The Yemeni Sufi meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert: everything is placed together on a low mat or cloth (soufra) on the floor, in the zâwiya (Sufi lodge). One eats with the right hand, in sharing and silence, starting by invoking the name of God. Frugality is the rule: few dishes, small portions, fasting often in the background. The liveliest moment is not the meal but the long nightly vigil of dhikr, punctuated by cups of coffee. Three types of meals structure the table: the sober everyday meal (legumes, porridges), the exceptional one for feasts and ziyâra at the mausoleum (honey breads), and the traveler's and pilgrim's viaticum, which must keep for days.

Yemen is the birthplace of cultivated coffee, and it was precisely the Sufi brotherhoods who, at the end of the Middle Ages, spread its use: the drink helps to stay awake for prayer vigils and dhikr. The signature of this table is not a rare spice but the coffee cherry itself—roasted, or reduced to husks (qishr) infused with ginger. Drinking coffee here is an almost liturgical act.