A great safari is also about great food. Our guests want to be assured that what they eat is not only delicious, but also reflects and celebrates a sense of place. As important as the food itself is where it is served, and Angama Mara offers a dazzling choice of dining venues.

Inspired by what camp chefs might have cooked way back in the early days of being on safari, Angama Mara’s chefs prepare classic safari food focusing on it being perfectly cooked and freshly made, beautifully and simply presented. Our Kenyan chefs use only the best and freshest ingredients, celebrating the finest local produce for which the country is renowned: grass-fed beef, tropical fruits, prawns from the coast – amongst many others. The result is safari food which is simple yet delicious; unfussy but oh-so-good to look at; and always generous and joyful and sometimes surprising. Our 1-acre Shamba, or kitchen garden, offers an abundance of fresh produce and guests pick their own for a shamba-to-table lunch in the garden. At least a third of our menu is designed with vegetarian guests in mind, and together with a small stand-alone kosher kitchen, no dietary requirement or preference is too much trouble.

Finally – Angama Mara prides itself on perfect picnics and the best bread on safari anywhere. Our safari food is not fancy. Our food is good. And not a buffet in sight.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

To their immense delight, the chefs have worked out that guests could eat up to no less than twelve times a day. Not to say that guests have to eat that much, but just in case they might be peckish, there is always something delicious on hand.

On arrival at the lodge (after who knows what kind of journey) a little something is always welcome whilst unpacking. Lunch can be enjoyed on the tented suite’s deck, at the lodge, by the pool or best of all – a Mara picnic in the shade of a lone tree in the middle of nowhere. Try not to miss afternoon tea at the lodge – fruitcake, cucumber sandwiches and scones. Toast the sunset with bitings (a lovely East African word for snacks) with a classic East African mojito, known as a dawa, in the Maasai boma

Where to have dinner tonight? Maybe an elegant candlelit dinner in the lodge or a cosy dinner for two on the tent deck? Or perhaps Angama Mara’s signature family-style BBQ, where tall chefs in tall hats grill to perfection fat juicy steaks, prawns from the coast or Swahili-spiced kuku (chicken is Kenya’s most-loved dish). All this in a lovely forest near the lodge, lit with lanterns and a nightly chorus of hyenas.

After a restful night’s sleep, a knock on the door and a butler discreetly leaves fresh orange juice, steaming coffee and a newly baked something in the lobby. A good start to another day in Africa. Breakfast, too, is a widely flung affair – on the tent deck, at the lodge watching the hot-air balloons float by, or a picnic on the Mara plains amongst a herd of a thousand buffalo … who needs food?