Bahari Coffee Shela

Coffee at the Shela jetty

The counter sits on the water in Shela Village, a few steps from the jetty where the boats come in, and that setting does more to shape the place than any menu would. Dhows and passengers arrive, the coffee is made carefully and without hurry, and nobody is trying to get to an office.

The intent is summed up in the café's own three words, fresh, delicious and mindful, and the counter holds to them. This is a coffee bar rather than a restaurant that keeps a machine, run inside the wider hospitality of a Lamu guest house and its dining room.

A first solo project after 25 years in coffee

The café is its founder's first independent venture after a quarter of a century working in the coffee industry, opened on the coast partly as a personal retreat from the mainland. That history explains the seriousness behind a small island counter: the standards belong to a long career in coffee, applied at the scale of a village.

It has been noticed well beyond Kenya. Bahari Coffee was named a finalist for Best New Cafe in the 2026 Sprudgie Awards, a specialty coffee award rather than a general travel listing, which is unusual for a café this remote and this small.

The scale is part of the appeal. A counter on an island reached by boat cannot pretend to be anything other than what it is, and the result is a café where the coffee is the only thing being sold and the setting does the rest of the work.

How to use it

Come for the coffee and let the food be whatever the kitchen is doing that day. The drinks are what the place is built around, while the plates belong to the surrounding restaurant and change.

Ask what is being brewed when you order, since a small island operation works with what has arrived rather than with a fixed lineup, and take it to a table facing the water. It works best as a morning stop between boats, or as a slow hour in the afternoon when the heat is at its worst and the waterfront is the only sensible place to be. Either way it is worth arriving without a schedule, since the boats set the pace of the village and the counter follows them.