Restaurant review: Fast food would be a better option

Upon entering Nakajukko Restaurant the place strikes me as being the sort of joint that would best be suited for the main Street in the city centre. True that Kansanga has a large community of students and fast food joints are a dime dozen, but in the main, they are selling chicken and chips which in terms of Ugandan students has to be the preferred menu of choice. Conceptually and in terms of layout, this latest fast food joint is trying very hard to make an impression. Despite the close proximity of Kampala International University and its vast cosmopolitan student body the punters are simply not impressed.

Menu
The menu is unusual for this genre of roadside eatery, and given the prices that are unrealistically low, authenticity is not only farfetched, but keenly absent. Better to have done something along the lines of Tipsy or Chicken Tonight and compete with them all the more so considering that the startup cost for the venture is the same either way.

Dishes
Jerk chicken, Teriyaki chicken, Japanese beef these are incredibly recondite (in Uganda) items that are prominently featured on the menu, but despite their presence are poor renditions of the real deal. Jerk is the Jamaican barbecue and like its North American counterpart, jerk is simultaneously a dish, a cooking method and a way of life. In Jamaica it turns up at rugged roadside eating joints.

Compared to others
Honestly, the only place in town that can lay claim to making an authentic variant of the dish is Café Javas. To make jerk, the meat of choice is washed with lime juice and or vinegar and marinated in a fiery paste of Scotch Bonnet chilies and other spice and smoke cooked over smoldering hardwood. The chicken teriyaki fared no better and sadly lacked adequate marinating and as for the Japanese beef, the beef used was not Kobe which pretty much sums it up. We ordered burgers and were not impressed.
As for the kitchen it is really tiny and no bigger than the size of postage stamp. One can only pity the poor chef who is most likely a tenderfoot in the field and given the cramped quarters that obtain it is hard to see how they can cope with large numbers. It took for ages for our burgers to arrive and that is despite our being no fewer than a half dozen diners.

If you go…
Place: Nakajukko Restaurant
Address: On Gaba Road adjacent to KIU and Tipsy takeaway
Smoke-free zone: Not available
Recommended items: Nothing to write home about
Service: They try
Ambience: The size of a postage stamp with poor ventilation
Open: Daily
Our rating: Ok/so so
Menu: Jerk chicken teriyaki chicken Japanese beef
The space: Cramped and can barely seat a couple of dozen people
The crowd: Not at all busy
The bar: Coffee
The damage: A piece of jerk chicken is a fiver while coffee costs shs 4,000; a relatively inexpensive joint
Sound level: Not bad
Parking: Not available
If you go: Daily