Day 14

Cuisine in the Bilila Lodge Kempinski

Dining in the Lodge and
the amazing story of the green bean

Tanzanian Cuisine

Think that the meals in Tanzania are boring and only consist of the national dish Ugali? Think again!

Today is all about the fantastic cuisine in the Bilila Lodge Kempinski. At my stay in the Lodge I enjoyed many tasty treats. They all were connected with African meals, but had a special twist to them. Mozambique chicken & coconut curry, local Arusha Beef Fillet with a biltong & blue cheese sauce, red bush-smoked Nile Perch, tea infused Bavarian cream, stuffed chicken supreme with shallot jus, … every item tastes absolutely fresh and is excellently spiced. And if you enjoy these meals with the view over the National Park and a good bottle of African wine from the well-assorted wine cellar – life couldn’t be better!

The story of the Green Bean

The Chef, Eduan Naude does a most convincing job of creating these fantastic meals. Even if sometimes things get, well . . . challenging! Logistics in the middle of the Serengeti can be difficult to master, even for the most basic things.

So enjoy this movie about a little bit of an unusual day in the life of the Bilila Lodges Chef and the famous green beans!

The Green Bean Cuisine - Chef Eduan Naude on his unusual quest for the green beans. (The video may take a while to load, but I think it is worth it.)

The Mara Smallholder Horticultural Project (MSHP)

The friendly people we met in the video are part of the MSHP. The project was initiated in 2002 with the aim of improving the living standards of the local farmers. Many of the people living around the National Park used to hunt in the Serengeti. But with the declaration that the Serengeti was to become a National Park, hunting became illegal and so people were forced to search for an alternate income. Most of them had only a little experience with (professional) farming.

The solution was to build a community, with many of the farms participating. Project coordinators built up the farms and empowered the farmers over a certain time to operate the farm independently. The crops from the farms are sold through the project network – so that even small farms can participate in larger markets.

The Bilila Lodge Kempinski is one of the purchasers of the fresh goods – in this case in the Bunda region (Balimi network). Of course, there are still a lot of challenges (road infrastructure, availability of market information, etc.), but it is good to see this sort of thing developing. And let me say this: getting to know the story behind my meals made them taste even better!