Aokit Food Hub, otherwise known as “Daniella’s” is the small, culturally intense restaurant with resonant homely and cultural vibes, located along Moroto road in Kotido town.
It is feels a lot like home but where your mother is a supermodel, super-chef and you will actually be left alone to mind your own business and surf the internet. It also carries, with classy subtlety, the unspoken responsibility to represent the modern in our Karamoja context where the modern and the traditional are inextricably braided, existing both side by side and as spirit and body.
Aokit Food Hub has the intensity of a feeling I am yet to name. In three words; it is authentic, intense and culturally savvy, pretty much like its proprietor.
“Daniella, why do you do this?”
“I just love cooking, and also, this is not just about me. It is about everybody who works with me. Sometimes it gets so hard that I want to give up, but when I see my team, I just cannot leave them.”
Besides the restaurant, Daniella works as a radio presenter at 92.7 FM Etoil a Karamoja/Voice of Karamoja, a local radio station, where she daily floods the airwaves with her voice in her enviable mastery of and fluency in three languages: English, Ng’akarimojong and Leb Thur, the three major spoken languages here.
To understand the significance of this restaurant, it is necessary to appreciate the unique context in which Kotido district and pretty much the whole Karamoja region exists, particularly the delicateness of handling a business here., and one both so necessary and lofty at the same time as a food business.
Also, Karamoja is a place with its own wiles and in many ways it takes a combination of wildness and exoticness to ace it here. For Daniella, her magic formula seems to be the resilience, flair and zero chicanery with which she handles her business. These are suited up in a disarming smile which makes one feel really important when you step into her restaurant.
Say what you will, but Daniela is easily Kotido’s queen of customer care.
She has easily mastered the art of human relations. Even better, she has managed to multiply herself severally into her team, creating artisans of human relations quite like herself. She is no-nonsense but never speaks rudely or shouts at any of her team members.
“I have an aunty who runs her own food business. If you went to her establishment, you would never tell that she is the owner. She works alongside her staff like she is a staff member herself. That’s exactly how I want to be” She lives up to this.
Aokit Food Hub is a breaking news waiting to happen. I am happy to have told this story before that time. So the next time you’re in Kotido, ask for Daniella’s restaurant and pass by. It is yet a small establishment, but the vision is worth eating a plate of food for.
Kind regards,
Anna Grace
