Nairobi is a city on the move. The past decades have seen the Kenyan capital fast transform into a vibrant, modern metropolis. Vast high rises are replacing older, informal settlements as the city has become the centre of a rapidly developing tech industry referred to as the Silicon Savannah.
And it’s growing at a staggering rate. Its population has doubled to six million inhabitants since 2008, according to World Population Review, and projections predict it will be at 10.5 million by 2050.
With that growth and useful energy, it’s not much of a surprise that it’s also staking a claim as the continent’s cocktail capital. And since launching in 2019, Nairobi’s Hero has quickly developed into the city’s standout cocktail bar on the global stage, named the best bar in Africa at the 2025 World’s 50 Best Bars.
“Hero opened almost six years ago now,” says Shamim Ehsani, co-founder of Tribe Hotels Group, owner of Nairobi’s Trademark Hotel, home to the bar.
“At the time, there was no real cocktail scene in Nairobi. Of the limited mixed drinks that you’d find, it would be a very basic offering. Nothing that was using local ingredients, nothing was all that creative or homemade. It was basically mixing soft drinks or juices with alcohol.
“When we opened Hero, we saw an opportunity to change the culture in Nairobi and introduce something new to the scene, and there was an appetite for it.”
While cocktails could be found in Nairobi, they didn’t reflect the nightlife of the city itself.
“They tended to be in high-end hotel bars,” explains Richie Barrow, the group food & beverage general manager for Tribe Hotels Group.
“We're renowned for safaris in Kenya, so around the camps there were cocktails, but the offering was basic – Mojitos, Caipirinhas, that kind of thing – and the pricing was unreachable for a lot of the Kenyan market.
“With Hero, we simply put cocktails on our menu and didn’t have anything else, and it meant that people were driven towards ordering cocktails. From there, as the bar got busier, our bartenders became more experienced, more creative, and that’s where the culture has grown from. Today, there are five or six independent bars in Nairobi with a serious programme in place. It’s been awesome to see the switch and the growth is visible.”
Standout bar
Speaking with Ehsani and Barrow, the notion of growing their regional scene is commonly referenced. It seems it’s as important for Hero to be a standout individual bar as it is to be a champion for African bartending.
“It was always our intention [to be a pioneer of cocktail culture] in Nairobi when we started, but now, after we’ve had the good fortune of getting some attention, we see it as our responsibility for Africa as well,” says Barrow.
“We didn’t always have that wider vision, but we’ve sort of been charged with this responsibility of being the face of African cocktails. Now, a lot of people look to Hero for our use of ingredients, for techniques, or equipment, or things that we’re still learning.”
And part of that responsibility is centred around introducing the cocktail world to Nairobi.
“Our guest shift programme has been so important in broadening our horizon,” Barrow continues. “Around the world, obviously, I don't know how much impact guest shifts have on local markets, but we can attest to Kenya and what it’s done for Kenyan bartending and Nairobi bartending. We had Julio Cabrera come from Café La Trova. He hosted a simple masterclass about making a Mojito and, ever since, you can go into bars around the city, and you can tell which bartenders were in that masterclass; that’s a tangible impact.”
It’s this attitude towards cultural sharing that led the Hero Bar team to collaborate with New York PR agency Hanna Lee Communications to launch the inaugural Kenya Bartender Week, a week-long cocktail festival that took place across the city last September and has announced its return for August this year.
“We launched last year, and we’re incredibly happy with how it went,” says Barrow.
“During the week, we had lots of educational stuff, with guest bartenders who were involved in things like panel discussions and masterclasses for the bartender community here in Kenya. We’ll lean into that again. And then the takeovers were more consumer driven to get the city involved.
“Last year, we were quite specific in mainly hosting bars from across Africa. So, we had some bars from Cape Town, from Johannesburg, from Accra and then from Dubai as well. This year we’re going to invite bars from further afield.”
Hero Bar has accepted a mission befitting of its name – to be a positive force for change within African bartending, and it’s a responsibility that Barrow doesn’t bear lightly.
“We’re trying to effect change for the wider community; it would be naïve for us to try to just keep that attention for ourselves without building a market beyond us,” he says.
“I want people to experience here. Kenya is a fantastic place to visit. You can be feeding a giraffe at 8am and then pouring drinks at the top of Trademark Hotel in the evening. When the bar world visits, people become our ambassadors and, thankfully, they’ve gone on to speak positively of us.
“I think that we have become the tip of the spear for African bartending – it’s a role that is a great badge of honour, and we’re holding it very humbly.”
