Delah Coffee (SoMa)

Delah Coffee opened on Fourth Street in South of Market in July 2022, started by Omar Jahamee — eighteen years old at the time — together with his uncle Majed Jahamee. The Oaklandside reported the family's story in November 2023, and KQED's June 2026 account of the Bay Area's Yemeni coffee boom names Delah as the first Yemeni coffee shop to open in the region, the start of a wave that has since put more than twenty across the Bay. The name is the Arabic word for the traditional long-spouted coffee pot, and the logo is drawn from the same object; the group has since expanded to Oakland, Berkeley, Dublin, San Diego and Naperville, Illinois, but the SoMa room remains the original.

No alcohol is served, and the trading hours are what make the cafe useful to anyone going out without it: 6am to 11pm Monday through Thursday, 7am to midnight on Friday and Saturday, and 7am to 11pm on Sunday. The drinks list is short and traditional rather than sweetened into a milkshake menu. Sana'ani is the house-way black coffee with cardamom. Jubani is a light roast cooked with cardamom, ginger and cinnamon. Arabian Qawah is a light roast boiled with cardamom, and Adeni chai is Yemeni black tea simmered with cream and Delah's own spice mix. A drip coffee brewed from the house beans and an iced Yemeni latte round out the everyday orders, with prices in the four-to-seven dollar range that put a full evening's drinking well below the cost of one cocktail elsewhere in the neighbourhood. The counter carries Turkish delight, honey-soaked pastries and savoury turnovers baked fresh each day. The room fills late, particularly with students and with people who want somewhere to sit and talk that is neither a bar nor a chain coffee shop closing at seven.