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Acacia restaurant Emara Ole Sereni hotel Nairobi National Park view fine dining

Acacia — Emara Ole Sereni

#15 in Nairobi International / Kenyan $$$ Emara Ole-Sereni Hotel, Mombasa Road
FF

Reviewed by Fredrik Filipsson · Visited Q1 2026

Lead Curator, Restaurants for Kings

"Sunset over Nairobi National Park, giraffes on the horizon, and a Choma buffet with live music on the third-floor terrace — the only table in the city where the wildlife competes with the food."

8.0Food
8.8Ambience
7.5Value

About Acacia at Emara Ole Sereni

The Emara Ole-Sereni sits at a particular junction of geography that no other luxury hotel in Nairobi can match: it faces directly onto the Nairobi National Park. From the third-floor terrace, where Acacia's signature Choma buffet takes place on selected evenings, the view opens over the park's grasslands — and on clear afternoons and evenings, the wildlife makes its appearances on schedule with the indifference of creatures accustomed to human attention. Giraffe, zebra, wildebeest — the park's residents become the restaurant's backdrop in a way that is genuinely extraordinary and entirely specific to this address.

The restaurant itself operates as an all-day dining destination, presenting international and Kenyan dishes prepared continuously from breakfast through dinner. The kitchen is hotel-calibre — reliable, well-sourced, executed with the consistency that international business travellers demand. The global voyage of flavours on the buffet is earnestly comprehensive; the traditional Kenyan dishes anchor the menu in place. But the standout experience at Acacia is unquestionably the Choma buffet: succulent barbecued meats, live music, complimentary welcome drink, and the park view as the sun descends — available for approximately KSh 5,500 per person.

Saturday Curry Night, beginning from 5pm at KSh 4,500 per person, has become a weekly institution — a serious programme of South Asian and East African curries that draws a regular local following alongside the hotel guests. The breakfast service is among the most accomplished in any Nairobi hotel: fresh-baked pastries, made-to-order eggs, and the kind of properly brewed Kenyan coffee that sets the day correctly.

Location bears noting: the hotel sits just off Mombasa Road, making it exceptionally convenient for arrivals and departures via Jomo Kenyatta International Airport — the journey takes minutes in off-peak hours. For international business visitors, it represents the most experientially distinctive hotel restaurant in the city at this standard.

Best for: Impress Clients

The client dinner at Acacia works on a logic that no downtown restaurant can replicate: before the food arrives, before any conversation begins, the client is already looking at Nairobi National Park. That view — particularly at sunset during the Choma buffet, with giraffes moving against the last light and live music in the background — communicates taste, local knowledge, and a certain operational confidence that a conventional power-lunch restaurant simply cannot generate. Book the Choma terrace. The business takes care of itself.

Best for: Team Dinner

The Choma buffet format — abundant grilled meats, live music, spectacular views, a complimentary drink included — is one of the most naturally celebratory team dinner formats in the city. Everyone eats well, the service is warm and unhurried, and the wildlife sighting that almost inevitably occurs during the evening becomes the story the team tells afterward. It is the kind of dinner that teams remember. The price point, at approximately KSh 5,500 per person inclusive, is justifiable for occasions that require that quality of memory.

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