EATING OUT: Street kitchen serves tasty snacks

I was walking along Peponi Road in Westlands minding my own business when I came across a vendor selling cassava chips and crisps. His makeshift stall was somewhere along Peponi Road between Eldama Ravine and General Mathenge Drive.

It’s no secret that Nairobi’s street food isn’t very diverse. Every other vendor seems to be selling smokie and mayai pasua, groundnuts or mahindi choma, but there certainly is room for diversity! It’s only smart business … If everyone is selling roast maize along the same stretch, that’s just too much competition. If one, however, decides to do something different, they will be the only person offering that product — for a time anyway.

The cassava vendor’s stall is really simple; there’s a small wooden table upon which the finish products are placed. A small bucket holding thick hot deep fried cassava crisps sits on it, selling at Sh20 per piece. This attracts people from various offices around the area, fancy cars passing through the road, boda-boda riders as well as any hungry passers-by looking for a quick bite.

There are no plates … each serving is done in a brown paper bag and you tuck in as you head off on your merry way, or rest under the tree behind the vendor, which has boulders that act as seats.

He also has thinly sliced cassava crisps, which he makes on the spot, dexterously slicing up the long tubes of cassava with surprising speed before dipping them into the hot karai of oil behind him. When ready, he transfers them to a big brown paper bag. When customers walk in, the crisps are still hot, and each bag goes for Sh100.

Just like in the Coast region, where this street food is popular, he offers fresh lime which you can squirt over your bag and finish off with a touch of ground chilli. The only other people I’ve seen offer this in the streets of Nairobi are a few vendors in Nairobi West, and being an ardent fan, sometimes I used to drive all the way across town just to get them. This is even closer home.

He could in fact scale up the operation by adding kachumbari, tomato and chilli sauces, but even then, the very simplicity of his operation is part of its charm. Hygiene can be a concern with roadside stops but his place was also very clean as were the utensils and the water he used for washing the cassava.

Nairobi is certainly no match for street food hubs like South East Asia, but our coastline at least offers a variety.

Having visited Forodhani Night Market in Stone Town Zanzibar, which I have talked about in this column before, I’m a strong advocate for diversification. It is slowly starting to evolve … you can imagine my delight when I recently found a vendor selling deep fried chicken feet, and there were people flocking to his stand!

I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to look for chicken feet, but much like chancing upon this cassava vendor, it is the change that excites me the most.