An aviary is a large enclosure or structure for keeping captive birds. It’s big enough for them to fly around and they often have plants to simulate the natural environment. You see that concept at the Dusit Princess Hotel on Mimosa Lane, in Westlands. (Off Church Road). They are over the bar, over the booths. The creativity of it all is unique.
Does one feel like a bird in the Aviary? No. One feels like a very pensive John Wick would nurse a Blanton’s bourbon as he waits for the villain to come downstairs for a good old-fashioned gunfight. It’s a bar of great illusions with mirrors all over. You can sit at the bar and look at someone across the room without actually looking at them.
Behind the bar is a section which might or might not have been partitioned with wood and glass. There, in the booths, very sophisticated young ladies dressed to the nines imbibed cocktails with other girls, their drifting laughter as brittle as Bordeaux glass.
By the doorway, the room opens into a lounge-ish area with very colourful seats that remind one of a premium airport lounge. More ladies sat there on dates with other ladies and on the next table, a boisterous cluster of men gathered drinking beer and looking like they were just from a conference.
One whole glass wall overlooks the cityscape that spreads out in lights and seduction. Because it’s also dark outside, this same glass wall turns into another large mirror and so the whole room seemed to swirl with illusions and reflections.
A deejay at the end of the room offered an appropriate soundtrack to this swish tableau. The Aviary is gorgeous aesthetically and with its reflecting mirrors, represents the great metaphor of Nairobi.
My Lady had a MaiTai cocktail (a 7/10) and chicken wings which she complained of being “very little, in a very big plate for even a bigger price.” I nursed a bourbon, like John Wick waiting for a villain to come downstairs for a good old-fashioned gunfight.
