Growing Yemeni coffee scene brings late hours and spiced chai to Buffalo:
https://buffalonews.com/life-enterta...home-top-story
"As a senior at Lackawanna High School, Amin Almontaser dreamed of becoming a lawyer.
Then he took a stroll down Warren Avenue in Dearborn, Mich., the largest American city with a majority Arab American population.
The street was “alive” with Middle Eastern businesses. The number of choices – where to eat, shop or drink coffee – was overwhelming, unlike anything Almontaser had experienced in his beloved hometown of Lackawanna.
When he returned home, he wondered if Ridge Road, which neighbors told him was once a vibrant business district, could eventually resemble Warren Avenue. While his friends were participating in things like Senior Skip Day, Almontaser got to work.
He opened Socotra Café (671 Ridge Road, Lackawanna), the area's first Yemeni coffee shop later that year, in 2021, using some of his Yemeni mother’s recipes.
“In my family, coffee is everything,” Almontaser said.
Almontaser was ahead of the curve locally, but Yemeni coffee shops have been sprouting up in cities across the country for the last decade. The trend has reached Buffalo and doesn't look like it's slowing down soon.
Two Yemeni coffeehouses, Sana’a Cafe in North Buffalo and Raha Coffee House in Black Rock, opened in February. Haraz Coffee House, a growing Yemeni coffee chain that started in Dearborn, is opening its first Western New York location at 471 Elmwood Ave. in June. Almontaser is planning on opening Socotra’s second cafe at 547 Elmwood Ave., in the former Cereal Spot space, in a couple of months.
“There’s going to be a lot more to come,” Almontaser said. “It’s a trend.”
Late hours and cardamom
Raha Coffee House (370 Amherst St.) is filled with sunlight and customers sipping chai at their laptops by day. But on weekend evenings, when the hours extend to midnight, the dimly lit cafe’s vibe shifts.
The longer hours are a staple of the new Yemeni coffeehouses, which are all open until at least 10 p.m. every day except Sunday (when they usually close at 8 p.m.).
“I know you’re not supposed to drink coffee at night, but that’s how we are,” said Abdulgawi Mohamed, co-owner of Raha Coffee House. “We love to stay late at night and chill and relax and have a cup of coffee or tea and chit-chat."
In the evenings at Raha, plush chairs and couches fill with groups of caffeinated friends. Sometimes, it’s standing room only. The crowd is diverse, Mohamed said, and includes a lot of Bengali, Palestinian and Egyptian people, additional to Yemeni, and many young college students.
Mohamed and his business partner, Bassam Harhara, are from the same city in Yemen, Aden, though they didn’t know each other until their families moved to Lackawanna in 2006, while they were still in school. They’ve lived in Lackawanna for nearly 20 years, both graduated from Erie County Community College, and opened a coffee shop to bring a slice of home to Buffalo.
"That was the whole idea," Mohamed said. "To make it just like home."
Traditional Yemeni coffees, teas and pastries are served at each of the cafes, in addition to standard espresso-based drinks, like lattes and caramel macchiatos. Traditional drinks can also be served in pots and kettles for groups to share.
The Adeni chai, for example, is made with cardamom and milk, but each cafe makes it their own way. It’s the most popular drink at Sana’a Cafe, according to assistant manager Nagi Hassan.
Other Yemeni coffee shop staples include Jubani, which is made with coffee husks and spices and tastes like a cross between tea and coffee, Mofawar, a coffee with cream and cardamom, and Turkish coffee, a strong, rich and small coffee, like espresso.
These are coffee shops, not restaurants, but expect to see two customary pastries and a few desserts. The beehive, also called honeycomb, is a bulbous bread filled with pockets of cream cheese, topped with sesame seeds and usually drizzled with honey. Sabaya is a crunchy and flakey bread, similar to baklava, made with dozens of thin phyllo dough layers.
Maps of Yemen can be seen on each of their walls.
“When someone does come in here and they ask me questions,” Almontaser said. “It’s kind of a nice, proud feeling... It’s like, yeah, this is our culture.”
Yemen's storied coffee past
All of the coffee at Socotra, Sana’a, Raha and Haraz, is sourced from Yemen, once a hub of international coffee trade.
For hundreds of years, farmers have been growing coffee beans in the terraced mountains of Yemen. The country's coffee beans are celebrated for their earthy flavors and hints of dried fruit and chocolate.
"That's why we're coming back strong here and working with farmers back home, just to start this business again," said Sana’a Cafe Operations Manager Sadeq Alaqel. "It's dying out."
Mohamed’s family owned a coffee bean farm in Yemen before he was born. Mohamed never saw the farm, but he’s committed to investing in his home country.
“We’re trying to give them an opportunity to have jobs and work,” Mohamed said. “At the same time, we benefit here.”
Mohamed and Harhara have big plans for their coffee beans, which they roast in Buffalo. They dream of seeing their Yemen coffee beans in supermarkets across the country.
They're not the only Yemeni coffeehouse owners with ambition.
Almontaser hopes to open third and fourth Socotra Café locations in Amherst and Tonawanda.
Sana’a Cafe ended up in North Buffalo, located at 1207 Hertel Ave., because Yaseen Albraq was looking to get out of the pizza business. He moved to Buffalo from Yemen about six years ago and previously ran a pizza and shawarma shop called Slice of New York in the same space. But he wasn’t passionate about pizza.
What he knew, and loved, was coffee.
He reached out to his Yemeni American community for advice and connected with Bassery Al Riashi, owner of Sana’a Cafe in San Francisco, who was looking to expand. Buffalo’s large Arab population made the city a natural fit for another location, especially because they had a restaurateur eager to run it, Alaqel said. Al Riashi hopes to have 15 locations open nationally by the end of the year, including another possible cafe in Buffalo.
Alaqel said he believes the trend is propelled, at least partly, by Yemeni Americans seeking to serve their own community and share their culture with more people. Yemen has been embroiled in civil war for years, leading to one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, but its culture and history is rich, especially when it comes to coffee.
"It's not really great [in Yemen] right now," Almontaser said. "But the culture is still here and we're very proud of it."
None of the business owners in Buffalo plan to stop at one independent Yemeni coffee shop. They’ve seen others, such as Haraz Coffee House, find a lot of success serving traditional Yemeni coffee drinks served in chic cafes with late hours throughout the country.
“Tim Hortons, in every corner they have one,” Mohamed said. “So why not have our Yemen coffee in every corner?”
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