Slow Down! Cultural Cafes Are Offering Spaces to Settle in With Friends.

Driven by Yemeni and Egyptian businesses, a new kind of coffee shop is spreading through the Twin Cities.

1:28 PM CDT on July 30, 2026

Ali Elabbady

As demand grows for late-night spaces that aren’t centered on alcohol consumption, the Twin Cities is seeing a boom in culturally focused coffee shops.

Cafes generally serve one of two purposes. Either you quickly duck in, grab a drink or a sandwich, and go about your day, or you settle in for a day behind your laptop as an alternative to working from home.

What has been lost, in a process only accelerated by the pandemic, is the idea of the cafe as a gathering spot or a cultural "third space," where friends and colleagues can enjoy a pot of coffee or tea, and maybe also a snack. A place where you can pause, relax, converse, simply hang out—and ignore your calendar app.

As Ziad Alobaidi of Haraz Coffee House in Minneapolis's Lyn-Lake neighborhood puts it, “Our goal is for people to stop by and just enjoy themselves, whether solo, with family, or with friends. Our coffees and teas are not meant as beverages to be quickly picked up. Everything is carefully crafted, and takes time to create, so it's meant to be more of an extended sitdown.”

The cultural cafe is nothing new in Minneapolis. Long-standing establishments like Espresso Royale and Purple Onion in Dinkytown were known for their welcoming atmosphere, ideal for evening meetups or study sessions. And currently, Hamdi Somali Coffee, located inside Karmel Mall, remains open daily from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., serving chai and Somali coffee to a steady clientele.

Similarly, hookah or shisha lounges like Yafa or Pyramids Cafe in Columbia Heights shared traits with today’s cultural cafes, though their clientele was predominantly male, there to play cards and smoke. (When cities restricted tobacco licenses and regulations on flavored tobacco both businesses eventually closed.)

The current influx of cultural cafes is driven by emerging Yemeni-owned chains based in Michigan, such as Qamaria Yemeni Coffee Co., which opened first in Little Canada, followed by locations in Blaine and Eden Prairie. Then Qahwa House opened in northeast Minneapolis, taking over the former site of The Mill. And Haraz, mentioned above, is in its soft-opening phase in the former Iron Door/Cause Spirits and Soundbar space on Lyndale Avenue, across from Wrecktangle Pizza.

All three establishments offer late-night hours, sweet and savory pastries, and comfortable seating ideal for group work, study sessions, post-Ramadan iftar gatherings, or meetups with friends. You can share a pot of tea or coffee or try a refreshing single-serving drink.

On the walls of Haraz, Qahwah House, and Qamaria, customers can read about the city of Sana'a and its history in producing the finest coffee Yemen has to offer the world. In addition, seasonal drink menus offer a range of refreshments, hot beverages, and even pastries that have gone viral.

These cultural coffee shops aren’t just coming to Minnesota. “Yemeni immigrants are making their mark on the U.S. coffee industry and shifting cafe culture late into the night," the New York Times noted recently, documenting the spread of such cafes to Texas, New York, and California.

Taking a page from these Yemeni coffeehouses, Egyptian coffeehouses have also emerged, with soft openings from Ramadan's Egyptian Coffee House, located next to Maxwell's near Dinkytown, and Cairo Cafe in Blaine.

“Within the Marcy Holmes and Dinkytown neighborhood, unless it's a bar, there’s no late night spot,” says Ali Mohammed of Ramadan’s. “When I moved here three years ago from Wisconsin, there weren’t any Arab cafes or places to congregate, because the Arab community is dispersed into different pockets within the suburbs. We want to be a space for students who need a late night place to hang out or study, but we also want to be a space for Arabs to hang out too.”

Additional cafes are rising to meet the needs of the communities they serve. Fadumo Ali of Nur House Cafe, which opened this past March at the Commons, a stone's throw away from U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, is happy to see the rise in coffee and tea places helmed by people who reflect the diversity of the Twin Cities.

“The need has been long overdue,” Ali says. “We haven’t really felt represented within a lot of the coffee shop scene, so with these spaces, we are able to see a lot more of the reflection of the Minnesota community in coffee spaces that we haven’t seen for a really long time.”

And Albi Kitchen, which opened in last fall, serves Somali bur, beverages such as its Manju Refresher, and cardamom-spiced beignets drizzled in a transparent frosting.

Alongside these SWANA/East African coffee spaces, spots such as Cafe Milagro and Abogados Cafe and Mercadito in St. Paul, and Bichota Coffee at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, showcase coffee harvested from Latin America. Vietnamese coffee and tea are also finding their footing in spaces such as Caphin Mpls in Minneapolis's Linden Hills neighborhood, and Giot Coffee in Richfield. Indigenous coffeehouses and cafe spaces can be found at Makwa Coffee in Roseville, Pow Wow Grounds and Gatherings Cafe in Minneapolis along the Franklin Avenue corridor, and Roots Cafe in St. Paul.

In a post-Operation Metro Surge landscape, cultural coffeehouses play vital roles, not only as a space for communities to congregate and care for one another, but as a better reflection of the communities they seek to serve. Below is a sizable yet not exhaustive list of the cultural cafes and coffeehouses in the Twin Cities metro worthy of your consideration. Call up your homies, your coworkers, or your family, and make a hangout of it.