Located in Diani on the beach next to Forty Thieves, Ali Barbour's is a convenient and popular spot to grab a bite while holidaying at the coast. A few weeks ago I took a weekend trip to Diani with a girlfriend, known to many as the Buffet Queen, for a much needed getaway from Nairobi.
Some friends, Hot Pastis and the hubby, were also on holiday so we
decided to meet up for dinner at "the Cave" one night.
We headed over to Forty Thieves, the sister bar/restaurant to the Cave, and
settled in for some sundowners and requested a reservation next door. For low season, in a bar that was mostly
empty, the waiter told us it would be hours before he could get us a table next
door. I’m not sure if this was a ploy to
get us to stay at his table and have dinner or what but once we said we’d wait we
quickly got an earlier reservation.
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Once they “squeezed us in” we headed over and got
settled. The ambiance is definitely the
selling point here and the bougainvillea on the table was a nice touch along
with soothing background music that was noticeable, but not distracting. I think you would be hard pressed to find a
restaurant with a more unique ambiance than this place. We were a bit concerned it might start
raining as it had many of the previous evenings, but were informed there was a
sliding roof overhead, reassuring us that our dinners would not drown. It
was also nice that there were mounted fans for those humid Diani evenings to
keep us from sweating to death.
