What is Tanzanian food like?

It's time to write about this. Food.

Food is something you can't reeeally export. I mean, if you want a Canon camera, though the price may vary, you can buy exactly the same stuff in Japan, US, Singapore, India, maybe Tanzania and so on. But food is best enjoyed in the "original" country. I mean, no Japanese food is better than what you can find in Japan, and you can say the same to all sorts of food - French, Italian, Spanish, the rest, think of your favourite cuisine :)

So. What is Tanzanian food like?

...Any idea?

Well, I'm here to report!
I actually don't have the whole range of photos yet, so I shall introduce the typical "main meal" of local food here :)


This is one of typical lunches I have in Dar - Ugali na mshikaki, 1500Tsh ($1). Ugali is made from cornmeal, mixed with water till it's like a porridge/dough. Nice Ugali tastes like smashed rice. Reeeeeally really hot when it's served, but you eat this with your hand. On this pic, I've got mshikaki (meat -beef?- skewers) but often you have stew kinda stuff with ugali and you dip a bit of ugali in it and eat.

They also eat rice a lot here.
(I don't have too many pics of city lunch so the following is from village lunch and dinner.)


Ah yes, the bananas too - they aren't sweet. I have to say I don't particularly like these bananas raw - when you see bananas in city, they cook it and it tastes exactly like potatoes, and it's okay (still a bit weird though.. you know you are eating bananas but it's like potatoes..).

Overall do I like Tanzanian food? Yes I do!
(those who know me know that I don't dislike any food but.. well.)

Apparently food in West Africa (French colony area, as opposed to East Africa = British) is NICE. Nicer. I'm curious.. but I like Tanzanian food so far.

It's true there's not THAT much variation here, but as you can see on my city-lunch plate, it's a pretty well-balanced diet! carbohydrate stuff, meat/fish, veg and it's not oily!

Wait, as I said earlier, these are just typical "main meal"s. There are more snacky food as well. But I don't have photos of them so maybe another time.

Let's see how long it takes me to be entirely sick of ugali!