Heritage in a Bowl: Meet the Medina Affogato
On the 9th of September, qahwa lovers will experience something they haven't tried before. I'll get to the details further down. But first, you need to understand what qahwa (Arabic coffee) actually is, because that's what makes this worth talking about.
Most people outside the Gulf think Arabic coffee is one drink with one recipe. It's not even close. Cross a border, or even just a city, and the roast changes. The spice mix changes, the ratio of cardamom to saffron changes. Walk into a home and there's a decent chance the family recipe hasn't left that household in generations. Some are never written down anywhere. You either grow up drinking it, or you get invited to experience it.
Every traditional household in the Gulf will have their own version of the recipe, passed down through the family for generations. It's less a recipe, more an inheritance, some of them never written down anywhere, just taught by hand from one generation to the next.
What stays constant is the purpose behind it. Drinking qahwa is as much about bonding and coming together as it is about the coffee itself. It's the reason the dallah (traditional Arabic coffee pot) gets carried around a room instead of staying on a table. It's why nobody pours their own cup and the person serving you keeps refilling until you shake the finjan (coffee cup) to say enough. It's why a stranger in a majlis gets treated the same way as family.
In 2015, UNESCO recognized Arabic coffee as a symbol of generosity, and if you've sat in a majlis and had a finjan handed to you, you already know why. It's not about what's in the cup, it's about what happens around it.
That's the culture Medina Ilyas has spent the last two decades trying to understand properly.
The woman who went looking for all 700 versions of it
Medina didn't set out to build a coffee brand, she set out to understand why a cup of qahwa in one part of the Gulf tastes nothing like the same cup somewhere else.
That search took her across the Arabian Peninsula for years. She sat with elders, spice traders, historians and coffee makers, and collected recipes that had never left a family kitchen or a small community. She eventually documented over 700 and put a good part of that research into her book, The Art of Arabic Coffee. In 2022, she started Medina Coffee, built around a simple concept that Arabic coffee could move into the specialty world without losing what made it Arabic coffee in the first place.
Two years ago I sat in one of her workshops two years ago and it's stayed with me since. Coffee has been part of my life for as long as I can remember, in the majlis, at family gatherings, even while shopping for dates. It's part of growing up here. But that workshop was the first time someone showed me just how different the recipes get, sometimes from one Gulf country to the next, sometimes from one family to the next. Some of those recipes, Medina told us, are guarded like secrets. Nobody's writing them down for outsiders.
She brews with specialty grade coffee, and once you've had qahwa made that way, the version sitting in a supermarket tin stops being an option. During that session she made two versions, the traditional one with saffron, and a second one finished with chilli. I know what you might be thinking: it sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does.
That workshop is the reason nothing Medina does surprises me anymore. I already knew how deeply she understood qahwa, deep enough to know when something new still belongs under that name. I just didn't expect it to show up in a bowl with a spoon.
The drink I couldn’t keep to myself
From the 9th of September, Medina Coffee is putting something new on the menu, and I got to try it early.
It's called the Medina Affogato. It takes the qahwa most of us grew up on, hot, spiced with chilli and cinnamon in a recipe made just for this drink, and pours it tableside over frozen black sesame and vanilla gelato made in house. Saffron sits on top for aroma, and the moment it is poured is the moment that will make you smile.
The aroma of the coffee and saffron fills the air around you as hot coffee hits frozen gelato, and everything starts changing the second they touch, texture, temperature, and flavor. Early on you get a complimenting contrast, the hot qahwa against the cold sesame. A few spoonfuls in, it's softened into something closer to a warm, spiced dessert. You're not consuming the same thing twice here.
Even the cup plays a part. It's hand finished, custom made ceramic, and it comes with a small story card carrying an Arabic proverb about coffee and generosity, something to actually read while you're eating instead of scrolling through your phone.
I'll be honest, I left that first tasting and immediately wanted to tell someone about it. That's rare with a new launch, most are forgettable by the time you’ve finished the cup. This one I was still thinking about on the drive home.
Medina Affogato lands on the menu from the 9th of September at Medina Coffee, Galleria Mall, Al Wasl, Dubai.
If you've grown up on gahwa, go in expecting your idea of it to get rearranged a little. If you haven't, this is genuinely one of the better ways to be introduced to it. Either way, go with time to spare.
This isn't a drink you rush, and you'll want to talk about it after.
