Qahwah House - Dearborn

A Coffee Maven Advance Review

Although the Coffee Maven is writing this post, it is truly in the spirit of student-led coffee discoveries that are the main purpose for this blog. A student who took both the coffee seminar and the coffee travel course over a decade ago has remained a good friend and recently forwarded me an article about Yemeni coffee shops in general, and Qahwah Coffee in particular. 

Cozy image: Qahwah Coffee

As we now know, coffee originated in Ethiopia around 200 C.E., but it became known to the rest of the world through its cultivation in Yemen, which began around the year 600. More than a millennium later, Carolus Linnaeus was convinced that Yemen was the origin point of the species he named Coffea arabica -- a Latinized way of saying Yemeni Qahwah.

As important as it was historically, coffee from Yemen had become rather rare, and I had encountered it only once in my first decade of studying coffee. It was in 2022 that I met anybody from the Yemeni coffee industry -- shown below at the Specialty Coffee Association meeting in Boston that spring. 

Those gentlemen were working at the wholesale level. I am very delighted to know that coffee from Yemeni farmers is now available by way of Yemeni American roasters and baristas. I am especially delighted to have found all of this out in time for a trip I am taking to Detroit with students and colleagues in March. These shops are now opening in many parts of the United States, but they originated in Dearborn, which is adjacent to Detroit. I have added the East Dearborn Qahwah shop not only to the GeoCafes map, but also to the planning map for our AAG-Detroit travels.