To Epicureans, Boko Boko Restaurant in Mombasa, Kenya offers the finest in Seychellois cuisine. Founded by home-taught chef Yolanda Firth in 1975, the restaurant continues to draw diners four decades after it opened.

Located in Kanamai, about 25 kilometres north of Mombasa on the Mombasa-Malindi highway, the airy makuti thatched structure has a simple interior and décor, surrounded by a lush tropical garden where patrons enjoy nature walks. The garden is home to two giant tortoises from the Aldabra Island and six crocodiles. But at the end of the day, it is the food that attracts people to the restaurant.

“Creole food,” Yolanda says, “draws from many parts of the world. This is because of the different peoples that make up the Seychelles archipelago — fusing different cultures to create a distinctive Creole cuisine. But on the whole, Seychellois cooking is spicy and uses lots of coconut milk.”

Gourmets from around the world who have sampled the food at Boko Boko have been enthralled by Yolanda’s cooking, which she learned from her Seychellois mother.

“My mother was a great cook and she taught me a lot. I have built on what she taught me,” Yolanda says.

Her specialties at the recently renamed restaurant, which started out as Porini, include the famous Boko Boko chicken, marinated in Creole spices and grilled over charcoal, Fillet au Poivre, a pepper steak in rich coconut sauce, and Tafti Creole, sea fish that is grilled after being marinated with garlic and onion. The expansive menu also offers Mahe beef — fillet strips fried in golden onion — and Curry Kinondo, a Seychellois curry.

A favourite with customers since 1975, Yolanda says, is Porini Chicken, which is steamed in tamarind sauce and goes well with African foods like ugali and chapati.

The dining experience is unusual — traditionally clad waitresses provide water for washing hands in African clay pots, and the dinnerware is made from wood and clay, with even the spoons made of mvule hardwood.

The food itself is amazing. The Porini Chicken that I tried was unlike any I’ve tasted and the spices give it a delicate, exotic flavour.

Besides the Seychellois food, Boko Boko is also known for its Swahili dishes prepared by local chefs. They include Samaki Paka, which is fish coated with a spicy coconut sauce, maharagwe (beans) in coconut milk, and mbaazi, pigeon beans also cooked in coconut milk.

The prices are fair. Starters, salads and desserts cost between Ksh100 ($1) and Ksh250 ($2.50), steak, fillet or chicken start at Ksh600 ($6) and Swahili dishes start from Ksh150 ($1.50). Seafood dishes range from Ksh700 ($7) to the highest priced item on the menu, charcoal grilled Creole Lobster marinated in Seychelles spices at Ksh4,000 ($40).

The fine food at Boko Boko has attracted a varied clientele from ordinary folks to well known people. Even Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has dined at the restaurant.

Yolanda says her most memorable guest was Rupiah Banda. The retired Zambian president first visited the restaurant around 1976 and 1977 — she cannot remember the exact date. But she does remember that he was the minister of foreign affairs at the time.

Two months ago, Mr Banda came to dine again after almost four decades away.

“So happy to be back at Porini (Mombasa) and to find Yolanda still cooking, happy and doing well,” he wrote in the visitors book.

The enigmatic Boko Boko owner, now in her seventies, was born in Mariri, Kwale County. Her father was a Catholic missionary from Uganda while her mother was an orphan from a convent in Seychelles. Her parent’s marriage was arranged within the church.

Yolanda got married to a British national, Collin Firth, in 1963. They met when Yolanda was working at Sun N’ Sand beach hotel near Boko Boko while Firth was working at a clearing and forwarding company in Mombasa. However, he died 12 years later, leaving Yolanda to take care of their three sons and two daughters on her own.

Yolanda now has five grandchildren and the most famous is top model Tamara Firth, aka Malaika Firth. Despite being little known in her grandmother’s country, Malaika has been making headlines globally and has even been likened to catwalk legend Naomi Campbell.

Malaika, in an interview with the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said, “My grandma has a restaurant back in Kenya and I love her grilled ‘Boko Boko Chicken.’ It is exquisite and gets a 10/10.”