Damascena Coffee House Birmingham City Centre ★9.1

Most cafés in the middle of Birmingham are answering the same question: how to get an espresso into a working person’s hand quickly. Damascena Coffee House is answering a different one. It is named after the damask rose of Damascus, it was built by a Syrian founder who wanted a room that felt like home, and its idea of a coffee house is the older, Levantine one — a place you sit in for two hours with a pot of tea, a plate of mezze and someone you actually wanted to see. The city centre branch is the busiest expression of that idea, and it sits a few steps from the cathedral churchyard, in the middle of the district where everyone else is in a hurry.

Highlights

• A Syrian coffee house, not a Syrian-themed one. The founder built the first Damascena with his homeland in mind, and the name means rose of Damascus — the reference is personal rather than decorative.
• Arabian spiced coffee served the traditional way, arriving with a date and a tahini dip alongside it, next to Turkish coffee and cold brew on the same list.
• Handmade baklava as a house speciality, an exclusive range rather than a tray bought in from a supplier, sitting alongside oven-baked pastries.
• A full Middle Eastern kitchen behind the coffee: fuul, wraps, shawarma and mezze platters mean this works as lunch or dinner and not only as a coffee stop.
• Part of a Birmingham-grown group of five — Moseley, Harborne, the Jewellery Quarter, the city centre and Edgbaston — all of them in this city, none of them elsewhere.
• Shelves of teas and coffees you can take home, which turns the room into a small souk as much as a café.

What’s in the cup

The coffee list here has two halves and it is worth understanding both, because ordering the wrong one is how people come away puzzled. On one side is the European café repertoire that every room in the city centre serves — the flat whites, the lattes, the chai and the cold brew. On the other is the Levantine tradition: Turkish coffee, ground to powder and brewed in the pot so the grounds settle at the bottom, and Arabian spiced coffee, which is a different drink altogether. The spiced version arrives with a date and a tahini dip, and that pairing is not a garnish invented for a menu photograph — it is how the drink is served across the Levant, because the bitterness and the cardamom want something sweet and fatty against them.

Damascena describes the blends it serves as award-winning and exclusive to the house, and the first site the founder opened in Moseley in 2014 traded as a coffee house and roastery, which suggests roasting has been part of the operation from the beginning. What the company publishes about it now is thin, and it is worth being straight about that: there is no public sourcing page naming farms, lots or roast profiles, and if you want that conversation you are better served by one of the multi-roaster bars a few minutes away. The blends here are built for consistency across five sites and for drinking with food, not for a tasting flight.

Tea deserves its own sentence, because in a Middle Eastern coffee house it is not the afterthought it usually is in Britain. The range is broad and it is treated as a proper order rather than a concession to the person at the table who does not drink coffee — mint, black, spiced, and the sweeter latte-style drinks that shade toward dessert. If you have brought someone who finds espresso bars tiring, this is the room where they will be happiest.

Who’s behind it

Damascena was founded by Anas Zein Al-Abdeen, who opened the first coffee house in Moseley in 2014 and has kept the business in Birmingham ever since. By the autumn of 2022 there were five sites, the newest of them in Edgbaston, and he was still talking about it with a certain disbelief — his own line was that he could hardly believe how far it had come in eight years.

What matters about that history is the shape it gave the business. This is not a private-equity roll-out testing a format for national expansion; it is one person’s idea repeated in the neighbourhoods of one city, with the head office attached to the newest branch and a retail arm and an online shop grown out of the same kitchen. The group’s motto, and it is a fair summary, is that it wants to be your local, far-away coffee house. The city centre site is the version of that idea aimed at people who work in the district and at anyone stepping off a train with an hour to fill.

What it’s for

This is a talking room first and a working room a distant second, and going in with the right expectation makes all the difference.

Bring a conversation and you have found the right place. The tables are laid out for sharing food, the mezze format naturally slows a group down, and nobody is going to move you along once the plates are cleared. It works particularly well for the kind of long, unhurried meeting that a bar would ruin — the drinks list runs to coffees and teas rather than to a bar, which makes it a genuinely comfortable evening venue for people who do not drink and who are tired of being the only ones ordering a soft drink.

Bring a laptop and you are on your own judgement. The company publishes nothing about Wi-Fi or power at this branch, the room is food-led and gets loud at the middle of the day, and a table occupied by one person and a screen is working against the grain of what the kitchen is doing. Early in the day, before the lunch service builds, it is perfectly possible; across the lunch peak it is not the room for a three-hour session, and there are better options for that within five minutes’ walk.

Coming alone works better than you might expect, because a coffee house built on tea culture is a forgiving place to sit by yourself with a pot and a book. And takeaway is straightforward: pastries and baklava travel, and the counter is set up for people who came in for something to carry back to a desk.

The space

The decor is the first thing everyone mentions, and it earns the attention. The room is worked in an Arabian-inspired register — Middle Eastern architectural detail, warm materials, shelving stacked with tins and packets of tea and coffee that are there to be bought as well as looked at. Visitors consistently describe the effect as transporting rather than themed, which is the difference between a designer’s pastiche and a room built by someone reproducing what he remembers.

It is a substantial space rather than a boutique one, spread to take groups as well as pairs, and it behaves accordingly: quiet and easy at the edges of the day, properly busy and conversational when the kitchen is going. There is outdoor seating for the days Birmingham allows it, which in practice means a handful of weeks a year and a surprising number of stubborn afternoons in between.

Two honest notes. First, this is not a library — if you need silence, the middle of the day will defeat you. Second, the room is popular enough that at peak you may wait for a table, and there is no way of reserving your way around that at a coffee house.

Beyond coffee

The kitchen is the point here, not an accessory. Damascena runs a full Middle Eastern menu — fuul in the morning, wraps and shawarma through the day, mezze platters for a table that wants to graze — and it is cooked on site rather than delivered in. That single fact changes what the café is for: you can arrive hungry, and you can arrive at a mealtime rather than only at coffee o’clock.

On the sweet side the house speciality is baklava, made by hand as an exclusive range, alongside pastries baked in the oven rather than bought from a van. There are cakes at the till in the British café manner too, which is how the two traditions in this room keep meeting each other. The practical consequence for a visitor is simple: you do not need to plan around whether you are here for a drink or a meal, because the menu covers both without changing rooms.

When to come

Think of the day in three parts. Early on, before the district’s lunch rush, the room is calm and it is the best window for a quiet coffee or a slow breakfast; this is also when a solo visit with a book works best. Through the middle of the day it becomes a proper restaurant, loud and full, and the wait for a table is real. Later on it settles into its evening character — the long conversations, the shared plates, the groups who are here for two hours — and that is when the coffee house feels most like itself.

Weekends run differently from the working week. The city centre branch draws shoppers and visitors rather than office workers, which flattens the lunch spike into a long busy stretch. If you want the room at its most relaxed, the start of the day is the answer in either case. As always, check the current opening times on the card rather than relying on anyone’s description, including this one.

Getting there

The branch sits in the heart of the city centre, immediately beside the cathedral churchyard — that green square of trees and benches is the landmark to aim for, and once you are in it you are within sight of the door. It is the business district, so the surrounding streets are dense with offices, and the café is at the point where that district meets the shopping core.

By rail it is easy from every direction: Snow Hill station is a short walk to the north, New Street station and Grand Central sit just to the south, and Moor Street station is a similar distance to the east. The Metro tram runs through the centre a couple of minutes away. Driving in is the least attractive option — this is a pedestrianised, bus-lane part of town with the usual clean air zone considerations, and the multi-storey car parks around the shopping centres will cost you more time than the walk from a station would.

Good to know

A few things worth knowing before you go. This is a coffee house in the Levantine sense, so plan on food being part of the visit — coming in for a quick espresso alone will leave you wondering what the fuss is about. The Arabian spiced coffee is the order that most distinguishes this place from every other café in the district, and it is genuinely different from what you are used to, which is either the reason to come or the reason to order a flat white instead.

The group has four other Birmingham sites, and they are not clones. The original in Moseley, the Jewellery Quarter branch, Harborne and the newest room in Edgbaston each have their own character and their own catchment; if the city centre is too busy on the day, one of the others will not be. There is also a retail arm and an online shop for the packaged goods, so the tea you liked does not have to be a one-off.

The honest weaknesses: it is loud at peak, there is no booking, and the company says very little publicly about its coffee sourcing for a place that puts coffee in its name. None of that is a reason to skip it — but if your visit is specifically a specialty-coffee pilgrimage rather than a meal, calibrate accordingly.

Questions and answers

Is Damascena a café or a restaurant?

Both, deliberately. The Middle Eastern coffee house tradition does not separate the two — you can order a Turkish coffee and nothing else, or you can sit down to fuul, wraps or a mezze platter cooked in the kitchen on site. It works as a coffee stop and as a full meal.

What should I order that I could not get elsewhere in the city centre?

The Arabian spiced coffee, which arrives with a date and a tahini dip, and the handmade baklava. Both are house specialities and both are closer to how they are served in the Levant than to a British café interpretation.

Do they roast their own coffee?

The first site, opened in Moseley in 2014, traded as a coffee house and roastery, and the blends are described as exclusive to the house. Beyond that the company publishes very little about its sourcing and roasting, so treat anything more specific with caution.

Can I work here with a laptop?

Early in the day, yes, within reason. Through the middle of the day this is a busy food room and a single occupied table with a screen sits awkwardly against the service. Nothing is published about power sockets or the Wi-Fi at this branch, so do not plan a long working session around it.

Is it a good place for a group?

Yes — it is one of the better ones in the centre for exactly that. Mezze platters are built for sharing, the room takes larger tables, and nobody rushes you out when the plates go.

Is there anywhere to sit outside?

There is outdoor seating for the days the weather allows it. On a grey Birmingham afternoon that is theoretical, but it exists and is used whenever the sun makes an appearance.

How many Damascena sites are there?

Five across Birmingham — Moseley, Harborne, the Jewellery Quarter, the city centre and Edgbaston — plus a retail shop and an online store. All of them are in this city; the group has not expanded elsewhere.

Do I need to book?

It is run as a coffee house, so plan on walking in and, at peak, waiting a few minutes for a table. If you are bringing a large group, the quiet parts of the day are a safer bet than the lunch rush.

Is it suitable for someone who does not drink alcohol?

Very much so. The drinks list is built around coffees and teas rather than a bar, which makes it a comfortable evening venue for anyone who wants a long sit-down without the pub.

Opening hours