The Carnivore Restaurant Experience in Nairobi: Lunch or Dinner

You will be picked up at your Nairobi hotel and driven to the Carnivore, which is just 2.5 miles (4 km) from the city center. Since its inception in 1980, the restaurant has played host to more than 2 million customers from across the globe, including celebrities who come to enjoy whole joints of meat, like legs of lamb and pork, ostrich, rumps of beef, sirloins, racks of lamb, spare ribs, sausages, chicken wings, skewered kidneys, and even crocodile. The meat is roasted on traditional Maasai swords over a huge charcoal pit that dominates the entrance of the restaurant (a vegetarian menu is also available).

With its rough-cut beams and local woods, the atmosphere of the restaurant combines the rustic feel of a rural environment with the grandeur of a medieval banquet hall. The Carnivore doesn’t conform to the traditional restaurant protocol of passing out menus and waiting for people to order. When you arrive, you simply sit down on your zebra-striped chair, and the moveable feast begins. First comes the soup of the day, and then a sizzling cast-iron plate is placed in front of you, along with home-baked brown bread and butter.

An army of carvers in aprons and straw hats move from table to table, carrying the swords laden with the different prime meats, carving unlimited amounts onto your plate. Accompanying your meat is a wide selection of salads and vegetables, plus a variety of sauces stacked on a 2-story revolving tray in the center of your table. When you've had enough, you can end your feeding frenzy by lowering the white paper flag perched on the central tray, which signals that you're ready for dessert and coffee.

Beverages are at your own expense, so you can choose what you'd like to drink. Highly recommended is the house cocktail the Dawa, which means 'medicine' or 'magic potion' in Swahili. Based on a Brazilian drink, the Dawa was introduced to Kenyans at the Carnivore and has become one of the most widely consumed cocktails in the country. If you order it, it's brought to you on a tray by a 'medicine man' named Dr. Dawa. 

At the end of the Carnivore experience, you will be dropped off at your hotel.