Mafian Diary

I don't know why the people of Mafia Island are referred to as Mafians. If I lived there on a more permaneant basis than I did I think I would prefer to be called a Mafioso. That being said, here's some notes that I jotted down while I was living there as a Mafian.




I miss being surrounded by professionals in the kitchen. I miss the buzz. I miss the calls from the expediter. “Fire a shank.” “Picking up octopus, quail, two scallops”. The changing zip codes maintained at the grill. Each number symbolizing a cooking temperature from rare to well. I miss the twelve burner saute station with dual salamanders. I miss the energy of a well-trained line. Making sure that my mise en place is all in perfect order. Making sure that I am not the one that the rest of the line has to wait for when the orders pile in. I miss the endless chatter of the printer as it relentlessly spews dupes. I miss the cuts and burns. The sting of cold hands when the freezer needs to be cleaned and organized.

In Mafia, the challenge is working with a staff who has a fraction of the education that is typical in the United States. The majority have went through about seven years. The rest received less or none at all. And then you have a huge language barrier. Most guests spoke Italian. Most staff spoke broken English and Swahili. I spoke broken Swahili, deteriorating Spanish, and English. You can ask a waiter for a banana and could very well end up with a fish. And try to teach a Muslim how to cook a pork tenderloin. It is like teaching a vegetarian how to cook fois gras.

There is no concept of urgency. Most of my staff spends the morning laying under mango trees waiting for breakfast to fall into their lap. If I see a Swahili moving fast, or (God forbid) running, I am certain that imminent disaster is soon to follow. Fire in the courtyard. Maasai performer who can’t swim fell in the deep end of the pool. (Both happened by the way). I had a bartender reach into a drawer for a receipt book and grab a handful of Boomslang, a poisonous African snake well capable of delivering a fatal bite. But nobody is going to move a knife with that sort of rapidity.

I only brought two knives with me. A Global santouku and a pairing knife. Usually I bring a whole roll loaded with all sorts of specialty knives and tools. A salmon slicer, yanagi sashimi knife, bird beak peeler, hefty meat cleaver, bone tweezers, flexible fillet knives, and a host of others. Both of the knives I brought are near ruined. When I am in the kitchen nobody touches them. But when I leave, knives are used to open canned goods and they are sharpened on the concrete block outside rather than the stone and steel in the kitchen.

The village that I am living in is at least two hundred years behind the mainland of Tanzania. Which pretty well puts it about a thousand years behind the rest of the civilized world. Houses are still constructed with mud, mangrove poles, and makuti, or palm-thatched roofs. The local butchery here is enough to turn Ted Nugett into a vegetarian. It is open air with no refridgeration. Slabs of beef lay on a blood-stained tin sheets and are overrun by flies. And for this reason I have my livestock delivered to the back gate alive.


Goats, ducks, guinea fowl, “Swahili chickens”, and just about anything else with a pulse is brought in on a leash or in thatch baskets. Swahili chickens are about half the size of what I am used to seeing in American supermarkets. Their eggs yolks are off-white, almost the dull color of cold butter, from being malnourished and living off of trash. And the meat has a bit more of a game flavor than what most of us are used to. But I guess you could call them “free-range” and make them sound appealing to Americans and Europeans.



All of the animals are slaughtered in the rear of the resort in Muslim tradition. Unless I do it. I just neck the goat and get on with the day. The Muslim staff say a few prayers, point the goat in a certain direction, dig a hole, bury a bit of blood, and pour water over the knife and wound. The thought of chopping off a chicken’s head on a block with an axe and then watching the chicken run around directionless for a minute is absurd. But the Swahili tie up the chickens feet and kneel on their wings before cutting off their heads and bleeding them into the ground.

I tend to hide offal in things like spring rolls and samosas. I just fine chop it and mix in a few vegetables and a bit of curry. People don’t often ask “Hey, what part of the lamb was used to make the Zanzibar Spring Rolls”? I will mince up flap meat, hearts, livers, stomach, kidneys, and whatever else doesn’t look pretty on the plate. But I won’t use the intestines. The putridity and foulness that is emitted out of the pan when these babies are boiled is stomach churning. It smells just like the grass mix that spills out of the stomach when you gut a lamb or goat. You could not hide the repugnancy with the strongest of curries. So I give it to the staff.

The staff boil up intestines and any other part of the carcass that will not be used in the kitchen. The boil-up is served with ugali, which you probably know as polenta. The ugali is rolled into a ball with the right hand (everyone eats out of the same bowl and the left hand is used for wiping), then with your thumb you fashion a sort of scoop or spoon out of it. Dunk your scoop into the mchuzi, grab yourself a chunk of offal, and roll it into your mouth. The Swahili people chew it. I don’t recommend it. You are far better off if you can manage to swallow the whole lot. And I highly recommend chasing it down with a cold bottle of Tusker or Safari Lager.



My fish arrives strapped to the back of a bicycle. Most is caught with hand lines as the people can’t afford proper fishing rods and reels. Big tuna, silver trevalley, sailfish, grouper, snapper, and barracuda. The island is not yet a huge dive destination even though there is world-class reef surrounding it. So the big fish are still around. Some fish are longer than the bicycle that they are tied to. It is sort of like a scene from The Old Man And The Sea unfolding on land.

Usually the same guy who brings me the fish filets it for me. Because he knows that I will give him the head if he does. I keep grouper cheeks and prepare them as a special treat for my favorite guests. But all the rest of the head goes to the fish monger who usually shares it with the rest of the staff. Kitchen knives are used like hatchets to split silver trevalley skulls the size of manhole covers. The heads are grilled over charcoal and picked apart methodically and served with the ever accompanying ugali.