Café Touba

Café Touba is Senegal’s spiced coffee, sold from street carts and kiosks across the country. Its flavour comes from djar, the peppery dried pods of grains of Selim, and often cloves, which are roasted with the beans and ground together. Boiling water is poured through the spiced coffee in a filter, and it’s served sweet, frothed by pouring it back and forth between two cups. It’s named after Touba, the holy city of the Mouride Sufi brotherhood, and linked with its founder, Sheikh Amadou Bamba. Here’s how it’s made.

The short version

• Coffee roasted with djar (grains of Selim) and often cloves.
• Ground together, then brewed by pouring boiling water through a filter.
• Sweetened, and frothed by pouring between two cups.
• No milk.
• Named after Touba, and linked with Sheikh Amadou Bamba.

What is djar?

Djar is the dried seed pod of Xylopia aethiopica, also called grains of Selim or Guinea pepper. Wikipedia describes its taste as a mix of cubeb pepper and nutmeg with overtones of resin, and Tasting Table as bitter-spicy, with hints of pine and anise. In café Touba, it’s usually added near the end of roasting, so it toasts with the beans; Wikipedia says roasting then continues for about five more minutes.

How is café Touba made?

1. Roast the coffee, adding djar and often cloves near the end.
2. Grind the coffee and spices together.
3. Pour boiling water through the spiced coffee in a cloth or paper filter.
4. Sweeten it with sugar.
5. Froth it by pouring it back and forth between two cups from a height, and serve hot.

How much spice? Wikipedia gives a typical ratio of about 80% coffee to 20% djar, New Lines 1 part spice to 4 parts coffee, and one Cape Town café owner uses 75% coffee to 25% djar. New Lines reports that most Senegalese vendors brew it with robusta from Côte d’Ivoire, and sell it for as little as 100 CFA francs a cup. At home, you can toast the djar in a dry pan instead and grind it with roasted coffee.

Who invented café Touba?

Café Touba is closely linked with Sheikh Amadou Bamba, who founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883 and the city of Touba in 1887, according to New Lines. The French exiled him to Gabon in 1895, and New Lines says it was there that he found grains of Selim. Accounts differ on the rest: Wikipedia says the drink came to Senegal when he returned from Gabon in 1902, while New Lines says he brought the recipe back on his final return in 1907. Chef Pierre Thiam, quoted by Tasting Table, ties it to Sufi chanting, with the coffee keeping chanters up through long night sessions. I treat the origin story as tradition rather than settled history.

For nearly a century it stayed mostly within the Mouride brotherhood. New Lines reports that the rise in imported coffee prices from 2008 pushed people towards it as a cheaper local drink, and that an estimated 2 in 3 Senegalese now reportedly drink it.

Café Touba vs other spiced coffees

	Café Touba	Arabic coffee	Yemeni qishr
Spice	Djar, often cloves, roasted in	Cardamom, often saffron	Ginger
Base	Coffee beans	Lightly roasted beans	Coffee husks
Brewed	Water poured through a filter	Simmered	Simmered
Served	Sweet, frothed, no milk	Unsweetened, with dates	Often sweetened

General guidance only. Take care with boiling water and when pouring between cups, and buy djar from a reputable spice supplier.

Café Touba vs other methods

• Arabic coffee: light-roast coffee spiced with cardamom.
• Ethiopian jebena buna: the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
• Yemeni qishr: coffee husks brewed with ginger.
• South Indian filter coffee: also frothed by pouring between cups.

Explore every boiled method in the boiled chapter.