Cooking with Love

My Chef journey started when I visited a friend who worked at a beach hotel on the Kenyan coast. He took me on a tour of the hotel, and part of that was a kitchen tour. It was nearly lunchtime, and the chefs were preparing for a busy service. After I saw them putting on those long white hats, I said to myself, ‘This is it.’

I haven’t looked back and I have now been cooking for 16 years. With food, it’s easy to be inspired because there are always new ingredients to try and old favourites to try again (and again). At the moment, I am inspired by the many positive feedbacks I get from our guests. It makes me want to do more and push myself and the rest of the Kitchen team even further.

Before becoming a Chef, I wanted to be a broadcaster. I always knew I wanted to communicate with people, I just didn’t know you could do that through food. Now, I hope that people feel my message of happiness through the food I cook. If my younger self had to see me now, I think he would be very surprised to see me at a safari lodge.

It’s good when dreams change, I think that’s what makes life exciting. To anyone who wants to be a chef but is maybe scared to go for their dreams, I would advise them to go for it. It’s lots of fun working in a kitchen. My favourite part of the job is doing the actual cooking; I really just love being in the kitchen and working with nice ingredients, especially with a team of great people around me.

Here at Angama Amboseli, we have a team of seven in the kitchen. We’re very proud to serve our guests. I think the menu is so special because it consists mostly of locally available ingredients thus guaranteeing freshness and flavour that suits this environment spot-on. My favourite dish on the menu is the grilled tilapia with butter-blistered tomato sauce. The butter sauce is so, so delicious and the presentation is simple and beautiful. It’s the dish that speaks most to Angama’s food philosophy of good, simple food made with love.

This philosophy works well because we have all put in a lot of time and thought into our menu and the recipes. We have chef Amanda, who is the chef trainer, Sarah Saleheen from Boho Eartery in Nairobi, Mama Nicky, who always helps with the food, and of course, Collins had some things to say after being Head Chef of Angama Mara for so long.

The most important tip I can give to any chef is to read the recipe carefully and follow it as closely as possible. One day, in college, I didn’t read the recipe properly and was asked to serve a sauce but made a soup instead. The whole kitchen clapped, and I was the joke of the month, so learn from my mistake and read, read, read before you cook.