Connect Coffee Roasters

Roasting and pouring in the same building

Connect's Chiromo branch is the roastery café, which is the reason to choose it over the group's simpler counters. Coffee is roasted on site and served on site, so the bar is not buying beans in from elsewhere and dressing them up; production and service share one room and one set of decisions. That gives the visit a different texture from a standard coffee counter, particularly for anyone who wants to ask how a lot was sourced and roasted before deciding how to drink it. Kenyan single origin is the obvious strength, poured as filter or pushed through the espresso machine depending on the hour. The café was placed at number 81 in The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops for 2025.

A ground-floor room on the Westlands edge

The café sits at ground level in a mixed-use riverside building near offices and homes, set back from the heavier congestion of the main Westlands strip. That position does two jobs. It makes the place a daily stop for the people working and living around Chiromo, and it gives Nairobi coffee drinkers a destination worth crossing town for. The room is built for staying rather than only for collecting: there is proper seating, and it works for a laptop morning as readily as for a short break between meetings. Connect also runs counters in Kisumu, Hurlingham, Gigiri and Sanlam, but Chiromo is the one carrying the roastery identity.

Start with the Kenyan pour-over

Order the Kenyan pour-over first. It is the cup that shows the roasting most plainly and the one that makes the most of what the country grows, with the acidity and blackcurrant weight Kenyan coffee is known for arriving without milk to soften it. From there, a flat white is the sensible second order, since the milk drinks are built on the same house roast and the bar is comfortable with them. The house line is that the coffee is tailor-made to what you want, so the counter conversation is not decoration: say whether you want it lighter, stronger or with more milk, and the bar will work with it. Food is not the reason to come. Treat the visit as a roastery session and let the cup be the point, with a bag of the house roast to carry out if the pour-over makes the case for itself.