Great food – except for the deconstruction

As far as Madame Connoisseuse is concerned, restaurants should serve complete plates rather than make patrons work for their meal. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • At an average cost of Sh600, the food is fresh and healthy which I like, even if the portions sometimes make me want to cry.
  • They have ricotta pancakes at Sh650 and that comes with banana and organic honey.

Wasp & Sprout Cafe seems like just the kind of hipster place that older generations like to poke fun at millennials for.

The kind of cafes taking root around the world, where they are either going to have avocado toast on their menu, serve dishes on chopping boards or a surgical tray if they are feeling particularly clever, and where the menu is likely to have something deconstructed, even the surprising spaghetti bolognese.

The kind of cafe you can call ‘cool’ and everyone unanimously agrees because they have something unexpected like a barber’s chair instead of regular seats for patrons. Or Wasp & Sprout, their barber’s chair is a bicycle on the wall which the millenial in me thinks is quirky, charming and totally cool but my jua kali working uncle would probably look at in bewilderment. “Yaani hawa wameweka boda boda kwa ukuta kama picha?”

Run by a lovely husband and wife duo, this cozy cafe is located right next to Loresho Housing Development and can be a pain to find but the ambiance and food makes it all worth it.

At an average cost of Sh600, the food is fresh and healthy which I like, even if the portions sometimes make me want to cry. They have ricotta pancakes at Sh650 and that comes with banana and organic honey.

One of my favourites is the bircher muesli for which they soak the muesli in yoghurt with apple, raisins and honey, and at Sh450, sometimes I go through two bowls of that in a morning.

INCREDIBLE WAFFLES

The waffles are incredible and you get two at Sh550, and they come with either organic honey or dulce de leche. There’s a tofu that’s scrambled with capsicum, onions and spices, and I refuse to touch that ever again if only because I think tofu is an acquired taste that my palate simple won’t warm up to.

Much like hipster cafes, they have a deconstructed parfait on their menu. While I’m a sucker for greek yoghurt, muesli, berry coulis and fruit, I just so happen to detest the idea of anything ‘deconstructed’. If I go to a restaurant and ask for sushi, I don’t expect to be served the ingredients separately so I can assemble it myself; just save me the hassle and finish the job. Similarly, I wouldn’t invite you to my house and offer you ‘deconstructed ugali’, which I guess would be just water and flour.

If I’m coming to your cafe to work, to break away from the monotony of writing from my apartment, I don’t expect to be assembling anything.

I would have you butter my toast if I could. As such, as far as food trends go, can we stop it with the deconstructed stuff? Please?