coconut water, limes, condensed milk, coco tincture and mursik float. It was tangy. It was creamy. It was gone before I knew it.
Who said old is boring?