We went on a breakfast date, but didn’t exactly find what I expected. I’d heard good things about Café Layal and thought it sounded like a good place to grab an omelette and coffee.

Apparently though, there’s Café Layal as in the place where coffee is roasted and sold, there’s the boulangerie Layal where the best pita bread in town comes from, and then there’s also Le Layal, their restaurant which Jenn reviewed here. So we were standing in front of Café Layal, expecting omelettes but only seeing large containers of freshly roasted coffee.

When you’re us, coming across freshly roasted coffee is never a bad thing. So we went in and started talking with the woman behind the counter.

An hour later we walked out after having sampled beans from every single roast, buying five kilos of our favorites and enjoying a complimentary espresso from the Mexican roast that the woman thought we’d under-appreciated. (She was right! Next time…) We were thrilled to find coffee we loved at a reasonable price, plus supporting local businesses is always our preference.

Here’s what you should know:

– Café Layal roasts coffees every Monday, Tuesday and Friday.

– If something’s not fresh, they won’t sell it to you.

– They love coffee and spilling the stories behind their beans.

– Current stock includes Guatemalan (our favorite!), Mexican, Guinean, Ethiopian, Brazilian, Vietnamese…

– You can also find their coffees at Cafés du Monde downtown and in some grocery stores around Dakar, like Hoballah’s (Le Parcours / the French Fry store) on the Corniche.

– They are the exclusive Dakar distributors of Lino’spresso dosettes, which are compatible with Nespresso machines, but much less expensive.

Café Layal
44 rue Paul Holle, near Lamine Guèye

They do not offer delivery service, but for orders over five kilos, they’d consider it. But half the fun is going down there and talking coffee! The other half, I’m enjoying right now.