Nairobi After Dark: An Insider's Luxury Guide to East Africa's Most Ambitious City

Nairobi is in continuous revision. By the time any description is accurate, the city has moved on from it. New towers have replaced the cranes that replaced the empty lots. New restaurants have opened in the spaces that last year's best restaurants occupied. New people have arrived with new money and new ideas about what this city can be, and the city has absorbed them all and become something that includes them while remaining, recognisably and stubbornly, Nairobi. Nairobi After Dark is not a guidebook for tourists. It is the specific, practical, honest guide to East Africa's most ambitious city - which neighbourhoods speak which social language, which hotels understand what the serious visitor requires, which restaurants are doing something that matters with Kenyan ingredients, which cultural institutions are essential, and how to move through the city's social world without wasting the time that this city demands in exchange for revealing itself. Inside you will find everything the city requires you to know before you arrive. Westlands and Upperhill after dark covers the commercial and social hub of contemporary Nairobi, the restaurant scene that has made this city the serious dining destination of East Africa, and the rooftop bars looking out over a skyline that will have changed by the time you visit. Karen, Lavington and the private world covers the residential neighbourhoods of established Nairobi money, the private club culture that does not appear in any public listing, and the specific pleasures of Sunday lunch in Karen with the Ngong Hills in the distance. Shopping with Discernment covers the contemporary Kenyan designers building international reputations, the Maasai Market approached correctly rather than as a tourist transaction, and the antique and craft traditions that serious collectors are quietly acting on. The Nairobi Table covers the city's food culture from the nyama choma grill to the new generation of Kenyan chefs cooking pre-colonial ingredients for the first time in a fine dining context. Wellness at elevation, cultural immersion including the Karen Blixen Museum and the Nairobi National Museum, and day trips to the Rift Valley and Amboseli complete the guide, alongside the neighbourhood quick reference and Amara's Black Book. Amara Osei came to Nairobi for a story in 2013 and stayed because the story kept expanding. This guide is written from twelve years of moving through the rooms that Nairobi reserves for those who know how to enter them. Nairobi will give you exactly as much as you are prepared to receive. Not more. It has learned to be precise about this. Part of The City Insider Collection, a series of luxury insider guides for the woman who travels with intention.