One of the most enticing spectacles to behold at a typical Kigali buffet is the fruit cuts –usually ikinyomoro, pine apple, passion, papaya, and sweet bananas. But the problem with these buffet fruit cuts is exactly that –they are cuts, and who wants fruit cuts when one can get the whole thing? I don’t know if it’s a case of economics or civilized pretensions, but honestly why would one want to serve me half a passion or ikinyomoro fruit on a buffet for which I forked out Rwf2,500? To the best of my knowledge, they have to be served whole, the way sambaza fish are served –all intact. Recently while queuing up at an otherwise decent buffet in Remera’s Kisementi area, an equally decent-looking, suit-clad West African man was overheard asking a waitress if it was legal for one to heap up on the meats –that is, serve more than one miserable piece on one’s plate. The first issue I had with the suit-clad West African lad was the question; what sort of man (investor at that) goes about inquiring from hotel wait staff how many pieces of meat are likely to fill their tummy? Real men do their home work in advance, if only to avoid such undue embarrassment as that which my Nigerian friend witnessed at the said buffet when he was duly informed that the buffet policy read something like “one man, one piece of meat”. The other manly way to wiggle out of this awkward situation is to simply go ahead and pile up on the meats –then sit back and bravely wait for the repercussions. Real men don’t subscribe to that silly rule of “one man, one miserable piece of meat” at the buffet, simply because real men ought to know their rights at the buffet –let alone the definition of a buffet. Any buffet-goer with the vaguest idea what that word means will never be afraid to serve the number of pieces they want on their plate. Still with the meats, and lastly, know the best way to consume your meats whenever it’s them on the menu. In these mean and hard times, when a son of man is not free to serve filling portions of meat on their plate at the typical buffet, one ought to exercise due diligence before digging into their meat to achieve maximum results. The trick with a meat dish is to first eat and sweep the plate clean of all “bad things” while saving the best (read meat) for last. These bad things are anything accompanying your meat sauce – ubugari, ibijumba, igitoki – whatever. The thing is to first “sweep” away all these bad things while isolating the meat and saving it for the very last bite.
