In that field, 2K Restaurant in Bukesa and near the Old Taxi Park, Feedrite Restaurant on Kanjokya street, Bukoto, and Sebankyaye Restaurant behind the Wandegeya main market stand out.
And if you were wondering why the food tastes almost similar, despite the different restaurant names and addresses, it is because the recipes are the same and shared, despite ownership being different.
Their mastery is a result of decades of experience, as well as the business-oriented innovations that have seen them stand out from the rest. And in an era when more and more people are conscious about health, many Ugandans are running away from junk food to local dishes. But as way back as 1947, a youthful Yusuf Mukiibi had foreseen this.
Mukiibi is the surviving patriarch of this food empire and family. I met him at his home in Makindye, where he narrated the humble beginnings of what was Sanyu restaurant, before it expanded to create other units.
Back in the 1940s, Mukiibi says, the most common way of preparing food in Kampala restaurants was through frying.
“I had just come to Kampala from Butambala but I had learnt the basics of cooking during village get-togethers,” says Mukiibi, who is in his nineties now. “White-collar Ugandans working in offices loved to taste European and Indian cuisines and several top restaurants in Kampala suburbs mostly prepared exotic foods.”
“I didn’t want to go with the bandwagon and I thought of a need to innovate with our traditional dishes.”
Pioneer restaurant
Mukiibi’s first venture was Sanyu restaurant in Kisenyi along Musajjalumbwa road.
“It was a busy place; a hub for trading and was not a slum as it is today. So, we specialized in local food with luwombo (sauce steamed in fire-treated banana leaves) and on average a plate cost one shilling,” he recalls. “My clientele was mostly people around the area and some workers at the Kabaka’s palace. It is strange, but traders from Kenya and India greatly loved to taste our traditional food because it was unique.”
When business picked up, he went back home to Kibibi for backup. He failed in the quest to convince his elder brother Juma Kinene to tag along, but somehow managed to persuade the younger brother, Abdul Sebankyaye, to join him in Kampala as a cashier.
“He was still in school but I didn’t trust the way my workers handled the money,” a jolly Mukiibi says.
Sebankyaye Restaurant is born
Sebankyaye’s arrival as a cashier greatly relieved Mukiibi, who expanded his business acumen by joining cross-border trading, leaving Sebankyaye to run the restaurant show. By the early 1960s, Sebankyaye had mastered the basics of managing a restaurant and left Sanyu to start his own, Sebankyaye restaurant.
“We had become too big and he needed his big break. He established his first restaurant in the Kisenyi neighbourhood, but later moved it to Katwe and later Bwaise,” says Mukiibi.
In a surprise twist, Sanyu restaurant would later close when the state incarcerated Mukiibi in Luzira prison at the height of the 1966 Buganda crisis. But upon release in 1971 when Idi Amin took power, Mukiibi did not resume his restaurant business and instead left the shine to Sebankyaye.
“A lot had changed in Kisenyi and the businesses there didn’t suit my restaurant,” he says.
Sebankyaye restaurant at Wandegeya
As Mukiibi went into full-time trade, Sebankyaye expanded to Wandegeya. I first got to know about Sebankyaye restaurant in the 1980s when it operated on Bombo road near the former Makerere High School. The good food aside, what made it stand out then was that Sebankyaye inculcated values of food business into his children, who often worked as waiters and waitresses.
This won over the hearts of the Makerere University community with relatively cheap but tasty food.
“Restaurants normally served food at lunch time and would close by 7pm, but Sebankyaye’s operated like a 24-hour restaurant that ensured ready food at any time of the day,” Mukiibi says. “It wasn’t easy because Wandegeya was already a hub for fast-food restaurants that university students frequented.”
Lucky Restaurant
The fall of Amin forced Mukiibi to abandon business in Uganda and flee to exile in Kenya. Stranded due to limited movement, he decided to reignite the food business when he created Lucky restaurant in the heart of Nairobi along River road. It was a popular place for Ugandan exiles in Kenya.
“I picked up from scratch but business flourished almost immediately. I remember serving many top NRM leaders such as Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, Kirunda Kivejinja, Amama Mbabazi, Abu Mayanja (RIP), Sam Njuba (RIP) and Besweri Mulondo (RIP),” he says. “I had to rent the whole building and add accommodation facilities.”
In 1986, Mukiibi returned home, but he says he no longer had the zeal to engage in the food business.
“I had aged and wanted to retire,” he says. “I was satisfied because I had mentored many people into the food business.”
He left the Kenyan restaurant in the hands of one of his sons. Meanwhile, Sebankyaye’s stock in the food business was rising higher and higher and in the 1990s, he bought a prime piece of land in the heart of Wandegeya, where construction of a new restaurant kicked off.
Like Mukiibi before, Sebankyaye too passed on his culinary formulae to elder brother Kinene, who had just retired from teaching at Kabasanda primary school and finally was considering earning from the family’s God-given talent.
In 1997, Kinene joined the food business along with his wife Hajat Safina Nakku Kinene. Sebankyaye guided the couple in their humble beginnings when they opened their first restaurant, with a big breakthrough coming when they won a deal to supply food for support staff of former Greenland bank.
The Kinenes too got their children firmly involved in the business, right from preparation of food to serving it, giving them a hands-on experience that would pay dividends in the future.
2K is born
However, the closure of Greenland bank in 1999 left the couple at a crossroads and in 2000 they had to restart from scratch after getting a new location in Bakuli, right after the current traffic lights along Hoima road.
They named it 2K restaurant to coincide with the start of the millennium and within weeks, it was attracting several former workers of Greenland bank, who brought along their friends.
According to Engineer Rashid Katende, one of Kinene’s children, it was a tough start after relocating to Bakuli.
“It wasn’t easy to get our clients from the city centre to move to Bakuli, but we got some public figures to eat at our new place for free in order to attract others,” he says.
By now, Hajjati Kinene had taken the lead at the restaurant, which quickly became popular with socialites and top businessmen in town. She was a trademark fixture at the Bakuli restaurant, whose popularity was huge.
When it picked up, business expanded to include outside catering services but the space was getting smaller and smaller as their tasty chapattis, pilao, luwombo dishes and big glasses of fresh juice drew clients in droves. Finding parking space was a nightmare. In 2006, Sebankyaye passed on, leaving management of his franchise in the hands of his children.
In 2010, the Kinenes bought land at the nearby Bukesa opposite Club Ambiance to build their new home, but before they could finish the structure, Kinene, whose health had deteriorated, died in November 2014.
The demise of Sebankyaye and Kinene, however, did not deter the families from continuing with the food business. But whereas some of the late Sebankyaye’s sons later broke off to start independent restaurants under the same name, the Kinenes have stuck together and all the children are shareholders in 2K.
In fact, the Kinenes managed to complete a three-storied structure, which they launched in September 2015. Kinene’s son Twaha Serunjogi, who runs the restaurant, led me on a guided tour of the facility, which houses the restaurant, offices, a conference hall and accommodation for staff. There is even a mosque.
In 2017, 2K opened a branch at Shell Ben Kiwanuka road to cater for downtown customers and Katende admits they are contemplating starting another branch in the upmarket Kololo soon.
Enter Feedrite
In 2014, Katende’s wife Fauzia had just left university when Hajjati Kinene convinced her to avoid job-hunting and start her own venture in the food business in Kamwokya called Feedrite.
“I was really not interested in food, but seeing how successful 2K was, she convinced me to give it a try,” says Fauzia. “It wasn’t easy getting clients and rent was high, but Hajjat Kinene mentored me to persevere.”
After overcoming initial challenges like having few customers, in April 2018, Feedrite moved to a bigger place just next door, a strategic location on both Kanjokya street and Prince Charles drive.
No escaping them
In December 2018, Feedrite opened its first branch on Bukoto-Kisasi road and also included other businesses such as a washing bay and laundry services. According to Hajat Fauzia, she targets opening more branches around Kampala.
For now, what Mukiibi started decades ago in Kisenyi has fed a lifestyle for Kampala’s food lovers. Among them, these descendants of three brothers from Butambala have ensured that all classes of Kampalans have a taste of their unique recipe.
While Sebankyaye restaurant remains true to its roots of feeding the humbler university environs of Wandegeya, Mulago and Makerere at relatively affordable prices, Feedrite restaurant throws in some fanciness to the plating, presentation and location, charging a little higher than what you would otherwise pay in Wandegeya, where Sebankyaye’s food popularity makes a scramble for parking space very real.
But for the foodie that also likes to sit in fancier spaces when tearing apart their luwombo lwa semutundu, that is where 2K restaurant comes in. The efficiency, furnishing and even an executive dining option all add up to a more expensive dish.
Make no mistake, none of the three restaurants ever sits vacant, and they are proof that true entrepreneurship is about passion for what one is doing.
