Kaldis: Great service, not-so-great food

On the one day I decided to venture to Nairobi’s CBD, it started pouring.

As you may know by now, sometimes that results in hour-long traffic and to beat that, commuters will pop into one of the numerous bars around town to wait it out.

I would have, except it was 2pm on a Sunday and my companion doesn’t go to bars for reasons I can never seem to remember.

Given that we were along Kimathi Street, we immediately rushed over to Java, but it seems like everyone was thinking along the same lines because it was far too crowded. Kaldis Cafe is right across the road and so we decided to head there instead.

A waitress promptly handed us a menu as soon as we sat down, and I was impressed by the fact that the staff did not seem overwhelmed by the full house.

A quick scan through it, and given the options, I settled for the signature drink in pretty much every mass eatery in the country: passion juice.

To accompany that, I asked for the first familiar item I saw, an almond croissant, which so happens to be my favourite off the breakfast menu at Artcaffe.

LOAF OF CROISSANT

Three minutes later the croissant was delivered. It turned out to be a shapeless loaf of bread, the kind my grandmother would have slathered in margarine before slicing it into perfect little triangles.

Yes, it was a loaf, not a pastry. It also had too much yeast in it, as though the baker wanted the dough to rise faster but instead ended up with excess gluten and a strong chalky flavour. It is a wonder that the dough did not collapse in the oven, although the excess yeast explains why it was shaped nothing like a croissant.

In hindsight, it was probably naive to expect anything more from a place where waitstaff pronounce ‘croissant’ exactly as it is written then look at you blankly if you say it correctly.

If you are going to include a French pastry in your menu, train your staff: you can’t use the excuse that the name is foreign. When our waitress came to take away my plate, she asked why my pastry was largely untouched. I admired her earnestness and I wished the chef had put as much passion into ensuring all the food items on the menu were of high quality.

My companion ordered a chicken pasta dish, which was decent. I still can’t decide if Kaldis gets packed because it is generally cheaper than the Java across the road, is convenient or if there are people who actually like the food.