About Café Golis
A Somali kitchen with a coffee bar attached.
We cook the food of the Somali table — camel, goat, muqmad, suqaar — alongside the Kenyan and Middle Eastern staples Nairobi grew up on, and finish with pastry from a European bench. One room, one pass, in Adams Arcade on Ngong Road.
What we cook
Four traditions, one pass.
Nothing here is a fusion. Each dish is cooked the way it is supposed to be cooked — they just happen to share a kitchen, and a menu that runs to 137 items.
- 01
From the Somali table
Muqmad cured and soaked in ghee. Suqaar diced and seared hard and fast. Haneed goat slow-roasted until it gives way. Canjeero to fold it all into.
- 02
From the coast and the city
Chapati made to order, masala chips finished with lemon, mandazi and mahamri with spiced chai — the Kenyan breakfast, done without shortcuts.
- 03
From further north
Hummus blended fresh and loaded with chicken, beef or spiced camel. Foul medames with olive oil, lemon and cumin. A proper Arabic salad.
- 04
From the pastry bench
Croissants laminated in-house, éclairs piped and glazed the same morning, tres-leches soaked overnight, tiramisu built on real espresso.
The thread through the menu
Why camel.
Camel runs from the first page of the menu to the last. It is the meat of the Somali pastoral kitchen, and it rewards patience: steamed slowly it turns silky, diced into suqaar it takes a hard sear better than beef, cured as muqmad it keeps for months and comes back to life in hot ghee.
The milk is the other half. Naturally sweet and slightly saline, it foams like dairy but tastes like nothing else — which is why the espresso bar pulls camel milk lattes and cappuccinos alongside the usual, and why the tea comes by the pot.
The other counter
Coffee, brewed properly.
Espresso for the morning rush, and three filter methods for when there is time — V-60, Chemex and French press, each brewed to order. The pastry case is restocked through the day: croissants plain, almond, pistachio and cheese; milk cakes, opera, red velvet, tiramisu.
