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Ranked shortlist · 10 of 18 cafes
Best cafes in Nairobi
The 10 most notable cafes in Nairobi, in rank order. The order is curation quality — how well attested and how complete each record is — not popularity, and no place on this list paid to be on it.
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1
Cafe Clarion Nairobi
Moi Avenue
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.99 · rank score 2.408, percentile 100 of 18
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2
Cafe Villa Rosa
Villa Rosa Kempinski, Westlands, 69671 - 00400
listed by Microsoft and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.97 · rank score 2.278, percentile 94.12 of 18
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3
Mint and Salt
Uchumi House, Off Moi Avenue, Aga Khan Walk
610 m from Nairobi railway station, rail
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.96 · rank score 2.198, percentile 88.24 of 18
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4
Pointzero Coffee
Moi Ave
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.96 · rank score 2.183, percentile 82.35 of 18
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5
Moov Cafe and Bistro
Mowaka Autocenter, Wood Ave
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.95 · rank score 2.130, percentile 76.47 of 18
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6
Galitos-TRM
Thika Superhighway
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.95 · rank score 2.128, percentile 70.59 of 18
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7
Thorn tree cafe at sarova stanley
Kimathi Str,Nairobi Central
listed by Microsoft and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.95 · rank score 2.090, percentile 64.71 of 18
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8
Cafe Kaya
Slip Road Off Waiyaki Way after Westlands Roundabout
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.96 · rank score 1.976, percentile 58.82 of 18
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9
Alexandre
Off Arwings Kodek Rd
listed by Meta and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.99 · rank score 1.888, percentile 52.94 of 18
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10
Artcaffé Restaurant
Westminster House,Kenyatta Avenue
listed by Microsoft and Overture Maps Foundation · record has a website, a phone and an address · Overture confidence 0.97 · rank score 1.882, percentile 47.06 of 18
How this list is made
Every place in this group was scored by the same model, with each term z-normalised inside the group and capped, so a famous chain cannot win by being famous everywhere. The weights, verbatim:
- attestation by independent providers
- +0.35
- record completeness (website, phone, address)
- +0.25
- Overture existence confidence
- +0.20
- Michelin designation (Wikidata, CC0)
- +0.40
- brand fame (Wikidata sitelinks)
- −0.15
- same-name chain collision
- −0.30
Curation quality, not popularity: how well attested and how complete a record is.
No licensable popularity signal; this ranks curation quality, not taste
Independent check: 5,951 places listed in Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA 4.0; validation only, never published or scored) were matched to our records by name within 250 m. Across the 5,651 that fall in groups of at least 10, the median matched place sits at percentile 73 and 24.2% are in the top decile, against 10% by chance; five families have enough anchors to report (arts, food and drink, lodging, shopping, sport), while health care (5), lifestyle services (17), travel (26) have too few and are not validated. A match needs both the guide and the catalogue to name the same place, which favours well-attested places — a term this rank itself rewards — so these are lower bounds; Michelin's 528 in-group anchors have a median percentile of 100, but that is partly circular: across the Wikivoyage matches, the 17 that also carry the designation term this rank scores sit at 99.93, against 72.55 for the 5,934 without it.
The catalogue carries no rating, review count, price or opening hours, so this file has none.
Station locations from Wikidata (CC0-1.0). Nearest station, not service: no frequency, timetable or departures.
Nobody paid for placement: no ads, no sponsored results, no ratings for sale.
Data: AllThePlaces (CC0-1.0), BrightQuery (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), DAC (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Foursquare Open Source Places (Apache-2.0), Meta (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Microsoft (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), PinMeTo (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), RenderSEO (CDLA-Permissive-2.0).