Cafés in Al Fahidi, Al Seef & Meena Bazaar

Wind towers and the old Bastakiya

The quarter is open daily 07:00–20:00. Its houses now hold art galleries, specialized museums and cultural associations, among them the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding.¹

A study of the Bukhash house and six others found the towers did their best work in the afternoon, when families rested on cushions around the room where the air moved and the draft helped sweat evaporate.²

The Coffee Museum and the Arabian Tea House

The Coffee Museum was built by Khalid Al Mulla of the green-coffee importer Easternmen & Co from his own collection, modeled on the Kaffeemuseum in Hamburg. Its rooms are set up to show how coffee is brewed in Ethiopia, Turkey, Egypt and Yemen, and its library holds an original 1784 encyclopedia by Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer with more than 170 pages on coffee.⁴

The museum opened in 2014 and still runs on two floors; as of May 2026, visitors were greeted with Arabic coffee and offered another cup at the end of the tour.⁵

Ali Al Rais opened the Arabian Tea House in 1997, after about 20 years in aviation, in a house a pearl trader built in the early 1920s, with a central courtyard, wind towers and a well. He first called it Basta Art Café. The menu runs from karak chai and Dubai Tea to a full Emirati breakfast.³

Al Seef and the abra stations

Al Seef is a 1.8 km creekside promenade by the developer Meraas, begun in 2012 and finished in 2017. Its heritage section, Souk Al Seef, reworks the creekside souks of the 1950s with wind towers and arish (palm-frond) shelters, and its alleys lead west into the historic quarter. Abras moor at the souk's marina.⁶

From Al Fahidi station, route CR4 crosses to Al Sabkha and CR5 to Deira Old Souq, each AED 2; CR6 runs from Al Seef to Baniyas, 07:30–23:45 Monday to Saturday. Route CR7 was on hold, and the electric abra TR10 charges AED 60 per 30 minutes, 16:00–23:00.⁷ Caffe' Trucillo, Coffeöl and Haleeb O Heil sit near the water at Al Seef.

Meena Bazaar and the chai counters

Meena Bazaar took its name from the signboard of Sarda Trading, a textile shop that opened at the entrance of the lane in 1973 and closed in 2010. Ram Buxani, one of the first traders to move into the lane, said the name recalled the Meena Bazaar of Delhi's Red Fort, and that it strictly means one street. Textiles boomed from the late 1970s to the 1990s; jewelers, who could pay the rents, now dominate.⁸

Gupshup Chai Pe Cafe is at 124 Khalid Bin Al Waleed Road, in the Bank Street building, and Top Tea Spot is on the same road; Cafe Lemon Spice is at 33 Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Street. Zaharat Al Sharq stays open until 00:00 every day, opening at 09:30, or 10:00 on Fridays.