Cafés in Qatar Doha

Making gahwa the Qatari way

Qatar's tourism board starts the process at Souq Waqif, where wholesale shops sell green beans with the other ingredients: saffron, cardamom, cloves and dried shaiba (black stone flower). Saffron, the most expensive, is chosen with care or brought from Iran. The seller will roast and grind the beans on request.⁴

The beans are roasted over a flame in a mihmas (roasting spoon), cooled in a wooden mubarrid and ground fairly coarse in a hawan (mortar), whose pestle is sometimes struck against the side to set a rhythm. Coffee, cardamom and spices simmer in a large pot, the khumrah, before the brew moves to the dallah, often through a palm-fiber strainer fitted in the spout.⁴

It is poured into fanajin, small cups without handles, and eaten with dates; the guide suggests khlas dates for their light caramel taste.⁴ Elders and guests take the first cups, the pourer uses the right hand, and a guest who has had enough gives the cup a small shake.³

Karak and the kaftheeriya

Much of Qatar's everyday caffeine is tea. Karak, a sweet milky tea boiled from tea leaves, canned milk, sugar and cardamom, sometimes with saffron, is sold by the thousands of cups a day in kaftheeriyas (cafeterias), most of them for QR1 as of 2022, AP reported.⁵

When it arrived is disputed, but South Asian residents are generally credited with bringing it as early as the 1950s. Many karak makers come from the Moplah Muslim community of North Malabar, in southern India, and one chain, Tea Time, had more than 50 branches in 2022.⁵

Doha's specialty boom

Specialty coffee took off in the 2010s. Flat White, which AFP called Qatar's first "hipster" café, opened in 2012, and by 2018 specialty shops had spread across Doha, including into Qanat Quartier, a Venice-style district.⁶ That year a Chemex pour-over at Flat White cost QR26, about US$7, and a UBS study ranked Doha's coffee the most expensive in the world, at an average of US$6.40.⁶

The same report noted that the rift that began in 2017, when neighboring states cut all ties with Qatar, had hit the food and drink trade and forced importers to change suppliers.⁶

The trade now has its own calendar. The Qatar Specialty Coffee Association (QatSCA) runs the Qatar World Coffee Expo, formerly the Doha International Coffee Exhibition; its January 2025 edition at the Qatar National Convention Centre hosted the national barista, latte art and cup tasters championships.⁷

Doha: Souq Waqif and Msheireb

Souq Waqif, "the standing market", grew from a place where Bedouins and townspeople traded near Wadi Msheireb. After a fire destroyed most of it in 2003, a government restoration from 2006 to 2008 demolished buildings put up after the 1950s and refurbished the older ones.⁸ Land reclamation for the Corniche moved the shoreline north, and the souq's northern edge now sits about 215 m from the sea.⁸

Next door, Msheireb Downtown Doha rebuilds the old Mushayrib district over 31 hectares. Msheireb Properties, part of Qatar Foundation, began work in 2010 and completed the last phase in 2022, and four restored heritage houses opened as the Msheireb Museums in October 2015.⁹