Haraz Coffee House (University City)

Haraz Coffee House's Chestnut Street room was the chain's first Philadelphia location, and its position matters: it sits in University City, between the Penn and Drexel campuses, in a neighbourhood with tens of thousands of students, a large international population and a significant number of people who do not drink for religious reasons. That is the demand a Yemeni coffeehouse is built for, and it explains why the format arrived here first.

The menu is the full Haraz list. Jubani and qishr are the two husk-based drinks — jubani uses coffee together with the dried husk of the coffee cherry, qishr uses the husk alone — and both are spiced with cinnamon and ginger. The husk drinks are the ones worth travelling for; they are effectively unavailable outside a Yemeni house, they carry far less caffeine than a brewed coffee, and they taste like a spiced fruit infusion rather than like coffee at all. Harazi mufawar takes coffee with cardamom and cream for something richer. Sana'ani is the plain, excellent version: black coffee, cardamom, nothing else. The tea side runs adeni karak chai with the house haraz spice blend and cream, plus a saffron version.

The hours run to ten most nights and eleven on Friday and Saturday, opening at seven in the morning. That covers both ends of a student day, and the venue programmes the room rather than leaving it to fill itself — a Mahjong and Matcha evening ran in August 2026, which is precisely the sort of thing that turns a cafe into a place people arrange to meet.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has tracked the city's Yemeni coffeehouse boom closely, and described these rooms as operating without alcohol or reservations. Both halves are the point: nothing to book, nothing on the back bar.

On alcohol the evidence is the menu and the halal, Muslim-owned character of the business rather than a statement in those words from the venue. Caffeine is the only active ingredient served — no kava, no kratom, no THC. Note that this is one of two Haraz rooms in Philadelphia; the Fishtown location keeps later hours.