RIYADH: Saudi couple Sabrina Andijani and her husband Fahad Almalki are offering Riyadh a chance to slow down and sip their handcrafted beverages face-to-face at their social space: Hearth Cafe.
Part coffee and tea bar, part listening cafe, and fully fun, customers are invited to talk, flip through magazines or books together and fill in physical coloring books — often collaborating on the same page — all provided.
“I wanted people to come inside and go back in time, like in the 90s, where you would sit in a cafe and socialize with other people, meet strangers and then become best friends,” Andijani told Arab News.
Opened in April, the cafe is still in its “soft opening” phase, they said.
“Since it is a social cafe, we wanted to try a different kind of business model; it is experimental. We primarily opened once a week on Saturdays to start,” she added.
Recently, they expanded to opening twice a week and are testing out opening in the mornings but not evenings. That could all change.
For now, it is still known as the “Saturday spot,” Andijani said.
“And then, for the rest of the week, we are open for private or business bookings; people can book our space alongside the services and the beverages for workshops, team-building activities, private events like birthdays, bridal showers, whatever,” she added.
“Anyone who asks us for Wi-Fi, I would say, ‘No Wi-Fi,’ you are not allowed to have Wi-Fi. Here, this is a chessboard. Do something with your hands. We wanted to be more analog.
“Before we opened this place, we had three requirements in mind,” her husband said. “The first one is a continuous table or bar, with no distractions between us and the visitors. And this is what is happening.
“The second thing is we want this place to be inside the neighborhood — not on a highway — because it matches the energy and the cozy vibes that we want to reach.
“The third thing is we don’t want people to come here and just drink their beverage. We want them to come here to play music instruments, to play board games, to talk to each other, to have that social life that everyone did in the old days. So basically, these are the three main requirements that we had in mind.”
And all three have been acquired. Even the cafe name is fitting.
“The name ‘Hearth’ initially is a combination (of) ‘heart’ and ‘earth,’ because you know this is where your heart meets earth — when you drink coffee or tea,” Andijani shared.
“Later on, we did research and we came to learn that ‘hearth’ is a word in English which means a fireplace that people actually gather around,” she said with a laugh.
So while they “came up with the name” organically, they found out it was “already in the dictionary before us,” Almalki added with a chuckle. But it is a hearth indeed.
“‘Hearth Cafe’ can be a fireplace, where people gather and do social activities — basically what our place is,” Andijani said.
“Our cafe is an extension of our home, so we wanted the cafe to feel like you are at home. We don’t want to say ‘customers,’ we say ‘Hearth Family.’ We encourage them to come and bring their own mugs and they can keep it in our cafe on a shelf. And every time they visit, they can drink from their mug,” she shared.
But even if you don’t bring your own mug and use theirs, they are serious about their beverages.
“Regarding the coffee beans, we care about sourcing and we make sure that any lot that we have has an international score regarding the quality of this specialty coffee. And we have the commitment of having only 86 and plus grade of specialty coffee graded by SCA, the Specialty Coffee Association,” Almalki said.
“I do the teas — anything related to teas,” Andijani chimed in.
“Fun fact: I’m half Saudi — that side is originally from Uzbekistan — and half Singaporean, so I’m very Asian, on both sides,” she said. “I try my best to bring herbs from both my Asian roots and incorporate it in the tea selections.”
While she often bakes the goodies herself, or with her sister, she considers herself more of a “snack provider.”
Most of their Hearth Family, new and regular, found out about the spot by word of mouth.
“Our visitors, we can say like 50 percent, they come from the neighborhood itself — and we love that as a neighborhood hub of the people,” her husband added. “And the other 50 percent, they come from everywhere.”
Andijani said: “It is literally a place where you want to go and escape and meet cool, good people.”
And there is also a secret door.
“Oh, so we have a secret door in the cafe. It’s behind our shelves — although it is not such a secret anymore. We can call it a portal,” she said.
As an engineer with a degree from the prestigious Dhahran-based King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Almalki built it himself with his own hands.
“This portal takes you to a hallway that is very interesting. I don’t want to give too much away. I want the element of surprise to be there, so come visit,” Andijani said of the space that is opened by pushing on an object on the bookshelf.
“As soon as you enter the cafe, you will see two things: You’ll see musical instruments and you’ll see vinyl records. Vinyl records are from our personal collection that we are sharing — we have more at home, but we couldn’t fit them all in one cafe,” she said.
“And then you have the musical instruments, like guitars, they all work and they’re all Fahad’s musical instruments. He’s a retired music producer and DJ.”
And if you ask, you might witness a lively impromptu jam session with a prestissimo piano performance by Almalki. Yes, there is a piano on the premises.
“Why vinyl in the age of very fast streaming on 5G? Music is very accessible now, like never before. Yet you see that demand on acquiring and having the vinyls,” he said. “You can stream any song you want now on your phone, but for sentimental reasons, we have our vinyl collection.”
The analog ethos does not stop there. It is even embedded in the menu, manually.
“We saw this idea in Korean cafes — they are very analog and very down to earth,” Andijani said. “Some of the cafes had the menu written on paper tape. So, we wanted to give that feeling also. No QR menus here or those digital screens that rotate.”
She wrote a sample of the Hearth menu by hand on a roll of paper they bought at a local shop.
“I showed it to Fahad, I was like ‘What do you think?’ And he was like, ‘We’re hanging this up right now.’ And that is what we have here,” she said.
“You can see a lot of spelling mistakes,” she said with a giggle. “That shows you that it wasn’t done by AI — it was done by a true human.”
