A Night Out

Last Saturday night Mark and I went to a restaurant that was advertising “Dinner and a Movie”. They were showing 2 different movies – Marley and Me and an R rated movie we didn’t want to see. We decided to try the Marley movie. The restaurant is being run by an American who is trying to use it as a training ground for orphans and underprivileged young folks. There are, as you can imagine, a lot of young adult orphans who missed out on schooling so there are several NGOs and other groups trying to help them out with various schools and training opportunities. Anyway, the restaurant seating area is actually a large wooden deck which is mostly covered over the top but open on the sides. On one wall they had hung a large screen and they projected the movie up on that. They had some couches arranged fairly close to the screen with coffee tables so you could sit there and snack while you watched or we chose to sit at a table right behind the couches. They had a “special” menu for the movie night which included a cheeseburger (a rare find here in Kigali!), spaghetti and meat sauce, a vegetarian dish that included a stuffed zucchini, some kind of tortilla chips with guacamole, vegetable samosas and I don’t remember what else. I ordered what was labeled “chicken and sweet potatoes croquettes “ or something like that. I thought it would be chicken served with croquettes but it turned out to be just croquettes and if there was chicken in them, I sure couldn’t find it! They were very tasty but not quite what I was expecting. Mark ordered the hamburger and said it was good.

The movie part of the evening would have been a nice touch except as the evening wore on, people showed up who were either there to watch the second movie or just to eat. So, voices got louder and the movie became harder to hear. We could get the main gist of the movie but I’m sure we missed some funny lines. By the end, it wasn’t really enjoyable any more simply because we had to work too hard to hear. The restaurant could improve on that a bit by seating non-movie watchers away from movie watchers and by simply turning up the volume.

But, it was a night out with dinner and a movie for $25. I don’t know if we’ll do it again. Maybe if there is something we really want to see. I think the food and atmosphere was good at the restaurant so we will probably go again just to eat and see what the regular menu is like. Hopefully, it’s not too expensive. The worst part of the prices were the cokes! We can buy a bottle of coke for 250 francs at the duka next door to our house. This restaurant charged over $1000 francs for the same coke! The only difference was that it was colder and they brought a glass.