A nostalgic return to Rolf’s Place in Rongai

It was Mazingira Day. The sun was out, the day had warmed, and I managed to persuade Lut to drive with me to Rolf’s Place on the southeastern edge of Nairobi National Park. It is something I had been meaning to do for the last 10 to 12 years after Rolf Schmidt died in October 2012. He was a man of many lives – a chef, restaurateur, power weight lifter, judo black belt holder, polo player, police reservist, and raconteur.

He was like Marmite – someone you really liked or really didn’t like. But, like him or not, you had to admit he was a character. Always up to something; always ready to chat; never boring.

I first met him in the late 1980s when I was writing an article about his polo playing. He was a very stocky man then, not tall but well-fleshed. Watching him ride at the Nairobi Polo Club near Jamhuri Park, I felt a bit sorry for his small polo ponies. For the photograph after the match, he posed with a line of four ponies. But he stopped me. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I am in enough trouble with the tax people, let’s have only two of them!’

I got to know him better when he had The Horseman restaurant at Karen Dukas. Before that, he had Red Bull in Mama Ngina Street. It was a restaurant famous for its steaks – much liked by a few of Kenya’s prominent and powerful people. I guess it was one or two of them who enticed him into polo.

As a chef, Rolf had travelled the world and, before coming to Kenya, he was the Executive Chef at the Kilimanjaro Hotel in Dar es Salaam. Before moving on, I must tell you a story about what happened on only his second day there. As soon as he took office, he was told that in a couple of days, there was going to be a banquet at the hotel for heads of state of the SADC countries. He asked what the menu would be because there was no time to plan anything else. He was told: prawn cocktail, mushroom soup, roast chicken and a dessert of fruit cocktail and ice cream. He asked where they were getting the mushrooms from, and he was told there was powdered soup in the store. The banquet was held. All seemed to be going well until a waiter rushed into the kitchen in panic. ‘Bwana. Bwana, the vice president wants to see you’.

Rolf went to the dining room, approached the Vice President, Aboud Jumbe, and asked him what the problem was. ‘There are dudus in the soup. Look!’ Rolf looked and saw the weevils. What he did – he picked a weevil out and ate it. ‘They are peppercorns,’ he said. ‘Oh, Ok.’ The VP finished his soup, and so did everyone else.

Another story, from the time that Rolf set up the boutique hotel and restaurant that quickly became known as Rolf’s Place. It was an occasion when a waiter told Rolf that a guest – it’s almost always a man and a girlfriend he wants to impress – was complaining that the wine he had ordered tasted like vinegar. Rolf sent out another bottle. The waiter came back, saying that the customer was still arguing the same thing. So, Rolf filled a carafe, half with vinegar and half with wine. ‘Take it to him, with my compliments.’ Rolf followed, and when he saw the guest taste and splutter, he said, ‘Now that is vinegar!’

That is the kind of man he was. And if you would like to read more of his life and his stories, then there is his autobiography, ‘No Need to Lie’. He sent me the manuscript and asked if I would edit it. It’s one of my regrets that I felt I had to say No, because I was so busy at the time. But I asked him, ‘Why have you chosen that title because you have lied on so many of the pages?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘For one thing, you write more about your fist fights than your sexual encounters.’

‘Well, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.’

OK, but those who knew him well enough would also know that there were certain things that he had to lie about.’

I had some good times at Rolf’s Place. So, I wanted to know how it was doing after Rolf was no longer there. But, for a time, I heard nothing but disappointing news – that there was green slime on the water of the swimming pool, for example, that the furniture in the large dining veranda was in disrepair, and that the objects in the lounge and bar were covered in dust. But, in Trip Advisor recently, I have been reading much better reports. So, we went.

It would be difficult to miss the entrance: via the safe wooden and metal suspended bridge that spans the rock-strewn Mbagathi River. So, the lodge stands high on the southern bank with a view over the green of the park.

It was very pleasing to see that the lounge and bar is now very well maintained: no dust on the Rolf memorabilia – silver trophies, paintings and prints, polo helmets and, especially, the small bronzes that, so I understand, Rolf crafted himself. I find it hard to imagine how such a bruiser of a man could have spent the time working on such fine artistic pieces.

For lunch, I had to order what used to be my favourite dish there – the Rolf’s Pepper Steak, accompanied by the red house wine and followed by chocolate ice cream. Lut had the mukimo with mixed roasted vegetables. It was good that we were able to talk with the man who now rents the place and who is working on the restoration. He is John Albertsen – a Dane, who thought he was going to retire in Kenya but, becoming bored with that, he has taken on this management task. He loves the place, and he wants it to keep telling something of Rolf’s story.

There is still work to do, particularly in smartening up the dining veranda – erecting more umbrella shades, covering the old wooden tables with cloths, and pruning the menu and wine list to have no unavailable items. It has seven bedrooms. The pool is clean and active. I understand that the lodge has become popular again with young Kenyans. I hope, soon, the clientele will be as wide as it used to be.

John Fox is Chairman of iDC Email: [email protected]