Qamaria Coffee

Yemeni restaurants have multiplied in Orange County over the last five years: House of Mandi opened in Anaheim in 2020, followed by Stanton’s Monasaba in 2021, Fullerton’s Qamaria Coffee in 2023, and Anaheim’s Qahwah and Chapati in 2024. Two threads connecting all of them are Yemeni drinks and desserts: Qamaria was Orange County’s first Yemeni coffee shop – a category that’s been rapidly expanding across the U.S. ever since rival Qahwah House debuted in Michigan back in 2017, touting the high quality of Yemeni coffee beans and teas.

Qamaria is effectively a younger, more compelling version of Starbucks – a place where you can dine in and feel blown away by the beauty of their full kettle hot coffee and tea service, including golden metal serviceware, as well as the adult flavors and heat of those drinks. It’s also a place where you can order a delicious pistachio latte or a white peach refresher; Qamaria does both serious and fun drinks well.

But what makes the Fullerton location one of the most compelling dessert and drink shops in this region is its ability to pair drinks with a collection of Middle Eastern desserts. All of their sweet milk cakes are winners – caramel and saffron sit at opposite ends of the sweetness scale, with an iconic green pistachio and pink rose somewhere in the middle, every one like a different spin on Latin tres leches. Yet somehow their rich date cakes and cheesecakes, topped with knafeh or biscoff cookies, are at least equally compelling.