Carnivore is Nairobi's most famous restaurant and one of the best-known in Africa, established in 1980 in the Langata area near Wilson Airport. The concept is simple and relentless: a fixed-price "Beast of a Feast" in which waiters carry sword-skewers of different meats from table to table, carving directly onto your plate. You eat until you raise a small white flag to signal surrender.
Meats typically include beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and several game options such as ostrich (both fillet and meatballs from the gizzard), crocodile (mild, slightly fishy), and hartebeest. The meats are marinated and cooked over open charcoal, and the quality is reliably good. The setting is a large thatched pavilion with outdoor braziers visible from the tables.
It is a tourist institution and unabashedly so, but it remains genuinely enjoyable. Reservations are recommended on weekends. The restaurant is on Langata Road, about 20 minutes by taxi from downtown.