Waleed Mahdi, a professor and expert on Yemeni-American culture at the University of Oklahoma, said that the use of the Dubai branding is part of a longer history of Yemeni immigrant merchants playing on Western imaginations of the exotic Arabesque. “Those orientalist fantasies have historically led to Yemeni restaurants that have been named Ali Baba, Aladdin, or even Magic Carpet,” Mahdi said. “In my mind, Dubai is the new Aladdin.” 

So what, then, is a Dubai aesthetic? Yasser Elsheshtawy, a scholar of Gulf urbanism at Columbia University, says there is no single defining architectural style but that its hallmark is the commodification of urban space, viewing land and the built environment as profit-maximizing assets rather than public goods. To that end, he said, historic areas in the region have been largely razed and reconstituted as “open-air museums” whose function is to extract as many tourism dollars as possible. “It’s a fake environment, completely inauthentic, and…to me really represents the essence of the Gulf urban model.”

While historic Arab urban centers are characterized by lively informality where people from different socio-economic backgrounds interact, Elsheshtawy argues that the Gulf cities render large sections inaccessible to most people who cannot afford to spend money in them. “An underlying principle among many of these Gulf countries while they configure their cities and architecture is an erasure of the past and an embrace of Western modernism,” he said. “The pre-oil phase is associated with poverty and hardship, so they wanted to move away from that toward a more progressive vision.”

The Gulf has emulated this Western neoliberal urbanism so successfully that it has perhaps become more associated with the phenomenon than the West itself. As Elsheshtawy points out, the Hudson Yards development in NYC is often called “Little Dubai in Manhattan.” The UAE has, too, seen success in using this gleaming urbanism to obfuscate the uglier parts of its development model—from the exploitation of construction workers in grueling labor camps to profiting off the genocide it backs in Sudan—in order to present itself as the standard-bearer of a Western-oriented neoliberal order in the Middle East. “The problem here is that culture is being used in a way to project a certain image and political vision,” said Elsheshtawy. “The appropriate term here would be culture washing.”

The stakes for Yemeni coffee shops are certainly much lower than that of Emirati geopolitical ambitions. But the cafe owners and their designers are also trying to project a similar vision of progress. Mokhtar Alkhanshali, an entrepreneur who helped pioneer Yemeni specialty coffee in the West, observes a cultural loop at play: cafes in the Gulf adopt the highly filtered, Instagram-friendly aesthetic of Western coffee shops, while US-based Yemeni cafes in turn take their cues from the Gulf. “It’s a repackaging of a repackaging, just with a touch of Yemeni branding,” Alkhanshali said. “We have a bit of an inferiority complex where we feel we have to follow Western looks to seem like we are progressing. I don’t think it’s purely economics, it’s about wanting to look modern and successful.”

If this premium branding reels in higher-paying clientele, it is only natural for Yemeni-American entrepreneurs to utilize it when their product is pricey specialty coffee. “Interior design and architecture become tools by which you achieve that objective,” Elsheshtawy said. “It works for that customer base, it works for the investor. Whether it contributes to having an inclusive city, a city that appears lived in where everyone feels welcome—that’s a different story.”

While there is not necessarily anything wrong with Yemeni cafes having a business strategy, Elsheshtawy argues that a problem arises when that model becomes the only choice. “If you want to go to a coffee shop where you are able to work with reliable Wi-Fi and you don’t have to deal with people screaming around you, then you should be able to do that,” Elsheshtawy said. “But if you want to be in a more boisterous environment where there’s laughter, people talking loudly and comfortably, then you should also be able to do that. The problem in places like the Gulf is that they are increasingly targeted toward the former, to these more refined settings that are geared toward commerce.”

Clearly, the business model is working and there are no signs that the Yemeni cafe craze is slowing down. But the same could have been said of the growth-at-all-costs Gulf model of economic development just a few years ago. Their massive mega-projects, like the flying elevators in Saudi Arabia’s science fiction-inspired Neom region planned for its Red Sea coast, once wooed global investors, but have since been dramatically downsized as harsh financial realities set in. 

Alkhanshali believes that the American Yemeni cafe bubble is similarly due to burst. “How are you able to open 200 cafes in one year across the country and make sure each cafe is consistent with quality standards, storytelling, and sourcing strategy? It’s impossible,” he said. 

Whether or not Yemeni cafes are in for a mass scaling back remains to be seen. But, so long as they’re booming, questions of aesthetics persist. Qahwah Time owner Imathil, for his part, took issue with the idea that all high-end Arab culture has to be associated with Dubai. “Some people think Yemen is nothing, but if you go to Sa’ana or Aden, you’re not gonna believe it,” he said. “I want to show people that Yemenis can do luxury, too.” 

Positive representation is no small thing for a country that has garnered international attention in recent years primarily because of its devastating civil war and the subsequent Saudi-led intervention, which is now on the verge of fully reigniting. “These cafes are incredibly powerful for Arabs, and Muslims in general, because they serve as a gateway,” Alkhanshali said. “Most Americans only know about Yemen or the Middle East from negative news stories. The cafes become a bridge.” 

There may be no single right way to represent Yemen in a coffee shop. But, what is clear is that the enormous popularity of Yemeni cafes has done more than anything in recent memory to buoy Yemen’s standing in the wider American cultural canon. “Despite what the interior looks like, it’s still going to be presented and perceived as something Yemeni,” said Ashrqat Saleh, president of New York University’s Yemeni Students Association. “And I think that in itself is doing good for the community.”