A Yemeni Coffee Shop Keeps the Masses Well Caffeinated Until Midnight

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week they were joined by guest artist Wahab Algarmi, whose debut middle grade graphic novel, Almost Sunset, is available in bookstores now.

In a college town like Berkeley, a coffee shop open past 10 o’clock at night is a precious commodity. These days, night owl students looking for a place to caffeinate and park their laptops for a couple of hours are more than likely to find themselves at one type of cafe in particular: a Yemeni coffee house.

So when we dropped by Heyma Yemeni Coffee on a late Sunday night shortly before finals week at UC Berkeley, it was both surprising and completely unsurprising to see how packed the place was, with a throng of undergrads waiting in line to buy blistering-hot cups of coffee infused with cardamom and maybe a honey-soaked pastry for good measure.

If you’ve been paying attention to the local coffee scene, you might know that Heyma is one of the dozen or so Yemeni coffee shops that have opened in the Bay Area, all in the past three years, at a rate that only seems to be accelerating. They all have a similar vibe, with their Arab design elements and menus heavy on spiced coffees and the same handful of Yemeni pastries.

At Heyma, the design is the first thing you notice — the cozy little alcoves lined with black-and-gold arabesque and, in the center of the room, the traditional U-shaped Majlis sofa, where a couple of college kids were sprawled out with their MacBooks. Still, at first glance, you might mistake the place for any other trendy Gen Z cafe or boba shop. The emphasis of the branding and the menu is skewed toward the kinds of flashy drinks and desserts currently popular on TikTok and Instagram: There are matcha lattes and Redbull mojitos, and we spotted at least three or four variations on Dubai chocolate.

At the same time, it’s clear that this is a place of real cultural pride. Just inside the entrance, a large sign summarizes the long history of coffee in Yemen, where 15th century Sufi monks were believed to be the first people to cultivate it as a beverage. Above the counter, a poem in untranslated Arabic — “Love and Coffee,” by the Yemeni poet Mutaher Ali Al-Eryani — celebrates the joy of the coffee harvest. At the bottom of the digital menu board, it says simply, “Free Palestine.”

The demographics of the shop’s clientele reflects this mix of influences. During our visit, about half the customers were the same laptop-toting college kids you’ll find at any late-night cafe in Berkeley. The other half consisted of Arab Americans of all ages just hanging out, including one big family that came in at around 10 o’clock, kids clambering over the sofa, everyone dressed up as though they’d just come from the symphony. They ordered such a big spread of food, the staff brought it out in a wooden crate.

When the Arabic speaker in our group asked one of the shop’s young Yemeni American baristas whether they sell any drinks that are uniquely Yemeni, he was quick to recommend an off-menu limeade — just lime juice, water and sugar (perhaps a little bit of cream?), whirred in a blender until light and frothy. It’s the same drink you’ll find on any street corner in Yemen, we were told. And it was incredibly refreshing, easily the best drink we had all night.

Meanwhile, the most striking of the pastries was the honeycomb: dough balls stuffed with cream cheese, arranged into a pleasingly geometric cake-slice shape, drizzled with honey, and then blasted in the oven until everything puffs up golden-brown. It was fun pulling the balls apart at the table, like monkey bread; each bite struck a nice balance between sweet and savory. If you want a toasty carb bomb that’s purely savory, the oniony beef sambusas and boat-shaped cheese manakish both hit the spot.

Heyma also goes straight to the top of the list of places I’ll hit up when I’m in the mood for cake at 11 o’clock at night (which for me is at least two or three nights a week). Among the many Dubai chocolate riffs on the menu, we wound up ordering a slice of green and black Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which was as tasty as it was aesthetically pleasing (if perhaps not as pistachio-y as we would have liked). My favorite, though, was the saffron milk cake — one of the many tres-leches-like cakes that the shop sells. It came soaked through with milk and sweet condensed milk and topped with a layer of whipped cream, and was so impossibly moist and airy-light, I would have happily eaten two more slices.

Of course, you can’t talk about a Yemeni coffee shop without trying the coffee itself, even if it is 11 p.m. on a work night. And here’s where I have to admit my own hubris: In my desire to try a swath of the menu, I ordered — and finished — not one but two of Heyma’s coffee drinks. First, I had the cardamom and cinnamon–infused Heyma Latte, whose spiced sweetness reminded me of drinks I’ve had at other second-generation diasporic Yemeni and Palestinian cafes. And then the mufawaar, a more traditional medium-roast coffee brewed with cardamom and cream. It was wonderfully fragrant and, as it turns out, very, very strong.

I enjoyed both drinks very much at the time. And I enjoyed reminiscing about them, too, a little while later, when I lay in bed wide awake at 3 a.m.

Heyma Yemeni Coffee is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m.–midnight, Saturday 8 a.m.-midnight, and Sunday 8 a.m.–11 p.m. at 1122 University Ave. in Berkeley.