Hotel café and afternoon tea in Sharq / Al Andalous (The Avenues, Waldorf Astoria), Kuwait

Peacock Alley

Hotel breakfast with a New York accent

3.5 of 5

Peacock Alley is the Waldorf's old Manhattan lobby room, and the Kuwait branch carries the name into a daytime café. The description on the hotel's page is New York style with Parisian influences, and that is a fair read. It opens at eight and runs until eleven at night, so it works as breakfast, lunch, tea and a quiet evening.

The morning menu is where it earns its place here. Lemon pancakes, a Scottish smoked salmon and brioche bagel, and an egg cocotte shakshuka that nods to the region without making a speech. The pastry case does the croissants, pain au chocolat and muffins you expect from a room with Paris on its mind. Afternoon tea is the Waldorf tradition and the kitchen changes it with the season.

This is a hotel room, so go for the calm rather than the grit. The coffee is slow, the tables are far apart, and nobody hurries you out. It suits a meeting that needs to feel civilized, a morning with a parent who likes a proper tablecloth, or a long pot of tea after a day of errands in the Avenues. Know what you are buying and it is money well spent. Ask which pastries came out of the oven last, and take that one. The people behind the counter know.

Order this

Egg cocotte shakshuka, Smoked salmon brioche bagel, Afternoon tea

The damage

$$$

Go

Morning start from 8am, or mid-afternoon for the tea

Find it

Waldorf Astoria Kuwait, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Road, Kuwait City

Instagram

@wak_peacockalley