Street food

In Tanzania, the establishment is where the action is. No need for such a primitive thing as bricks and mortar - Tanzania has leapfrogged the tedious evolution of restaurants from homes to inns to Michelin stars to fast food, and gone straight for the pop-up eatery.

Kahawa Chungu - the easiest way to get caffeine and companionship. These coffee shops consist of one peripatetic guy with a portable coffee heater (a pot on coals with a long handle), a bucket of water for washing up, and a tray of kashata (peanut brittle/croquant). These men walk from street corner to street corner and a few benches turn into a café. Pay TSH50 for a cup (or has it gone up to 100?) of 'bitter coffee', and  sweeten it up with a piece of considerably more expensive kashata if you like. Chat solemnly with your fellow coffee connoisseurs. Return the cup in a disdainful manner and pay without too much fuss. Some coffee vendors also have hot sweet ginger (tangawizi) drink. (AfriRoots' Reality Bike Tour takes you to visit the coffee guys' HQ where they roast and pound beans and make kashata.)

Zanzibar Mix - a tart green mango-based soup with savoury bits added to your taste: sliced grilled banana, bhajia (chickpea or lentil fritters), coriander, crispy vermicelli bits, chopped potato, mini-mishkaki. Delicious. Places I know that sell zanzibar mix include a hole-in-the-wall opposite Manyema mosque in Kariakoo (close to Lumumba St on Mafia St), New Coco Beach, and the corner of Malik and Mindu street in Upanga (after 5.30 PM).

Deep-fried cassava - deeply unhealthy but super good. The unforgiving cassava roots turns into something soft, tender and friendly and get doused in lime, salt and chili. One woman has her cassava wok off the road at Savei on the way to UDSM; others serve it at New Coco Beach. By the way don't walk to Coco beach anywhere near dusk and don't carry anything except a bit of cash. 

Coconuts: green coconuts are called madafu (sing. dafu. Hard brown coconuts are 'nazi', soft z please). These are sold off the backs of bikes all around, but you can find them for sure at the beach downtown off Ocean Road (now Barack Obama Drive). Chopped open at your convenience. Drink the water and ask the dude with the panga to dig out the flesh for you. Coco beach too.

Oranges: same thing, sold off the backs of bikes. You can usually smell the vendor form about 20 meters because of the delicious aromas from his (usually it's a man) peeling the fruit. The vendor peels off the green part of the skin and slices the orange nearly in half, so you can suck out the juice without staining your hands. Likewise: green mango with chili and salt in season.

Roast maize: rub the ear of maize with a slice of lime from the stall, shake over salt and chili and take your time chewing.

Deep-fried snacks: I wouldn't recommend eating these if you have a metabolism any slower than that of a 17-year old marathon-running boy. But a quick guide if you must: mandaazi = unsweetened donuts. Vitumbua: slightly sweet puffy UFOs from rice flour, ideally containing cardamon. Chapati: thoroughly oiled grilled flatbread. There's a great guy known as 'Mstadhi' (he's religious) running a little bakery with top-quality snacks (including, sometimes, crépes - 'chapati za maji' - with a bit of chopped onion and coriander) in Upanga: on Malik St just to the south (=towards Diamond Jubilee Hall) of  the crossroads with UN Road, one or two doors towards the crossroads from the Congolese Embassy and diagonally opposite the scout house.

Streetside breakfast: All of these baked goods (although they're deep fried not baked) can be had at a streetside breakfast stall, with hot sweet spice tea (but no coffee until the afternoon). Combine the stuff you like: cassava, chapatis, mandaazi... One standard combination is a plate of beans (maharage, poss. with sugar) and a chapati. For some reason the breakfast stalls are usually run by women. Once you start looking around in the morning you'll see where they set up. One small cluster is outside IST secondary school on Chole Rd; another near the bus stop outside Thai Village.
There's a big one at the dangerous curve of Kimweri Avenue  - just downhill from Thai Village where Kimweri Ave makes a sharp left, at the entrance to the alley with the mosque and Fitness Centre. There are at least ten stalls there, specialising in different things so you get a food court effect. (By the way when I say 'stall' I mean stool, bucket and wok.) The women fetch dishes from each other and must have a fiendishly sophisticated accounting system to keep up with who owes who 300 TSH. There are tables and benches for the customers.