Why do gourmet dishes in Uganda mostly have to be exotic? Why can’t one find such a classic Ugandan dish as katogo, luwombo or pasted beef at a fine dining venue in Uganda?
Your answer is as good as mine but these questions likely run through many Ugandan dinners quite often. Now one young chef is trying to change the status quo.
Andrew Nsubuga is a chef in his late 20s whose passion is elevating Ugandan dishes to modern gastronomy standards. He blends tradition with innovation to celebrate the richness of Uganda’s local ingredients.
From fresh tropical fruits, millet and matoke to flavorful spices, beans, ghee, and smoked meats, all presented in ways that feel both authentically Ugandan and contemporary. He’s the head chef at Zara Gardens Hotel in Muyenga where he’s been heading the culinary side for four years.
Nsubuga reimagines local classics such as katogo, eshabwe, pasted meat, luwombo, even rolex in a refined gourmet style.
‘I spend time crafting new recipes that highlight Ugandan flavors in unexpected ways. I strive to surprise and delight guests with every bite. I believe food should be a sensory journey where every dish tells a story about culture, community, and creativity. My goal is to design dining experiences that celebrate Uganda’s vibrant culinary identity, while meeting the standards of modern gastronomy,’ he says.
Nsubuga has eight years of experience in the hospitality industry. His first job came in 2018 right after his culinary arts course in Centurion, South Africa. The job was at August’80, a Bukoto pub that was the rage at the time.
His food was so popular that the bosses increased his salary five times within the year he spent there. Revelers were literally coming more for the food than for the alcohol at some point.
Conventional
‘After one year, I quit the job. I got bored. I wanted something more conventional like a restaurant. I did not want to work those strange hours anymore. So I went to Nairobi, where I spent much of my childhood, to try something new but things did not work out. Coincidentally, while things were not working out in Nairobi, the Bukoto pub called and offered me more money. So I came back. After one month, they increased my salary three times,’ he says.
His prowess spread like a wild fire in the industry and soon, Sheraton came calling. They offered him a job as a chef de partie, a senior position in the kitchen team, responsible for overseeing one of the many stations.
He worked here for a couple of years before joining Zara Gardens Hotel in Muyenga in 2022 as the head chef.
He attributes his fast rise to the top to what he calls his ability to be crazy. He believes you can’t be a great chef if you are not crazy.
‘To be a chef is to be crazy,’ he says casually. This notion first became clear to him while he worked in Estela restaurant in Lower East Village, Manhattan, New York. It was late 2017 and Nsubuga was on his eight-month long break from culinary arts school.
His mother lived in New York at the time and Nsubuga had gone there to spend the long break with her.
Pushed by mother
‘My mother asked me to look for a restaurant and work because she didn’t like the idea of me just chilling at home. So I looked for a restaurant with the smallest menu. But upon reaching there, that smallest menu was the biggest work I have ever done. Estela happened to rank among the top 50 restaurants in the world at the time.”
‘The work in that restaurant was endless. I worked more than 12 hours a day without stopping. For 8 months. This was a crazy schedule for me until it dawned on me that my chef de cuisine, the head chef who was 27 at the time, worked for 16 hours a day without complaining. On the contrary, his attitude was that of being constantly happy and energetic. He was crazy,’ he says.
It is that crazy work ethic that he brings to his kitchens, everywhere he has worked. When he asks any of his team members if they are crazy, he’s not insulting them. He is motivating them.
He’s reminding them of the chef’s path. It is a coded call for team members to think outside the box and create magic on a whim. Because to be a good chef is to be willing to be crazy.
Nsubuga did not think this way at first. He was a regular child that just wanted to be nice to his mother by cooking for her when she came home tired in the evenings.
In fact he wanted to be a pilot at first. But his mother convinced him to consider being a chef instead since he was very good at cooking. This happened in 2015, when, after Nsuguga completed his secondary education at Aga Khan High School, he went back home in Nairobi to live with his mother.
‘I used to cook food at home. She is a single mother. I felt bad that she would come home at like 9pm, tired and tryto cook. I realised that somebody had to cook and since I am the eldest, the task fell to me,’ he says.
It turned out that Nsubuga was gifted at cooking and his mother loved his food. He wanted to be a pilot and she was willing to pay for his pilot school.
‘My mother asked do you know what a great cook you are? Why don’t you try cooking professionally?”
He obliged and so she found him an apprenticeship at a popular restaurant in Nairobi called Thyme.
His main obligation here was to prove himself. His mother had told him that before she committed to spend any crazy amounts of money for him to go to culinary school, she needed to see the interest from his side.
As it turned out, he really was interested in going to culinary school because while all his teenage friends were out partying or playing video games all day, Nsubuga was in Thyme crying buckets of tears that come from cutting too many onions all day.
‘The schedule got so tough for me that I quit after three months. But my mother found me another internship. It was, in fact, a training. She paid an experienced chef to teach me. This guy was tough. He was a Ghanaian man that had had his training in Italy and had worked in America and Canada for years. Now he was in Nairobi to retire in a restaurant of his own.”
‘You know the old school chefs? He was throwing frying pans around the kitchen and being really crazy. But he is actually responsible for most of my knowledge right now. He taught me that you cannot be a good chef without being obsessive, persistent and willing to push past normal limits. If I keep saying crazy, this is what I mean,’ he says.
He says that being a chef is a kind of beautiful madness. A lifestyle driven by obsession, pressure, and creativity, where passion pushes you past normal limits until the chaos of the kitchen becomes the rhythm of your life. And that is what is needed to make real change in such a complex industry as his.
Different kind of culinary experience
This week, Nsubuga is hosting a brunch or, better put, a culinary experience at Zara Gardens rooftop, where classic Ugandan meals such as kalo and eshabwe, ground nut stew and other dishes will be on the menu. The daytime culinary event, dubbed Showtime.
This first-of-its-kind bi-monthly culinary experience showcase his masterful culinary creativity, cocktail artistry, and high fashion.
Some of the foods that will feature at the event include roasted maize, deep fried cassava and kabalaga. Generally, the classics that we are all familiar with, but with the creative touch of a well-trained, ‘crazy chef. ‘
It is about time we took pride in our food.