Jafra Cafe & Lounge

Turkish coffee, stone-ground hummus and a shisha table

Jafra Cafe & Lounge opened in Inman Square in June 2026 with a clear Levantine brief: Middle Eastern coffee, shareable mezze, and a hookah lounge built for a long evening. The house calls itself a little corner of the Levant, and the menu backs it up with stone-ground hummus, hand-rolled falafel, baba ghanoush, warm pita, small-cup Turkish coffee and cardamom-spiced Arabic coffee.

Food arrives for the table rather than for a single composed plate. Shisha is the third pillar, with coals kept glowing through the visit and flavours running from Double Apple and Mint to Grape, Watermelon, Mixed Berry, Lemon Mint, Blueberry, Mojito and Lemon.

A room for the slow part of the day

The room is built for time you are not counting: cushioned seating, arched interior details, and a pace that lets a table hold its place while the evening stretches. It reads upscale-casual rather than formal, and it works differently depending on when you take it.

Daytime runs on espresso, black coffee, cappuccino, latte, Matcha Cloud Latte, rose latte, Turkish coffee, Arabic coffee and fresh mint tea. Matcha Cloud Latte and rose latte are the two that set the daytime list apart from a standard cafe board. Later the same table shifts toward mezze and hookah without changing rhythm. Halal, vegan and gluten-free choices sit across the menu, so a mixed table can order together, which is part of why it fills with friends catching up rather than people eating and leaving.

How to build the table

Start with Turkish coffee if the decision has to be simple, because it is one of the clearest signatures here and comes in the small cups the tradition asks for. Cardamom-spiced Arabic coffee is the other defining coffee order, while rose latte and fresh mint tea keep the drinks list inside the same Levantine frame.

From there, build around the stone-ground hummus, which the kitchen puts forward as its central dish, then add baba ghanoush with warm pita and hand-rolled falafel for a fuller spread. This is a la carte cafe, mezze and lounge ordering meant to be combined slowly rather than a set sequence. Finish with a shisha flavour and let the table run: strong coffee, shared plates, and nobody trying to rush the evening.