Knead
Knead is a very cute bakery located at Kanha building, just opposite Sarit Centre. I had seen so many posts about it and being the pastry lover that I am, I had to check it out.
The setup is very well done. You are welcomed with a large display case of yummy looking croissants and other baked goods when you step in. There are lots of warm colours, lots of lighting, lots of natural light too and plenty of space and different seating arrangements depending on how many you are. My girl and I sat by the far left by the window because the view outside of all the greenery was so gorgeous for a Saturday mid-morning.
The menu is pretty straight forward, they have various breads, pastries (sweet & savoury), sandwiches, bagels, hot drinks and mocktails. The coffee smoffie (KSH550) caught my eye so that’s what I had to drink. It presents very well but I don’t think it’s a very practical drink. It’s basically a latte with a meringue topping.
Looks real cute and tasted great because the meringue adds a good amount of sweetness to it but the problem comes in when the meringue starts to disintegrate into the coffee. Not cute at all. It becomes a mushy mess and because meringue is made of egg whites, bits of it just floats within the coffee, not dissolving as easily - I was completely put off from drinking the rest of the coffee just because it looked like it had lumps in it.
To eat we tried a few things: the salmon bagel (KSH1000), the chicken tikka sandwich (KSH800) and the strawberry cheesecake croissant (KSH500).
The salmon bagel was very very bland The bread was hard (lots of places in Nairobi struggle with bagels for some reason, not sure why), the cream cheese was way too much compared to the amount of salmon - everything about that bagel was just meh. Not worth getting.
The chicken tikka sandwich is what I was quite excited for because they make it on focaccia bread which is one of my absolute favourite breads to eat. The chicken tikka itself was really tasty, the focaccia bread was also a bit hard but not bad - it’s quite large as well so it ends up being quite filling. I expected the sandwich to be warm/warm-ish but it came cold. Despite that I still enjoyed it because the flavours were really good.
The strawberry cheesecake croissant which was highly recommended by our server looks divine! Picture perfect almost. But tastewise, it fell flat. The croissant was hard to cut into (why are all their breads/pastries hard?) and it was also cold… not even room temp, it felt like it had been removed from the fridge, assembled then served to us.
For a bakery, they’re really doing badly in the actual baking I feel or they’re not storing the baked goods well for them to all have such a hard texture. This felt to me like another place where aesthetics are what sells the place. Looks great but the food isn’t worth it.
If you still wanna try it, it’s really great for coffee dates, brunch plans with your girls etc., hopefully they’ll have improved on all this by now because I went back in November and had given them that feedback right there and then.
Ratings
Food: ⭐️⭐️
Service: ⭐️️⭐️⭐️
Ambience: ⭐️⭐⭐️⭐️
Menu
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