Serving French culinary the classical way

Since she was young, JOY MAINA loved cooking. She nurtured her skills through cooking escapades with her mum as well as four years of intensive culinary education.

Nailantei Norari @Nailantei Norari

“Growing up, I wanted to be a lawyer. I instead chose to go to culinary school with the full support of my family.

My mother had to run after me as I would insist on trying to put pots on fire and of course I was too tiny to do that,” Joy Maina shares with a laugh. 

And she would have been an equally great lawyer just as she is a great chef, if her quick wit is anything to go by.

We are seated at her restaurant, Nabo Bistro, a French American bistro on Olenguruone Road in Lavington, where she  recently reopened after complying with the Ministry of Health directives

Joy talks about her four-year culinary course and a year’s internship in France and her extensive experience training under Michelin star chefs in world famous restaurants such as Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley California.

Her training in French culinary skills and her work experience in the USA is clearly visible in the items on the menu, with tacos and wings showing off her skills picked up while in the USA and cabernet braised lamb and chicken roulade being clearly French. She, however, uses organic Kenyan ingredients.

“Even as I schooled, I always knew that I wanted to set up my own restaurant and bring the finesse of a bistro to Kenya.

It took me two- and-a half years of intensive planning to get the restaurant open and working in November 2019.

And of course like in most start-ups, I had to do everything from being the chef to coming up with the restaurant’s rustic and industrial décor,” she explains passionately.

Sailing through the storm

The last born in a family of four children explains about her passion for cooking and the love of expressing herself through food.

How that passion pushed her to start her own restaurant, especially since it would give her autonomy and the freedom to express herself through specially curated menus, sourcing of fresh ingredients and even in the look, feel and experience of her dream establishment.

So, despite the fear of the unknown, wondering whether a restaurant was a feasible idea and whether people would show up or not, she muscled through the doubts and did it anyway.

“Entrepreneurship is a continuous learning journey, where no amount of planning can prepare you for.

The hardest thing was putting systems in place that would work in the foreseeable restaurant’s future such as sourcing for the team to work with.

For instance, we have a core team of three where I am in charge of daily operations, one employee is in charge of finances and another in charge of systems.

We have also had to learn how to deal with and survive a pandemic just a scant four months after opening,” Joy further elaborates on the challenges of being an entrepreneur.

As a person with great social and interpersonal skills, Joy has had to leverage this to mingle and interact with customers.

She has learnt to lean on her strong set of skills both in the kitchen and while mingling with clients while working on strengthening her other skills such as the financial side of the business from sourcing for startup capital to managing the capital sourced.

She explains that having a knowledgeable team does not mean you should not learn about that aspect of business, especially since you will need to be knowledgeable in order to successfully supervise or lead your team.

Millennial entrepreneur

In regards to her experience with societal pressure and expectations of a millennial business owner, Joy explains how it is hard to prove your worth.

“As a millennial, you have to fight a lot harder to gain respect. You also constantly have to prove a point that you are still here, running Nabo with a lot of hard work and dedication despite of or maybe because you are a millennial.

But I feel that so long as you are passionate about something whether you are a millennial or a 70-year-old, nothing will stop you from achieving your goal whether it is people’s outlook on you based on age or just societal hurdles.

I mean there are child protégés being piano virtuosos at seven and doing world tours.

It really does not matter what label your generation has been given, passion trumps everything,” says Joy who insists she is married to her job.

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