Wooden Bakery

The Wooden Bakery, Khurais Road is a nice place to have lunch.

The Wooden Bakery company hails from Lebanon.  Their specialty is Arabic and European breads, French Pastries and Arabic sweets.

The shop downstairs displays all their bakery delicacies and bread as well as a selection of deli meats.  Wooden Bakery also makes pizza.  Most bakery items you see downstairs you can buy upstairs in the family section.

The restaurant also has more substantial items on their menu.  Salads, sandwiches and so on.  I do like the coffee here, except the cups are too small.  Price wise you could probably buy cheaper at other bakeries, but the food here is quite good quality. 

I tend to make a beeline for the tables with comfy lounge though everybody else seems to prefer those seats as well, so going off peak times is better for your butt.

The Wooden Bakey has opened smaller branches in a couple of other locations around Riyadh, but the one I prefer is on Khurais Road.  The building has the unmistakable windmill on it which was subject to Muttawa scrutiny not long ago.

Story has it (and yes this is gossip) that the original windmill was a 4 bladed wooden structure.  The Muttawa deemed that the 4 blades looked too much like christian cross so asked the company to do something about it.  They added another blade, although it didn't fit correctly with the existing 4 and looked more like a stump than a blade (according to Hubster).  Plus the weight of the extra blade put a strain on the mechanism that turned the windmill.  So, the company had to take down the entire windmill and reconstruct a 5 blade structure made out of lighter material, hence the blade that now adorns The Wooden Bakery.

How true is this story?  Who knows!.  And it doesn't really matter.  With or without the windmill the food and coffee at The Wooden Bakery has still maintained excellent quality