Nairobi Restaurant Week: Sikia Fine Dining at the Crowne Plaza Hotel

As promised a review of the restaurant I managed to visit during the Nairobi Restaurant Week.

To say I was excited about the inaugural restaurant week in Nairobi would be an understatement. I ensured that I told anyone who cared to listen about it. Since, I found out about it a bit too late, I could only manage to visit two restaurants. However, I plan on starting a NRW kitty for 2015, ha! *it’s never that serious, right?*

Anyway, to the review, Diana (my friend and colleague) and I decided to have lunch at Sikia Fine Dining at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. The choice of hotel was obvious since our office is located in the opposite building.

On arrival the maitre d’ gave us such a warm welcome and she took us to our table. The restaurant has a very warm atmosphere and on entry you even forget you are in the middle of Upperhill.

For the starters,

Diana had the hummus with feta and olive. The description on the menu was given as, creamy pureed chick peas with red bell pepper mixed with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and toasted sesame seeds served with pita bread, marinated feta cheese and olives.

Well none, of us had ever tried hummus before and we can confidently say that it was yummy. It had a fine texture and it sort of melted in one’s mouth. The pita bread went very well with the hummus.

I had the caprese insalata, I know, strange names 🙂 It was described as layered slices of mozzarella cheese with tomatoes, selected organic greens set on a beetroot carpaccio dressed with balsamic oil.

I love beetroots and I also love cheese, however, I have never thought of having them together, for sure it was different but good different.

Entrees,

Diana had the Stuffed chicken breast – oven roasted free range double breast chicken with garlic herb cheese and served with lemon butter.

The presentation alone is enough to get your taste buds enticed. The chicken was well spiced, the glaze on the surface was delicious. The veggies were cooked to the right texture and the potatoes, oh my word, crunchy and utterly delicious, yeah I need to up my food vocabulary.

I had the Surf and Turf which was grilled jumbo prawns with lemon herbs, butter and beef fillet mignon on tomato salsa and pepperoni sauce.

The portions may look a bit ridiculous but after having the starter the serving is just perfect. The fillet mignon was tender and tasty. I had only had prawns twice before and on both occasions it had been deep fried and coated – golden prawns – so i was rather anxious of the taste of the grilled kind. Lucky for me, the prawns were delicious, fresh and well cooked.

Desserts,

Nothing fancy here since we were picking from their dessert platter. One thing though, the advantage of picking from a dessert platter is that you could pick more than one item, whoopie!!

Here is Diana’s choice, some fruit salad, variety of tartlets and strawberry cake.

I had almost the same as hers with the addition of a chocolate eclair.

The highlight of my dessert was the chocolate eclair. Crunchy and chocolatey on the outside and soft and full of creamy goodness on the inside. Yum!

Overall the food was great, on a scale of one to five I’d give it a 4.

As for the service, I have to say it was the best, definitely giving it a 5.

The ambiance was great. Perfect for a romantic date.

I didn’t visit the washrooms, so I can’t comment on that.

I would definitely recommend this restaurant to anyone else.

Quite a wonderful experience and I  would visit it again and again 🙂