Durar Coffee brings a new coffee experience to Morgantown.
New to downtown late last fall, Durar Coffee brews up authentic Yemeni coffee, which is known for its rich and distinctive flavor. Customers love the coffee and the atmosphere, so we spoke with Wael Al Hamdani, who translated for his friend and Durar owner Ghaleb Zeid, to learn more. Zeid divides his time between his Morgantown coffee shop and his first location, in Michigan, which is where he lives.
What made you want to open a Yemeni coffee shop in Morgantown?
Wael Al Hamdani: Ghaleb visited the city before the opening last December. He had visited a friend before and liked the city and liked the style of the people here. He thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce Yemeni coffee, because he thought this kind of product was lacking.
What makes Yemeni coffee stand out?
WA: Yemen is the first country in the world to export coffee. You hear the words “mocha coffee” everywhere, but nobody knows that Mocha was the name of the first port in the world that exported coffee from Yemen to different destinations. What makes Yemeni coffee very special is the taste and the quality. Some kinds of Yemeni coffee are the best in the world due to the climate, the soil, and the altitude, which is a very important factor.
What’s special about Durar?
WA: The word “durar” in ancient Arabic means “the pearl.” So Durar basically is a jewel or a hidden pearl. Why Ghaleb used it is because it is also used in the Arabic context as “the essence.” So what he meant actually is that Yemeni coffee is like a jewel—and also, he is using the purest and the most organic Yemeni coffee to present the real essence of Yemeni coffee.
In addition to him being a wholesale importer for coffee, all of the products that are involved in Durar—the milk, the sauces, the kinds of tea—he also imports them, and he is the sole importer of these products for his coffee. The coffee is 100% from Yemen. The milk is from a factory owned by Yemenis in Malaysia. The sweet condensed milk is the kind we use back home for coffee or tea, so this is the milk he gets from the factory in Malaysia. The tea he brings is from Yemen, from a very famous company that produces this tea, and it is a blend that is especially liked by Yemenis.
What makes Ghaleb’s store special is that he’s doing blends. He’s presenting Yemeni coffee in the classic ways that Americans know, but he is also experimenting and making new blends of different Yemeni coffee from different areas.
What foods does Durar Coffee serve?
WA: Durar Coffee serves many pastries. Ghaleb says he’s trying to mix Western pastries like cheesecakes and Danish desserts and also the Mediterranean and Arabic kanafeh, a type of cheese pastry. There is another thing Ghaleb’s made called the Beehive, which is a kind of bread with cream and honey. This is a major product and has been a big success. These are items that are already being served, and he still wants to introduce new items.
What should we try first?
WA: For tea, Ghaleb recommends anyone should try two kinds of tea. One is the Aden tea. Aden is a city in Yemen, and Durar has its own recipe of this tea with milk. Mufawar is another type of tea. It differs with the spices used—they use cardamom and clove and different spices that make it so different. When it comes to coffee, there are two kinds that you can’t find anywhere else, and they are named after the areas they come from. First is Sana’a, which is the capital of Yemen, and Juban coffee, which is another area in Yemen that produces coffee. As for foods, he says everybody should try the Beehive.
Al Hamdani adds that Zeid thanks the people of Morgantown—a very classy, kind population, he says. He thanks those who have visited the store and those who visit in the future, too.
Look for a Durar Coffee grand opening around the time school starts.
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