The InterContinental Hotel Nairobi recently launched a new À la carte menu. For those of us who don’t or didn’t know what the term à la carte means; sometimes restaurants serve à la carte menus as a practice of ordering individual dishes from menu, as opposed to table d’hôte, where a set menu is offered. The individual dishes to be ordered may include side dishes, or the side dishes may be offered separately, in which case, they are also considered à la carte.
Here’s my review of the menu and why you should definitely try it out 😉
Starters
We first had Five spiced-sesame Duck & Smoked Chicken & Mango salad. The smoked chicken was served with arugula and watercress salad which had a tasty peppery flavor while the duck came glazed with a hoisin sauce which is a perfect glaze for meat, orange, baby spinach & slices of rocket and cherry tomatoes which blended together amazingly.
This was quite a first for me seeing as the Kamba in me had never had mangoes mixed with any kind of meat but it was all a spicy party of wonderful goodness in my mouth 😍. I also adored the fact that I didn’t see or taste the sesame seeds in the duck considering I’m not a huge fan of sesame seeds.
The Seafood and veggie soup with bread accompaniments
We had the choice between the veggie soup and seafood soup which were both perfectly seasoned which also went down really well with the fresh bread.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had soup but the way it was presented to us with almost all the chefs coming out with these pretty little copper kettles and poured the soup into your bowl maked me wanna take soup more and more, but only if it’s done in the same way 😋
(I’m not a sucker for bread but the garlic bread was to die for)
Chicken Tikka Masala
This was my second winner for the night. Made with their Bhandini Chicken Tikka with a generous serving of house made Pizza sauce topped with Mozzarella, the chefs swore that this was an accidental discovery but they didn’t say it was their best one yet!
The pizza crust was so thin and soft, meaning you really can’t leave anything behind unlike with other pizzas in this city. It was actually kinda like eating chicken with Naan bread!
Next we had the Trio of Herb and Parmesan grilled Tiger prawns with the baby vegetable cassoulet & grilled slipper Lobster tails & Supreme Salmon fillet & yes it tasted as amazing as it sounds! I focused more on the salmon which was so tender and went down amazingly with the glass of dry red wine I was having & the sauteed spinach on the lobster brought the flavours together so perfectly!
Next up we had a platter of Morendat Sirloin steak, beef fillet medallion, herb crusted lamb chops and chicken peri peri.
I obviously dived for the chicken first which was my best choice that evening since the chicken was marinated in rosemary, garlic and lemon with their house made peri peri sauce. I loved the hot, tangyness of the chicken and if your tongue loves it’s hot spicy tastes, this is a definite dish for you.
The Morendat Sirloin steak and beef fillet took the menu to a whole new high. If you’re looking to create the perfect emotional connection with a meat lover, then have them ask for the Morendat beef 👌🏾
Morendat beef is basically meat that is 21-day aged. The bulls are especially treated with the correct steady diet of corn, lucerne and molasses until they are sufficiently plumped and then they are led away to a gentle death as opposed to how kawaida cows are slaughtered. They are then hang and left to dry-age for about twenty one days. The process leaves you with a tender and more flavourful meat. It fetches quite the price but trust me it’s worth every bite!
I also loved the fact that the chefs served the medium rare mear on a woody stair plate that almost added a nice distant woody flavor to the meat.This was served with balsamic shallots, cherry tomatoes and grilled mushrooms.
A tasting of four Desserts
I honestly didn’t care much for the dessert since I was soo freaking full at this point in time, but the salted caramel chocolate fondant stole my heart.
We got to choose from a sesame & amarula tart, nanaimo bar, apple strudel, salted caramel & chocolate fondant topped with ice-cream.
It came hot in a cup and the way it played around with my tongue made me melt on the inside! A secret I was given by the chef was to have it with a shot of whisky and yes it hit all the right spots!!
If you’re looking to indulge in a variety of foods to tickle your taste buds, try this menu at the InterContinental Hotel and let me know what you think 😊
Images courtesy of the stunning Laura Aura of Kulanini. ❤
