Qahwah House (Cleveland)

Qahwah House describes itself as a family business founded in 2017 with the aim of sharing Yemeni coffee culture, and its founder, Ibrahim Alhasbani, comes from a family that has farmed coffee in the Yemeni highlands for eight generations. The company is run from Dearborn, Michigan and says it now has more than thirty cafes across the United States. The Cleveland-area one is in a shopping centre at 25102 Brookpark Road in North Olmsted, about twelve miles south-west of Public Square. In the company's own words, each cafe is designed to recreate the warmth and hospitality of a traditional Yemeni coffee house, with beans sourced directly from Yemen's highland farms.

The section of the menu headed Yemeni Style Coffee and Tea is the reason to come. Sana'ani is a medium roast with cardamom. Jubani mixes medium and light roast coffee with coffee husks, cardamom, ginger and cinnamon. Mofawar is medium roast served with cardamom and cream, and Rada'ey is a light roast with ginger and cardamom. Qishr is made from the husks of the coffee cherry rather than the bean, brewed with ginger and cinnamon, and drinks more like a spiced tea than a coffee. Adeni Chai is Yemeni black tea with cardamom, nutmeg and milk, and a plain Yemeni Tea comes with cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. A conventional espresso bar, iced drinks, refreshers and organic teas sit alongside, and the counter sells pastries, light bites and retail bags of the house roast.

No alcohol is served. The company's page for this cafe gives hours of 8am to 11pm, and other listings show it opening an hour earlier on weekdays and running to midnight on Friday and Saturday, so check before a very early or very late visit. Ordering is at the counter for dine-in or takeout. It is one of three Yemeni coffeehouses within about a mile and a quarter of each other in North Olmsted — Baladi Coffee House is on Lorain Road and Shibam Coffee on Brookpark Extension — which gives the west side of the metro a late-evening option with no bar attached, alongside the kava bars of Lakewood and Ohio City.