Lebanese Coffee at Urbanista

I’m going to start off by telling you that we did not like Lebanese coffee.

Excited At First

After Vietnamese coffee being such a dream (we’d almost return just for the coffee- though there are plenty of other reasons as well) we were excited to try other regional coffees. We had read that Lebanese coffee was similar to a coffee you always hear people rave about: Turkish coffee.

I researched a place to get coffee that would be on the way to other destinations we wanted to see in Beirut and off we went. We actually ended up passing a number of other places on the way, but the majority of them were more expensive than this one (we checked the menu in advance). Eventually we came across Urbanista.

Nice Staff, Nice Atmosphere

The staff was fairly friendly and we saw a number of people working at their computers inside. While there were lots of options on the menu, including various meals, snacks, and drinks, Lebanon was already a little pricey for our budget so we decided to share a cup of Lebanese coffee (5,500 LBP, or ~$3.67).

Other coffee options included toffee nut iced latte, caramel mocha, cinnamon spice latte and more and these all sounded delicious but some of them were nearly double the price and we wanted to try Lebanese coffee.

We waited for a little bit and it came out in a little cup.

Wow, That’s Bitter

The coffee was clearly black but I had read online that sugar was involved in the process of making it. Sure didn’t taste like it. It was somewhat strong, but didn’t taste too special. In Vietnam, even without sweetener, the coffee had this amazing quality to it, but here it was just meh. To me, it was basically a boring semi-strong black coffee. Kyle and I both like our coffee filled with sugar and milk.

The other thing which I had read online was that once you reach the grounds in the bottom of the cup, you can turn your cup upside down and let the shapes inspire you. Reading them is an art. But honestly I think the people might have laughed at us if we did this so we just left them in the cup.

With Only One Drink, It’s Hard To Be Fair

Now, we only tried Lebanese coffee at this one place. So don’t judge it as a wholly on our experience at only one cafe. But if you aren’t into black coffee, you probably won’t like it. I also wouldn’t shun Urbanista as many of their other options are probably good – they sounded good.

When the bill came out, it showed us the price both in Lebanese pounds and American dollars which was nice.

~B~