Food & Drinks

Muvuleni Bar and restaurant serves five-star seafood in a shack

bdlBeercanchicken

Graze is a New York-style steakhouse, specialising in aged beef and succulent seafood. PHOTO | SHUTTERSTOCK

Don’t take a taxi. You are in Diani, hop into a Tuktuk because getting there is part of the experience.

It’s by a beach. Basically shacks; seats thrown under shades. Rickety bar. Breeze through you. The owners of the joint are fishermen, a Nairobian who is now a local says.

Fish comes in fresh from the ocean. Go about 3pm when the ocean hasn’t decided what kind of day it’s had when the waves sway between cantankerous or calm.

You are there for the seafood because there is no ambience apart from the crashing waves.

Order the platter because you want the whole shebang; lobsters, crabs, prawns, calamari, rice, and chips.

It will set you back a quarter of what you would have spent at your hotel. Go with someone because only medicine men/ women eat alone.

Before the food arrives, have a cold beer as you look out at the small dhows and canoes bobbling in the ocean.

The sky will be so blue you will suspect it’s a trick. Maybe you will make a friend because the folk are friendly.

Maybe you won’t because you want the company of the ocean.

The food won’t disappoint. Maybe it will drizzle because now it’s a bit rainy in Diani which feels like playing rhumba in church.

When you’ve wolfed down everything and the evidence is piled next to you, a song of bones of former fish, you will ask for another beer or something stronger.

The sand will suddenly feel like it’s rising in the evening breeze.

The fishermen will walk past down at the shoreline in their well-worn garments that know the very language of the ocean, and you will wonder how their children will receive them, what questions their wives will ask them and what dreams they will dream when they lay their heads down to sleep.

Dusk will ambush you, setting on your reverie. Suddenly the romance will sublime into the darkness and the ocean's temperament will suddenly change and you will not remember its beauty or voice.

However, you will never forget the shack, the seafood and the hopeless surrender of beauty.

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