This is what I had for lunch about half the time I was in Tanzania (roughly two months). Order "local food" and get some wali nyama, or "rice beef" for those of you who don't speak Swahili. The "office boy" would take the orders at about 10 am, gather up all the office tupperware, and make a run to the corner grilled meat place.
The rice was, in some ways, the star of the show. Tanzanians love their rice -- it's the largest producer in East Africa -- and they specifically love their rice. Very fresh, and very aromatic. It puts even the best stuff on our grocery shelves to shame.
Meat quality varied greatly -- sometimes the beef was excellently seasoned, sometimes really bland, sometimes very bony and gristly, sometimes very lean. Also in the pink tupperware are beans and greens, both of which were pretty consistently okay, except for the one time that the beans tasted smoky, but not in a good way...more like the cook accidentally mistook the bean pot for an ashtray. Extra beans on the side.
To wash it all down there was Stoney Tangawizi, a soft drink only found in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Tangawizi means ginger in Swahili, and it basically tasted like liquid powdered ginger -- not a ginger ale, but not quite a ginger beer like I've experienced before. Enjoy some pictures below of me enjoying some while waiting for the ferry to take me back from Zanzibar to Dar es Salaam. Also you'll see the Kilimanjaro brand drinking water bottle that I was reusing.
Perhaps best of all, the total cost was 3000 Tanzanian Shillings., or a little less than $2. It'd only be 2500 TSH without the soft drink.
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