Kahiwa Cafe & Bakery

Own-roastery coffee and a sourdough counter

Filter coffee from the group’s own roastery, a loaf of sourdough baked on site, and a former brewery hall to drink it in: that is Kahiwa in Lahti in one order. The café is the bakery arm of Kahiwa Coffee Roasters, working out of the Malski building, a brewery more than a century old before it became a city-centre destination.

The coffee comes from the group’s own roasting, and the roastery’s products are sold to take away as well as poured at the table. The bakery side is as central as the coffee, with sourdough bread, buns, cakes, pastries, a sweet croissant and artisan chocolates. Saturday brunch is the fullest version of the kitchen: sourdough, cheese, cold cuts, free-range eggs, yoghurt with house-made granola, a smoothie, a sweet croissant to finish, and filter coffee included throughout.

Spacious, comfortable, homely

The house sums up its own room in three Finnish words: tilava, mukava, kotoisa, or spacious, comfortable and homely. The Malski setting earns them, because a heritage hall with a brewing past gives the café far more room than most bakery counters get, and the scale suits a long sit as easily as a takeaway loaf. The building is half the appeal, an industrial hall given a second life as somewhere to eat and drink well.

Named a country winner in the 2025 European Coffee Trip awards, Kahiwa is casual in service and hybrid in purpose: specialty café, artisan bakery and small wine bar in one address. Natural wine is part of the concept, in a small selection that changes, which gives the room a second register without changing its character.

Filter coffee and sourdough first

Start with filter coffee and sourdough. The pairing joins the two strongest parts of the operation, the roastery and the bakery, in the least complicated way available. A cappuccino with a bun is the shorter version of the same visit, and it is the order the room runs on.

For something sweeter, the cakes, pastries, sweet croissant and artisan chocolates cover the case. For a longer sit, brunch maps the kitchen’s range best, and vegan, gluten-free and lactose-free options run through it, which makes the café more flexible than its compact signature list suggests. Take a bag of the roastery’s coffee on the way out and the visit finishes where it started.