The Alcove Restaurant serves Indian and Chinese food at Sea Cliff Hotel in Dar es Salaam. The kitchen has cooked since 1987, with Indian chefs preparing tandoor breads, biryanis and curries, and Chinese chefs handling Cantonese and Szechuan dishes like crispy chicken in plum sauce or prawns in garlic sauce. The dining room shares space with the Alcove Bar, which serves cocktails before or after meals.

The restaurant caters for events — conferences, corporate functions, cocktail parties — and the bar has a terrace for drinks outside. The menu covers both cuisines, so you can start with Indian bread from the tandoor and finish with Shanghai lobster. The bar team is known in Dar es Salaam for its cocktails, which they suggest pairing with the curries.

The hotel sits above the Indian Ocean, though the restaurant itself does not face the water. What keeps the place busy is the kitchen’s long tenure in the city: thirty-seven years of biryanis and plum sauce, with the same recipes through changes in the hotel around it.