Aidchild Ten Tables Restaurant
By Hannah Harlow
In late October, on a trip to western Uganda, I passed through Masaka and visited the then newly opened Ten Tables restaurant, run by the Aidchild organization. The downstairs dining room holds the ten tables mentioned in the name. It’s a cozy space, intimate, and well decorated with white tablecloths, dark furniture, and attractive art on the wall by many of the same artists you’ll find at the organization’s other ventures: the gallery in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala and the Equatorial Café located at the equator. (Aidchild also runs the Golden Lily Spa in Kampala.)
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Upstairs the restaurant has an eleventh table in a private dining room, which could seat 10-12 people. There is also a separate lounge area, relaxing and comfortable, a balcony overlooking the street where drinks are served, and a long room in which movies are shown every evening at 8:00 PM for Ush 5,000. At lunch, for Ush 5,000, there is an option of two menus. The first is the soup of the day, plus a choice of two items off a short list that includes chips, sausage, garlic bread, bruschetta, and samoosas. The second option is the local menu, standard Ugandan food. I opted for the latter and was served quickly a generous portion of beans and sweet potatoes that was anything but bland, perfectly cooked. A beverage is also included in the price of the meal. The dinner menu is a set menu with four courses for Ush 12,000,which also includes a glass of wine. The soup of the day was served first and I wished I had also ordered it at lunch—it was that good. The pumpkin soup was |
thick and delicious, served with a cheesy potato pastry on the side, which complimented the taste well. The second course was bruschetta on a thick, wide slice of sweet bread. I had never had bruschetta on sweet bread, but it seemed to work. By the time the main meal I arrived I was already full, though it was this course that I found the only disappointment. Amongst a large plate of chips was a fried piece of fish, mediocre in taste, and a pile of boiled carrots, sweet but a little limp.
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Despite my lack of enthusiasm for this portion of the meal, I was still impressed by the restaurant’s attention to detail: on the corner of the plate was a small garnish, two slices of carrot cut to make the number 10, the orange laid out on the bright green of a lettuce leaf - a lovely touch. After a long break to let the large meal digest, we requested the dessert, a fruit crumble of juicy pineapple with baked pastry that was the perfect sweet ending to the evening. At both meals I found the service to be warm and attentive, generous and quick. On the day I visited, the restaurant had only been open for four weeks, but it seemed they already had most of the kinks worked out. It’s a shame Kampala does not have a restaurant this good and this reasonably priced, with such a lovely atmosphere. I have visited a fair number of the so- |
called best Kampala has to offer, but I don’t think I have visited one restaurant I like as well as Ten Tables.
