Kelsey: Restaurant Reviews Kampala

The tourist information about Uganda available on the web is sort of lacking. Uganda is a huge place for European tourists. Tons of people come here for safaris, sight seeing, and adventure tourism (bungee jumping, white water rafting and such). There is one guide book written about Uganda, its fine. I think it is bland. I like reading people's blog posts about places they have visited. They are much more exciting and usually more helpful.

So this is my incredibly selfless gesture for all the many Uganda tourists reading this blog. Some restaurant reviews.


I <3 New York Pizza Kitchen

That is literally the name of this wonderful hidden gem. This is the perfect restaurant for the long time traveller in Uganda. The person who has been on an adventure in the village and who has eaten more matoke than any one person should. This traveler wants a taste of home! And in my opinion this is the closest you can get.

This place is inside the parking garage of the Garden City shopping mall.

It is like semi classy New York City diner. And the fact that it is in the parking garage kind of adds to the New Yorkness of it. Obviously the most amazing thing about this place is that they have cupcakes. Cupcakes.

They are kind of mediocre. But they are 100 times better than a stale crumbly Ugandan cake. Which is basically your only other option. They are mostly just very pretty to look at. That is good enough for me!

These are the bagel chips and dip that they bring for free while you wait for your food. This automatically makes this my perfect place in Kampala. They make bagels! I know how not exciting a bagel sounds to everyone in America. But it is a big deal here.

I ordered a bagel BLT which came with delicious coleslaw.

Sandwich stealer.

Sar and Frank like it too.

The funniest thing about eating in any restaurant in Uganda is the 100% lack of customer service. The waiter will act like you are a huge burden to them and they are very annoyed that you chose to come to their restaurant today. Shop owners do that too. They will move extremely slow and sort of roll their eyes like, why are you here? It cracks me up.

This place had a really creepy waiter who would linger at the table. He asked a few questions and then started pointing to his ring finger and he was like, eh? eh?

But other than him it is a great place. I recommend the pizza, the red velvet pancakes, and the bagels! If this place weren't 3 hours away I am sure we would eat there often.

Kelsey: How-to Friday! How to kill a chicken.

This is for Stef Wisbrock who is sitting at home with her chicken just waiting for a "how to" so she can cut him up and eat lunch. Sorry to keep you waiting Stef.

This post is not going to be pretty. Consider this your warning. Or maybe you should consider the title your warning. I mean you chose to read a post about killing chickens right?

The first time I saw this happen I thought it was disturbing. I got over that fast. I really do think that in America we are too separated from our food source. When I see a chicken I dont think food. When I see some plastic wrapped deboned, deskinned, clorox rinsed meat, then I think food.  Its just so wrong. You should watch Food Inc. Thats all I'm sayin.

Meet the victim. We named him Fred. He seemed nervous. Like he knew something...

It is highly recommended that you bond with the chicken and feed it snacks. If there is more than one chicken then definitely get them to race each other or put on some kind of fashion show competition. When I was a kid we used to do that with lobsters in new hampshire. We would name them, race them, and the winner got to go into the pot first. Lucky little lobster.

Give the chicken a knife for defense. I mean its only fair, you have a knife after all. It must be a fair fight.

Deno came out the victor. Wrestled that knife away from Fred like a pro!

Grasp the wings to prevent flappage.

Step on the feet if you dont want to be clawed. 

Pull feathers out at the neck where you will be cutting.

And start cutting

And this is the kind of sad part. Let it bleed a little bit before you continue cutting. Then keep going until you get all the way through the neck.

Clean the knife on the birds feathers. Hopefully it gets a more thorough cleaning later. Also Deno wanted it noted that he did feel very bad for the chicken and that he was only doing this for the sake of the blog. (lies)

Soak the headless chicken (poor Fred) in hot water to make it easier to pull out the feathers. 

Start pulling feathers. Dorcus had put on no pretense of feeling bad and was purely excited to eat Fred. Apparently the bonding time meant more to him than her. 

Then, and this is important, make it do a little dance.

Stand on its head. No dignity.

And then have it play dead. 

Finally lull the chicken into a false sense of security by having it lounge in a pot of water as if it were a bathtub. 

Then cut it up! (That was said in Mitch Hedberg's voice, anyone else remember that bit?)

There seemed to be basically no rhyme or reason to the cutting except for the removing of legs and wings it was sort of just chopped. So I am going to trust that you can cut up your own chicken. Do not let me down. 

Here was to be inserted a picture of finished cooked chicken. But it was eaten before I got the camera. Use your imagination. Can you see it?

My final piece of advice. If your chicken can do this then do not cut it up...