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Ugandan food is hearty, starch-based and built around what grows locally: green cooking bananas, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, beans and groundnuts, served with stews of beef, chicken, goat or fish. It is rarely spicy, and the best of it is cooked slowly over charcoal. These are the dishes worth trying on a gorilla safari, and where you are most likely to find them.
Matoke
Uganda’s best-known dish is matoke: green cooking bananas, peeled, wrapped in banana leaves, steamed and mashed into a soft, mildly flavoured yellow pile. It is the everyday staple of central and western Uganda, including the hills around Bwindi, and is usually served with groundnut sauce, beans or a meat stew. Lodges often offer it alongside international dishes, so ask for the local version.
Luwombo and groundnut sauce
Luwombo is a Buganda speciality for special occasions: chicken, beef, fish or mushrooms with groundnut paste or tomatoes, wrapped in a banana-leaf parcel and steamed for hours until tender and fragrant. Groundnut sauce (binyebwa) is the everyday companion to almost everything, a thick, nutty peanut stew that is good with matoke, rice or sweet potatoes. Vegetarians eat well in Uganda thanks to beans, groundnut sauce and greens.
Posho, beans and the daily plate
Posho is a stiff maize porridge, similar to ugali in Kenya, eaten with beans or stew in schools, homes and roadside cafés. A typical local lunch, often called a “local buffet”, piles several starches on one plate (posho, rice, matoke, cassava, sweet potato) with your choice of beans, chicken, beef or fish. In the south-west you may also meet millet bread (kalo) and, in Ankole, eshabwe, a creamy ghee sauce.
Street food: rolex, chapati and grilled meat
The rolex, a chapati rolled around an omelette with tomato, onion and cabbage, is Uganda’s favourite street snack, cheap and filling for a road day. Look out too for chapati and mandazi, roasted maize and gonja (roast plantain) sold at roadside stops, and muchomo, skewers of grilled goat or beef. On the road to Bwindi, roadside vendors at towns such as Mbarara and Kabale sell these through the car window.
Fish, insects and seasonal treats
Tilapia from Lake Victoria and Lake Bunyonyi, fried whole or stewed, is widely available. In the rainy seasons, especially around November and May, you will see nsenene, fried grasshoppers sold as a crunchy, salty snack, and in the east, malewa, smoked bamboo shoots from the slopes of Mount Elgon. Uganda’s fruit is excellent: pineapples, small sweet bananas, mangoes and passion fruit.
Drinks and where to eat
Ugandans drink sweet milky tea, and the country grows fine coffee; see our guide to tea and coffee. Local beers are easy to find, and waragi is the national gin. For eating out, see our guides to Kampala restaurants, where to eat near Bwindi and restaurants in Kabale. If you want to eat like a local, start with Ugandan breakfasts.
Frequently asked questions
Matoke, steamed and mashed green cooking bananas, usually served with groundnut sauce or a stew.
Not usually. Most dishes are mild, with chilli sauce served on the side.
A popular street snack: a chapati rolled around an omelette with tomato, onion and cabbage.
Yes. Beans, groundnut sauce, greens and starches such as matoke and posho are everyday food.
