Delicious food that’s pocket friendly

A delicious meal at Taheri Fast Foods. PHOTO | MADAME CONNOISSEUSE

What you need to know:

  • This restaurant is small and unassuming with plastic chairs, the printed tablecloths popular at the coast as well as some pretty, hand-woven light fixtures.
  • A menu was promptly placed before us and the waitress then proceeded to hover around, returning to our table every couple of minutes to ask what we wanted to order.

The space that presently houses Taheri Fast Foods used to be Oasis Gelateria, at least during an earlier visit to Malindi three years ago.

I remember stopping by Oasis with family, and with the bar for gelato having been hoisted well over the roof by all the charming spots around Malindi run by the towns long-residing Italians who certainly knew their cuisine, Oasis had simply been underwhelming.

Their ice cream had a chalk-like consistency even in the way it rolled around on the tongue, and you could actually taste the sugar and food colouring used as opposed to the rich, smooth, creamy and delightful flavours and texture that often accompany any good gelato.

I wonder whatever happened to that restaurant but if business was bad, it probably had to do with the quality of food. On my most recent trip to Malindi, we arrived in the town in the wee hours of the morning and finding ourselves in Lamu Road which is one of the main streets in the town centre, we decided to pop into the first place we could see, and that so happened to be Taheri Fast Foods.

This restaurant is small and unassuming with plastic chairs, the printed tablecloths popular at the coast as well as some pretty, hand-woven light fixtures. A menu was promptly placed before us and the waitress then proceeded to hover around, returning to our table every couple of minutes to ask what we wanted to order.

IDEAL

Much like most people, me and menus don’t get along well under pressure... I often end up staring intently at the darn thing while reading the same line over again then eventually ignoring it altogether and asking the waitstaff for the house specials, which is exactly what I did.

We ordered an array of things for breakfast: hot dogs which came topped with a cold coleslaw salad and a mustard dressing done just right. We also got chapati and sausages to make a classic roll-up, maru bhajia which had distinct Swahili spices and were thin, crispy and all round delicious.

The typical Kenyan in us also got fresh passion juice which was done just right. For anyone on a healthy diet, there will probably be nothing for you on the menu, as one of my companions soon found out. For lunch or dinner, options range from Indian curries, burgers, ice creams, and Swahili classics like pilau and biryani.

Our entire meal cost less than Sh1,000 which speaks to just how affordable the food is. The restaurant was very clean, but it was also the kind of place that where one would point out the cleanliness – it wasn’t a given.

Taheri Fast Foods’ main attraction would however be its convenient location off a busy street, making it the ideal stop for Malindi’s budget travellers, people in transit through the town or those who are simply just too hungry to look for a better option.