Coffee with cardamom? Former Fresno bar gets new life as cafe serving flavors of Yemen
Walk into one of Fresno’s newest coffee shops and it’s clear this is no Starbucks.
First off, it’s quiet – no yelling baristas anywhere, but instead, soft Middle Eastern music is playing.
The coffee is something different too, flavored with spices like cardamom and ginger, served in glass coffee pots and poured into little ceramic cups with gold handles.
Bab Al-Yemen Cafe opened in late October on West Shaw Avenue, near Marks Avenue, in between The Curry Pizza Company and Triangle Drive In Burgers. Longtime Fresnans will remember the spot as the former Border Cantina, the bar attached to Plaza Ventana Mexican Restaurant.
It’s completely different now.
The coffee shop sells Yemeni coffee and pastries, along with American drinks like lattes and a caramel macchiato.
Yemeni/Turkish coffee
But it’s the Middle Eastern coffee that’s the star of the show here. It’s coffee grown in Yemen and made in the Turkish style.
The coffee beans are organic and dried in the sun, ground finely and usually mixed with spices like cardamom, ginger and cinnamon.
“We add cardamom to pretty much everything,” said owner Ahmed Ghazaly.
The coffee is made in a pot on a stovetop. The grounds, spices, and sugar are added to a pot that quickly gets bubbling. You can watch it be made through a clear barrier.
For newcomers, Ghazaly prepares mufawar, a medium-roast coffee with condensed milk and cardamom, a spice sometimes used in baking that has a savory hint of rosemary or anise.
Another option? Cascara.
This is the husk of the coffee bean boiled in water to prepare a sort of strong tea with a slight fruity flavor.
It doesn’t have much caffeine.
In Yemen, people drink coffee in the morning, a blend of coffee and cascara in the afternoons, and just cascara in the evenings, Ghazaly said.
He serves the coffee with pastries. Try the sabaya if you want something traditional, a dough made with lots of honey.
There’s also honeycomb, an eye-catching pastry drizzled with honey with little pillows of cream cheese inside.
The coffee shop and its history
There is so much history in this place that if business is slow enough, it’s worth asking Ghazaly about.
The name of the coffee shop, for example, Bab Al-Yemen, is the same name as a market that’s more than a 1,000 years old in Yemen.
“You walk the market, smell all the spices,” he said. “Every time I go back to Yemen, it’s a lot of memories. ”
He came to the United States when he was 25, about 32 years ago.
Yemen was one of the first countries to export coffee. And traders brought spices from India to that market that made their way into Yemenis’ everyday coffee.
That mocha frappuccino that’s so popular at Starbucks? The word mocha comes from the port of Mocha in Yemen, a major shipping spot for coffee, he notes.
Ghazaly’s normal work is in restaurants. He’s a partner in the Triangle Drive In next door, for example.
Opening a coffee shop is something new, but something he really wanted to do.
“I’m happy to do this, to introduce something new to the community,” he said. “It’s part of me.”
Details: Bab Al-Yemen Cafe is at 3173 W. Shaw Ave. Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays.
This story was originally published November 26, 2021 at 11:19 AM.
