Alfa Café

 Alfa Café is situated very close to Sooper Guest House, on a perpendicular road to Oginga Odinga street on the way to the shopping mall called Swan Centre. Its street is kind of typical from the town centre, with a covered sidewalk. There is less activity in this street than in Oginga Odinga street which is one of the main road of Kisumu; however it is very close to Swan Centre where there is a lot of activities, piki piki drivers (motorbikes), touk touk, a supermarket, different kind of shops, cyber cafés, restaurants...

Going to Alfa (in the background, after the bicycles)

Alfa is a café-restaurant with different types of local food. The prices are not very high comparing to the "occidental" places at Swan Centre, but could be even lower if you compare to another street a bit farther, for the same kind of food. On the small menus available on the tables, there is mainly traditional dishes: kuku (chicken), arosta (roasted goat), ugali (dense melt of maize flour and boiled water), chapatis (kind of flat bread), pilau (rice), beans stew, sukuma wiki (vegetables)... You can also have mandazis (kind of doughnut), juice, tea, sodas and so on.

 

 Plan of Alfa Café  

The covered sidewalk in front of the café can be used with chairs and tables sometimes. There is quite often people talking there. As there are big windows, you can see what is happening inside, but it also brings light in the indoor space which is a bit dark. You enter directly in the main tables and chairs' space but there is a smaller one in the back, which does not seem to be used that much. On the right, the manager is usually sitting close to the counter to pay. This is a different counter that we are used to: it is not open but is more like a kind of small sentry box, closed by a glass with a small hole to give money. It gives the feeling that they do not feel really safe about the money. Then you have a place to store mandazis and juices and farther again the kitchen which is visible from the main space, with a kind of window to give the order to the chef and the food to the waiter. The spaces are not traditionnal nor informal but still very simple, without any special decoration.

You can either chose to eat on the restaurant or to take away. I chose to take away that time but already ate directly on the restaurant. If you eat there, you just order at the table but if you take away you go to the waiter first. The take away food is given in different small plastic bags for each type of food (meat, then ugali or chapati, then sukuma wiki...). Another thing is that the order can be a bit random sometimes: a lot of people of the Reality studio went there and for example, it happens that some people got a lot more food for the same price!

The main eating space is quite used at meal times. There is a TV always turned on, with some football matches for example; maybe this is the reason why the smaller space is less used than the big one.

The mandazis and juices' place; in the back through the window is the kitchen,

from where the food is given to the waiter

View of the eating place

 The counter to pay; the boss is sat on the right

 Back to Sooper on the rooftop with the food as a take away

Take away: all different types of food (meat, vegetables, ugali...) are separated 

in different small plastic bags

 Chicken stew, sukuma wiki and ugali

 The way to eat is also different in Kenya. You can form a spoon with ugali and use it to eat stew, vegetables... For chicken, you also have to use your hands. Eating with hands makes compulsory the fact to have a sink in the restaurant (this is the case in Alfa, but in more informal places the waiter comes with soap and water and pour the water on your hands before and after eating).

 Eating with hands: the chicken

 Eating with hands: using ugali as a spoon