Can vegetarians eat well in Rwanda?

Yes, and most easily at lunch: beans, rice, plantain, cassava, potatoes and greens make up most of a buffet, so a full plate without meat takes no special request. The thing to ask about is the cooking, as some cooks add dried fish or a little meat to the greens or the beans. Avocados are large and plentiful, and fruit — bananas, pineapples, passion fruit and tree tomatoes — is sold at every market and pressed into juice in many eateries.

Is Rwandan food spicy?

Not in the pot: the cooking is mildly seasoned. The heat comes at the table, from a chilli oil or sauce made with very hot peppers and set out in a bottle beside the plate. A drop or two is the usual measure, on brochettes, beans and fish alike.

Can I visit a coffee farm or a tea estate in Rwanda?

Yes. Washing stations in the coffee hills around Lake Kivu and near Huye receive visitors on coffee tours, which follow the bean from the bush through picking, pulping, washing and drying to roasting and a cup at the end; hotels and tour operators in the area arrange them. The stations are at their busiest during the harvest, from about March to June, when the cherries come in. On the edge of Nyungwe, walks through the tea estates are arranged locally, often combined with a day in the forest.

Is it impolite to eat in the street in Rwanda?

Eating while walking along the street is not the custom, and many Rwandans regard it as impolite. Food is eaten sitting down — at home, at a restaurant table or at a market's eating stalls — and a snack bought on the way is usually kept for the next stop.

Food guide

What Rwanda Eats and Drinks, From the Lunch Buffet to Banana Beer

Rwandan cooking is plain, filling country food built on what the hills grow — beans, plantain, cassava, potatoes and greens — and it is eaten without ceremony: from the buffet of a town eatery at midday, from a bar's charcoal grill in the evening. The local dishes are the ones to ask for by name, as hotels and lodges tend to cook international menus. The country's best-known crops, coffee and tea, are part of the trip too, in the cafés of the capital and on the farms and estates of the hills.

Updated 2026-10-05

The lunch buffet

At midday the small eateries of Rwanda's towns set out a buffet, the everyday way to eat lunch away from home: a row of dishes along a counter, from which the plate is filled. Beans stewed in a light sauce are on nearly every buffet, as on most family tables, with rice, boiled or fried plantain (ibitoke, the green cooking banana), cassava, sweet potatoes, potatoes and often chips. The greens are isombe, cassava leaves pounded and stewed, often with peanut paste or palm oil, and a stew of beef or goat completes the plate for those who want meat. In homes the sauce is often eaten with ubugari, a stiff dough usually made of cassava flour. A buffet in a small eatery is usually paid in Rwandan francs, in cash.

Brochettes and the evening grill

In the evening the charcoal grill takes over. Brochettes — skewers of goat, the favourite, or of beef — are grilled at bars, roadside stalls and restaurants alike and come with grilled plantain or chips. Pork in fried or grilled chunks, known by the nickname akabenzi, is a staple of the bars of Kigali. The drink alongside is usually a lager brewed in Rwanda or a soft drink, and a shared plate of brochettes over a beer is a common way to spend an evening out.

Fish from Lake Kivu and the other lakes

On the shore of Lake Kivu, the fish to order is sambaza: small, sardine-like fish netted at night, fried whole and eaten head and all, often as a snack with a beer. Tilapia, grilled or fried whole and served with chips or plantain, comes from Lake Kivu and the country's other lakes and is on menus well away from the water, in the capital too.

Milk and the milk bars

Milk is held in high regard in Rwanda, where cattle have long been prized, and it is a drink in its own right, taken by the glass. It comes fresh, often served warm, or as ikivuguto, a thick fermented milk close to a drinking yoghurt. In Kigali and the towns, milk bars serve both: small places with a counter and a few tables where people stop in for a glass during the day.

Coffee and tea from the hills

Coffee grows on small farms across the hills, mostly arabica of the Bourbon type. The ripe red cherries go to washing stations, where they are pulped, washed and spread to dry on raised tables in the sun. Most of the crop is sold abroad, but the cafés of Kigali serve the country's own beans. Tea grows on estates of clipped, bright-green bushes on the high ground, among them the slopes along the edge of Nyungwe Forest. In homes and small eateries the everyday hot drink is tea rather than coffee, usually boiled with milk and sugar, sometimes with ginger.

Banana beer and sorghum beer

The traditional drinks are brewed at home in the countryside. Urwagwa is banana beer, made from the juice of ripe bananas, and ikigage a cloudy, slightly sour beer of fermented sorghum; both are poured at weddings and family celebrations and belong more to the villages than to the restaurants of the towns.

This overview comes from Visaja's worldwide missions database (visaja.com), checked against official government sources; for binding answers, the mission itself always has the final word.