On my first day in Kigali, I had lunch on the veranda of the Banana hotel, eating perfect grilled fresh fish from Lake Kivu.

The horrors of the 1994 genocide weave into every part of life here in Rwanda, and before long, the glamorous owner, Françoise, confided that, on her return to Kigali from Brussels after the massacres, it was "like a horror movie", silent and completely empty except for the crows and the shamefaced dogs that had gorged on the bodies.

It's my first night at Xaranna, a safari lodge on an island in the Okavango delta. We eat outdoors at a long table, as the shape of a hippo ploughs the moonlit water and tiny reed frogs make their xylophone music.

On a mysterious wooded island on Lake Como, reachable only by boat, there is a restaurant where the same set menu has been served since 1947. It is perfect, so why change it? And at the end of the meal - of every meal served there - the proprietor performs an exorcism to rid the island of a curse dating back to the 12th century.