African Cuisine

The primary thing I learned about Tanzanian food is that it revolves around gravies. I ate a banana stew with chicken in white gravy, and the cooked bananas tasted similar to potatoes. I had a lot of great vegetable and chicken Marsalas, but again, they were heavy on the gravy. Beef stew…gravy. You get the idea about gravy.

The most common food in Tanzania is “ugali” which is made from corn and flour with the color and texture of grits or a really thick version of the hot cereal “cream of wheat”. Tanzanians eat ugali every day and claim to love it. I don’t know if they love the taste or love that it is a cheap food that sticks to your ribs, but I heard stories of people who visited family members in other countries and lugged along the ingredients to make ugali so they wouldn’t miss it while they were abroad.

Here is a photo of a typical meal I had—grilled chicken, cooked bananas, beans, a generous helping of ugali, some cooked greens, and tomato sauce.

No forks are used, so you roll up some ugali into a ball in your hand, pinch the other foods with the ugali, and eat them all together. It tasted pretty good, but I’ve got to admit that my stomach never did very well in Africa. I don’t know if it was the food, the high altitude (I was at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro), or malaria medicine, but I had a low-grade nausea the whole three weeks I was there.

Bottom line: don’t go to Tanzania specifically for the food unless you are on a top end safari with a world class chef making you Spice Rubbed Chicken, Carpaccio and Fennel Salad, and Roasted Bananas sprinkled with walnuts, thick cream, and cinnamon. Oh, and ugali.