Nyama choma: how to buy meat by the kilo and eat it properly

Overview

Nyama choma means roasted meat, and the words are as plain as the dish. Goat or beef, cut into large pieces, salted, and cooked slowly over charcoal until the outside is dry and dark and the fat has rendered into it. No marinade, no sauce, no rub. What arrives is meat, a wooden board, a knife, a bowl of salt and a heap of raw tomato and onion.

The important thing to understand is that it is not really a dish you order. It is a transaction and then a wait. You go to the counter, look at what is hanging or laid out, say which animal and which cut you want and how much of it, and the meat is weighed in front of you and taken to the grill. Forty minutes later it comes back chopped into pieces on the board. In between, people drink beer. That interval is the point: nyama choma is an afternoon rather than a meal, which is why it belongs to Saturdays, to groups, and to places with plastic chairs outside.

It is regional rather than the city’s own — this is eaten the length and breadth of the country, and the word is Kiswahili, not local to anywhere. What Nairobi has is the density and the specialisation. A capital that draws people from every part of the country ends up with whole streets of grills, some serving goat only, some famous for ribs, and a weekend habit that has turned into an institution. If there is a single Kenyan national dish by consensus rather than by decree, this is it, usually named in one breath with the two things that come beside it.

Goat — mbuzi — is the default and the better animal for the method: it is leaner, stronger in flavour, and stands up to an hour over coals. Beef is common and cheaper. A younger goat is sweeter and less chewy, which is what the phrase mbuzi ndogo, a small goat, is asking for.

What to order

The sequence, in the order it actually happens:

Pick the animal. Mbuzi for goat, ng’ombe for beef. Say it at the counter.

Pick the cut. This is the part visitors skip and then regret. The meat is in front of you and you are entitled to point at a specific piece:

• Ribs — the connoisseur’s choice, fatty, the part that crisps.
• Leg — leaner, cleaner, the safe order.
• Shoulder and neck — cheaper, more sinew, best when the grilling was slow.
• Matumbo — tripe, grilled. Chewy and strong; ordered by people who grew up with it.
• Mutura — the sausage of the same tradition, sold at street grills rather than at a butcher’s counter. A different order entirely, and worth knowing the word.

Say the weight. Meat is sold by the kilo, and half a kilo per person is a normal, generous portion — with the sides, it is plenty. Ordering “a kilo of goat ribs” is a complete sentence.

Wait. Half an hour to forty-five minutes is right, and a board that appears in ten was reheated.

What comes with it is not optional and is half of what makes the meal work. Kachumbari, a raw salad of tomato, onion and chilli sharpened with lemon, cuts the fat and is the reason the plate does not become monotonous. Ugali, the stiff maize staple, is the starch, and is used as a tool rather than eaten with a fork. Sukuma wiki, greens cooked down with onion and tomato, appears too. Some places offer mukimo — mashed potato with maize, beans and greens — which is heavier and worth it in cold weather.

Salt is the only seasoning, and it goes on at the table, in a small pile you dip into. Chilli sauce exists and is a modern addition. Eating with the hands is normal; the meat comes chopped so that it can be.

Beer is the drink, cold and lager. This is not a wine occasion and nobody pretends otherwise.

What to avoid

The board that arrives fast. Grilling a kilo of goat takes the time it takes. Where the meat comes out in a few minutes it was cooked earlier and warmed through, and it shows: uniformly grey inside, dry rather than juicy, with a surface that is dark but not crisp.

Meat you were not shown. The whole method rests on choosing your piece at the counter, and a place that will not show you the cut before it goes on the fire has removed the one check the customer has. That is unusual here and it is a fair reason to walk on.

A cold grill in an empty room. Turnover is the entire quality signal for a food sold by the kilo from a hanging carcass. A busy grill sells out and buys again; a quiet one does not. On a weekday afternoon, prefer the place with a queue and a working fire to the one with a menu.

Over-ordering. A kilo per person sounds reasonable and is roughly double what most people finish. The meat is rich and the ugali fills in behind it; you can always order another half kilo and it will be fresher than the first.

One thing worth stating plainly rather than hinting at: eat it hot, off the board, in the first twenty minutes. Cold nyama choma is a different and much worse object, and the fat sets.

Practicalities

Meat is priced by the kilo and that figure is what to compare — roughly 900 to 1,600 shillings a kilo for goat at an ordinary neighbourhood grill, less for beef, and well above that in the garden restaurants of the leafier suburbs, where you are paying for the lawn. The sides are charged separately and are cheap. Two people eating a kilo with ugali and kachumbari and two beers is a real meal at a modest price.

It is weekend food and afternoon food. Grills work every day, but the institution runs from Saturday lunchtime into the evening, and that is when the meat moves fastest and the company is the point. Sunday afternoon is the other reliable window.

There is no season, and the useful fact instead is the altitude: Nairobi sits high enough that evenings are genuinely cool most of the year, which is why so much of this is eaten in the afternoon sun rather than at night, and why a plastic chair outside stops being pleasant around seven.

Carry cash and expect phone payment to work almost everywhere — the mobile-money habit is close to universal here and small grills take it as readily as notes. Card is the least likely of the three at a butcher’s counter.

Go with more people than you think you need. This is a dish measured in kilos and paced in hours, and eaten alone it is simply a lot of meat.