Coffeetea Fusion Café

Coffee and tea lovers, rejoice! A new fusion café has recently launched that promises to deliver “the perfect blend between coffee and tea” to the Emirates.

Located at the Waterfront Market in Deira, it provides guests with a cozy ambiance, featuring indoor and outdoor seating overlooking the sea. The café also offers an amusement corner filled with books, cards and board games to keep guests entertained – A lovely touch!

Coffeetea’s menu will delight risk-takers and adventure-seekers as it serves up unique melanges of flavours, including the Coffee Burger and Cheese Karak. I like restaurants with menus that are to the point, but with variation. And I love it when I’m torn on what to choose, because that means I have an excuse to order more – or better still, to persuade whom I’m dining with to order something I can taste!

While I admire the café’s bold approach to combine unconventional flavours, unfortunately, not all worked well in their favour. Some combinations simply did not work. Compared to the prominent beverage blends made famous in East Asia (such as Bubble Tea with cheese foam), Coffeetea is no comparison.

Albeit friendly, I also found the service to be disappointingly slow. A shocking example: When I followed up on my coffee order after a 15 min wait, I was told they ran out of milk and had to send their staff to purchase from the supermarket. At the end, it arrived after a frustrating 25 min delay.

The setback was further intensified with the poor handling of this mishap. The staff should have at least notified me of their stocking error when the order was placed (to manage guests’ expectations) and no effort was made to inform me of the delay – until I had to follow up and find out myself.

On a serious note… A coffee shop without milk – Can you believe it? As I sat down to order my food, I found out milk was not the only item they ran out of. They also didn’t have lobster for their sandwich, so it had to be replaced with salmon instead.

We ordered the following items:

Lobster Avocado Sandwich
Price: 35 Dhs
Rating: 3.5/5
Preparation: Panini bread with a spread of salmon (because lobster was out of stock), avocado and mayo spread; garnished with spring onion and lemon zest

Matcha pasta with Shrimps
Price: 37 Dhs
Rating: 3/5
Preparation: Fettuccine pasta with white sauce infused with a hint of matcha green tea, served with grilled shrimps

Classic Cheese Burger
Price: 26 Dhs
Rating: 2.5/5
Preparation: Thick angus beef patty, lollo bianca lettuce, cheddar cheese, mustars mayo served with fries and paprika aioli