My niece Abby turned eight, and my sister threw her a small lunch party at Tamarind Brasserie. Abby is a little bullet—brave, brimming with vim. It feels as if her childhood is a leash holding her back.
The last time I came here, it was still Dari Garden Restaurant. Tamarind is a rebirth, and a better one. The grounds stretch out in green folds—lawns, indigenous trees, fountains, the kind of land you’d call “sprawling” without irony.
The forest soul still lingers, but the game I once saw—gazelles, dikdiks, bushbabies—has since been joined by another species: tourists in safari gear, hats perched like crowns, talking earnestly with knives and forks in hand out on a long table in the patio. A string of Land Cruisers wait in the lot. You can almost hear Carnivore’s old heartbeat throb the background.
Abby and her posse disappeared into the amusement park—jumping castles, face-painting, arcade games. We adults gathered in a gazebo near Pergola Island until our numbers swelled, then spilled onto the grass with chairs and laughter. The weather was nippy, but good company is a jacket of its own.
All but one of my siblings came, children in tow. A proper reunion, rare as rainfall in January. We are, after all, very busy people. So busy [I hope you can hear the sarcasm in that].
Tamarind matches its grounds with food. The menu reads like a carnivore’s gospel—lamb shanks, grilled lobster, wet-aged ribeye on the bone, pork chops, something called Ndogongogo (which turned out to be spring chicken), seafood platters, roast mbuzi, fried Homa Bay tilapia. A jamboree of flesh and smoke.
A cake was cut. Abby blushed. Gifts were handed. Then we scattered back to our very “busy lives”.
