Sit back, have a cuppa and think
Hipster coffee brews up change in Qatar.
DOHA: Doha’s Tawar Mall looks much like any of the other unremarkable shopping centres dotted around Qatar but tucked away in one of its corners, a tiny cultural revolution is taking place.
There you will find Flat White, Qatar’s first attempt at a hipster cafe.
Customers can buy drinks such as a V60, Aeropress or ginger latte, selecting coffee beans from Colombia, Tanzania or Peru, and then sit and drink while perusing a book.
Or they can just sip and admire the brutalist decor, all trendy bare concrete walls and dangling contemporary lighting.
In the background are the familiar sounds of drinks being prepared by baristas on machines costing US$3,500 (RM14,100).
“We didn’t have this hipster style, this is what was missing in Qatar,” said Nasser alNuaimi, who coowns Flat White with his wife Maryam.
AlNuaimi, 35, is a coffee fanatic who developed a passion for the Westernstyle version of the drink while on his travels.
An international insurance executive, he discovered speciality coffeeshops while on business trips and decided to try to bring the culture back home.
He opened the first Flat White in 2012 and now there are three dotted around Doha.
“After 5pm in Europe, people won’t drink coffee (but) they will have a beer. Here coffee is our passion, we drink it anytime, we sleep anytime,” he said.
The internationalstyle coffeeshop is packed with customers who are almost exclusively Qatari – men wearing traditional white robes and women in black abayas – in a country where locals barely make up 10% of the population.
“We like the coffee, the atmosphere, the energy,” said Shamma, 19, a student drinking cappuccino and eating cheesecake with her friend Muneera, also 19.
“It is becoming more of a social construct than just having a coffee.”
Seated nearby are engineers Mohammed and Jassim, both 34, who say Flat White has made them appreciate a different style of coffee.
“They are choosing beans from special places. We realised what we used to drink was not coffee,” said Mohammed, referring to more prevalent Western brands.
Arabic coffee has been a mainstay of drinking culture in the region for thousands of years.
Prices are not cheap. A Chemex coffee, made in a specially designed glass flask, costs 26 Qatari riyals (RM28.60).
A recent study by financial ser vices group UBS found that a cup of coffee in Doha is the most expensive in the world, costing an average of US$6.40 (RM25.80).
Speciality coffeeshops are springing up across Doha. In the Qanat Quartier, an upmarket area featuring a Venicestyle neighbourhood, cafes with names such as Volume and Artist Cafe have popped up.
The burgeoning “hipsterism” is not confined to coffee either. A speciality breakfast cereal shop is opening, as well as Qatar’s first vegan restaurant.
And its reach extends beyond the Gulf state, with Qatariowned coffee stores in London and a gastroburger restaurant close to Qatarowned Harrods.
But as with most things in Qatar at the moment, the food and drink sector has been affected by the yearold Gulf political crisis, in which Qatar’s neighbours have cut off all ties, accusing it of backing terrorism and being too close to Iran – charges it denies.
Qatar previously relied on its neighbours for much of its imports and has had to radically adjust its sourcing. — AFP