Saudi Coffee and Dates in Riyadh: The Ritual, Explained

The first thing that surprises visitors is the colour. Saudi coffee is not black. In Riyadh it arrives pale gold, almost the colour of weak tea, and it tastes of cardamom and saffron more than of roasted bean. Nothing has gone wrong. You are drinking the central Saudi style.

Why it looks like that

Saudi coffee is built from lightly roasted beans and cardamom, with ginger, saffron, cloves or mastic depending on the house. How dark the roast goes is regional, and the differences are real: the centre of the country, which is Najd and therefore Riyadh, uses golden, lightly roasted beans with cloves and saffron. The north roasts darker. The south goes light with ginger, cinnamon and caraway. So the pale cup in front of you is not a generic Arabic coffee, it is a regional signature.

You will also see it written as Saudi coffee rather than Arabic coffee on menus. That is deliberate: in 2022 the Ministry of Culture approved the renaming across restaurants and cafes in the Kingdom.

The pour, and the four cups

Coffee comes from a long-spouted pot called a dallah into a small handleless cup called a finjal. The server holds the dallah in the left hand and a stack of cups in the right, pours a small amount for each guest in turn, and often stays standing while you drink. Elders and honoured guests are served first.

The small pours are not stinginess. There is a named sequence, and each cup means something.

Al-Haif is the host's own first cup, poured and drunk to prove the coffee is good before a guest is given any. Al-Daif is the guest's cup, and it should be accepted, unless you are about to ask a favour, in which case declining it signals as much. Al-Kaif is the second pour, deliberately weaker. Al-Saif is the third, and it carries a sense of mutual commitment.

Hold the cup in your right hand, between thumb and index finger. When you have had enough, give the cup a small shake as you hand it back; otherwise it will keep being refilled, which is the point of the small pours. Arabic coffee was inscribed on the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2015 as a symbol of generosity, and the refilling is that generosity in practice.

The dates beside it

Dates are not a garnish. They open the fast at iftar, before the meal proper, and they arrive with coffee as a matter of course.

The varieties worth knowing apart are sukkari, soft, pale and extremely sweet, grown mainly in Qassim, the province next to Riyadh and the centre of Saudi palm cultivation, which makes it the date of this region. Khalas is firmer and more caramel, associated with Al-Ahsa in the east. Ajwa, dark and dense, comes from Madinah and carries religious significance. All three are sold everywhere in Riyadh. Medjool, which many visitors know from home, is not a Saudi variety and should not be mistaken for one.

The modern half

Riyadh also has a serious specialty coffee scene, with local roasters, third-wave cafes and a growing home-barista culture, clustered in the newer districts. Saudi Arabia now grows its own coffee too: the cultivation of Khawlani beans in the south was inscribed by UNESCO in 2022, so Saudi-origin beans genuinely appear on Riyadh menus rather than being marketing.

The pleasant thing is that these two worlds sit side by side. Plenty of cafes will serve you a carefully weighed pour-over and a dallah of cardamom coffee from the same counter.

For the sweets that come with the coffee, see the Riyadh sweets guide, and for the whole picture start from what to eat in Riyadh.

Want your days in Riyadh planned around the eating rather than guessed? A TastePass itinerary does that, from $4.99.

FAQ

Restaurants are chosen for quality and reputation. If you follow a specific diet, or want to know whether any dish or drink contains alcohol, please check directly with the venue.