Grilled Goat from Nyama Choma at Nottingham Street Food Club

Nyama Choma from Manchester are one of the featured vendors this weekend at Nottingham Street Food Club. On their website they say that “Nyama Choma is an original street food stall providing skewers of tantalizing grilled meats inspired by Kenyan adventures”.

I liked the story that after living over there for a year they had the urge to share the food that they had found. The name Nyama Choma sounded so exotic then I read that it means ‘Grilled Meat’, oh but then I like Grilled Meat so all was still sounding good 🙂

I think that normally they cook on an open grill or on the BBQ, but here at the Nottingham Street Food Club they were searing the skewers of meat on the flat top grill. It seemed to be working fine to me as I watched my kebab skewer on its journey from grill to my plate 🙂

They are serving up their take on Kenyan Barbeque with four options available for to try, chicken, beef, goat, and a vegan offering of Seitan.

I was sold on the offering of Goat, I love me some goat and I was having that! 🙂

Mbuzi – Grilled Goat

The Mbuzi was a bowl of Lightly marinated goat for £7.50 which came perched upon a bed of Pilaf rice and Kachumbari Salsa with a Chapati tucked in on the side. There was a number of choices for sauce and I chose one of spicy peanut, which I thought would go well with the goat. You could have also had a Kenyan Coffee flavoured sauce, a lime, and a chilli one. I also took up the offer of some fresh coriander and chopped red chilli to garnish my bowl, for flavour and heat (not to make the photo of the food look more enticing 🙂 honest)

This was a nice bowl of food, the goat was really well cooked, nice and juicy and mostly tender to the bite. The flat top had left a nice sear on the surface and this had added a little sweetness where the meat had kind of caramelized a little. The marinade seemed to be somewhere in world of the citrus, I thought I was getting hints of lemon or lime, and some garlic (love the garlic on my grilled meats), mind you all those flavour notes could have been from the other stuff in the bowl. Maybe I should have asked..doh 🙂

The bed of Pilaf rice seemed to be quite moist, I don’t want to say soggy because that sound like it was overcooked, it was a really nice almost creamy and spiced element in the bottom of the bowl and provided lots of enjoyable spoonfuls.

I also like the Kachumbari Salsa which was basically a chopped up salad of tomato, red onion, maybe some chilli, and more coriander. It was tasty, light and fresh and was the perfect foil to the Pilaf rice. The Chapati was quite soft and was kind of just a side bite, it wasn’t really big enough to make a wrap with the meat, but it was good to scoop up the remnants of the sauce from the bottom of the bowl and was nice and plain to take the edge away from the rest of the prominent tastes of Africa running around in the bowl causing well intentioned flavour havoc.

All in all I liked this Goat dish from Nyama Choma, it was just enough to satisfy the food soul, yet also it left me wanting more, and it made me wonder about the markets of Kenya where they get this stuff all the time. I was a little jealous to be honest!