There is his well-acclaimed TV shows – Tales from the Bush Larder – running on Zuku, a culinary travel show where he travels the region and beyond, through hamlets and the African thicket, cooking with locals and using their ingredients.

In the show, he will eat anything from cow blood, mud crabs, guinea fowl eggs and grasshoppers. The show is such a hit thatNational Geographic bought it, the first local TV show to be exported to the international market. Doesn’t that sound like success?

How is your personality or temperament similar to the restaurants you own?

Well, I believe that if you are going to do something, you just have to do it properly. Like my restaurants, I pay attention to detail. I’m also an extremely impatient person, totally intolerant to others’ mistakes.

I enjoy pleasing people, I’m an entertainer. When I’m out with my friends having drinks, I’m always the loudest. I believe business is an extension of one’s personality.

During your Bush Larder series, what is the one thing you have learnt about our local cuisines?

(Pause) First there is a fantastic variety of food people don’t know about in Kenya. I wouldn’t exactly say I learnt this, but it’s something I’ve always known, the problem was how to find it. I have had a greater appreciation of our local farmers and fishermen and what they have to do to make us eat.

It’s hard work and yet most people are unaware of this, or do not appreciate it. We are embarking on the third series, which will take me to SA, Zambia and Mozambique…if the war abates.

How does Kenyan cuisine distinguish itself from other African cuisines?

It doesn’t. But there are two distinctions here; the cuisine and the ingredients. In terms of ingredients, it’s world class. But we lack creativity to do much with it.

We should be more experimental, but to our credit, although Nairobi is capable of doing this, the rest of the country faces other financial challenges to engage in this.

You are a third generation Kenyan of an Indian dad and an English mom. Which lineage dominates you and why do you think so?

I sit on the fence on that. I don’t speak Gujarati well, neither do I understand it any better. I think from my Indian side I borrow the cooking. (Pause).

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