Delightful food, cheerful staff

Aangan Indian Restaurant made its debut in Kampala way back in 2009 and over time has successfully established itself as being amongst the best Indian restaurants in the city. The founder, Alox Badoni, cut his spurs with the mighty and famous Haandi Restaurant where he was the General Manager for several years and steered it into pole position for Indian food where it ranked supreme and unrivaled for a number of years. In 2009 he threw in the towel and went solo and has never looked back.

In 2019, the year preceding the great COVID-19 Pandemic, Aangan Indian Restaurant had the distinction of being among the top 1’000 tax payers out of 357’000 registered tax payers in Uganda. By any standard, this is a worthwhile and commendable achievement. Another noteworthy feat was how Aangan managed not to lay off any staff during these turbulent and uncertain times during COVID-19 times by implementing a revised work plan for the members of staff. This entailed putting the workers on a flexible work schedule where they would alternate their work rota on a weekly basis, thus ensuring that nobody went without earning wages.  In tandem with this arrangement was a modest CARE package of essential food items for each worker. 

I am sure that many Ugandans are curious as to the origin of the name Aangan which is derived from the Hindi word Aanganwadi that refers to the court yard of a house. Apparently, in rural India an Aangan is a meeting point where folks get together to yarn, greet and socialize. 

Sometime in 2014, Alox Badoni the founder and Managing Director of the enterprise, decided to open a branch in Victoria Mall in Entebbe, where they held forte for four years and found themselves frequently turning away customers owing to the space limitation. As a result of this deluge of customers, they were obliged to look for larger premises resulting in the establishment of a guest house equipped with a first class restaurant. They came up with the idea of looking for a property, such as a guest house within the Entebbe environ that could combine both accommodation and good Indian cuisine and thus came about the acquisition of Kalungi Guest House. 

Kalungi Aangan Guest House not only serves breakfast for their guests, but also for the public at large. Being a guest house, meals are pretty much available at any time of the day or night. 

The dining room is plain and simple which belies the wonderful food that they serve at Aangan. Glancing at the menu which also features some Chinese favorites such as stir fried rice, hot and sour soup, chicken wings with oyster sauce to mention just a few items. The menu has a myriad of choices of well-known Indian food from which to serve including much loved runners such as the tandoori chicken or chicken tikka masala which are nicely spiced chicken chunks that are marinated in a wonderful yogurt and spiced seasoning. Meat lovers would be well advised to check out the traditional tandoori goat ribs that are always incredibly tender and succulent. The Indian thali is very popular as are the plates of assorted Indian dishes. The full meal in one plate offer a staple such as fish or chicken wings or even whole fish served with rice, chips or naan and a salad. 

As for Indian desserts, these have never been anything to write home about and usually do not appeal to Ugandans but for those of you with a sweet tooth ice cream would be best deal of if you are looking for something more healthy then a refreshing fruit salad would be your best option.