If you are going to do another rooftop bar, do one like Dijo, over at Mandrake on Westlands’s Ring Road. Have a long, generous bar while you’re at it.
Make it elegant. In fact, make it a gastro bar. Make it look out over Nairobi’s skyline, over Westlands, over Uthiru and the airport….as far as the eye can flirt with the city.
Keep the music low. The type that merely brushes against your face. People come to dinner wanting two things: to eat and to talk to other people. Let them do both. And make the place sexy enough to be photographed - which is really just another way of saying make it sexy enough for people to look sexy when they photograph themselves in it.
But the bar has to be excellent, especially for guys like me who don’t understand French cuisine but do understand a great gastro bar, and love to sit at the counter. There is something about sitting at the bar.
You get to see the room from the room’s own point of view. You see who is arriving, who is lingering, who is waiting for someone and who is pretending not to wait. You see who is trying to be someone else. Which is something we sometimes do, right?
At Dijo there were plenty of expatriates at dinner, and a number of Kenyans, mostly women in pairs or small groups, enjoying cocktails, a meal and a laugh. There were couples too, mostly on dates.
Which reminds me: you never really see men sitting at dinner by themselves.
The bar counter was young and fast. Sitting there felt like being at the pit stop of a Formula One race: a blur of figures and moving hands. Everything seemed to happen at once, but nobody looked hurried.
A young, spirited barman called Jackson served us. He knew the menu, knew his drinks and, more importantly, seemed to enjoy both.
Later, as he handed us the bill, he brought out their special Dijo drink, reserved for first-time visitors. White and dark rum, honey, lemon and cinnamon. Sweet, warm, slightly wicked. A little barman’s kiss before we left.
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