In Salmiya there is a small bakery with a green front and a white sign, and taped to its glass a sheet carrying the Philippine flag and two words: “Filipino bread”. It does not open before 3 in the afternoon, and a queue forms outside it. The wait is fifteen minutes at best, and can reach a full hour in winter, when people will stand outside for it.
The item people queue for is Spanish bread: six pieces for half a dinar. The shop is called Laila Bakery, four people from one Filipino family run it, and it is about ten years old.
What Spanish bread is
Despite the name, Spanish bread is Filipino rather than Spanish, and is also known there as senorita bread. A soft dough is rolled around a sweet buttery filling, then coated in breadcrumbs before baking, so it comes out golden with a slightly rough surface. It is eaten cold or warm, and the filling is what decides how good it is.
The second most requested item in the shop is cheese milk bread.
What is on the shelves, and for how much
The shelves are arranged the Filipino way: every item individually wrapped, with a green or yellow price tag above it. The prices all sit in a narrow band, between 250 and 500 fils:
- Chicken asado — 250 fils. The cheapest thing on the shelf.
- Chicken asado pandesal — 500 fils, the same filling inside Filipino pandesal.
- Tikoy malagkit — 500 fils, the sticky rice sweet.
- Ensaymada with cheese — 500 fils.
- Sliced cheese bread — 500 fils.
- Bibingka with macapuno and cheese — 500 fils.
- Kababayan — 500 fils, a small yellow cake.
- Banana cake — 500 fils.
- Hopia with different fillings: ube, mongo and onion.
Why the wait
Because the oven is the bottleneck, not the demand.
Inside the shop a sign reads “Fifteen minutes, please” — meaning the next batch needs a quarter of an hour. One oven’s output cannot absorb demand at peak times, and the problem shows up plainly with large orders. The biggest order the bakery has taken so far was around fifty packs, worth close to fifteen dinars.
Those large orders are bought mostly by Kuwaitis, either for a chalet or for household staff. That is a shift in itself: at opening the founders expected Filipino customers first and foremost, and Kuwaitis turned into a large share of the trade.
A recipe that has not been published
The bakery does not disclose what is in the filling. Joycel Aquino, who handles sales and service, says her brother — the bakery’s founder and its cook — kept adjusting the recipe over the years until it stood apart, and puts the number of people selling anything similar in Kuwait at around four.
She points to one property they sell on: the bread stays soft for days rather than going hard.
Who Laila is
Laila is not family. She is a Palestinian housewife whom one founder’s mother worked for, and the name stayed in the memory until it became the bakery’s. One of the founders later gave her own daughter the same name.
What you need to know
- Location: Salmiya. The published source does not give the street, and we do not print an address we have not verified.
- Hours: 3 in the afternoon to midnight.
- Price: six pieces of Spanish bread for half a dinar. Everything else 250 to 500 fils.
- The wait: fifteen minutes for the next batch. For a large order, call ahead.
Further reading: Kuwait Times, 20 August 2026
Kuwait One, once a week.
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