Icons: adding a new taste to coffee

The just opened Icons Coffee Couture at Souq Al Bahar is promising to give its customers more than just coffee. Serving organic coffee, from your regular espresso and Americano to the Dh180 per cup Kapi Luwak, one of the world’s most exclusive coffees, it aims to be a fashionable lifestyle concept that serves healthy fare, but not in a mundane way.

While at the condiment bar you have the choice of “sweetener” — sugar or stevia for your cuppa — all pastries and cakes are baked with stevia.

Browse through the menu and you’ll feel you are looking at a mini version of a fashion magazine, which has been designed with Vogue or Cosmopolitan in mind. And according to Elena Weber, former model and CEO and founder of Icons, “we plan to have it as a quarterly magazine with tips on how to keep fit at home and office, along with the food”.

On a regular menu you’d find 700-calorie frappuccinos, at Icons you’ll get 200-250-calorie steviachinos.

“Naturally, you can get every sugar-free option in the UAE, but it’s with aspartame and other chemical sweeteners. We are the first ones to focus on stevia, a natural sweetener,” explained Weber.

“In the beginning we did consider keeping sugar and sweetened products but then decided to make stevia our unique selling point. Our hot white chocolate is 160 calories as compared to 450-500 calories regular ones. Frappuccino here is 200-250 where as somewhere else it would be close to 700.

“So there’s definitely a difference. We also try to use low fat milk, low fat butter in our cakes and combine the ingredients to keep the calorie count a minimum while maintaining the taste”.

However, sugar-free options, even stevia, are not my cup of tea as they leave a lingering and unpalatable aftertaste. For this reason the very sweet signature hot white chocolate that was offered to me was quickly replaced by a much tastier sugar/sweetener–free organic coffee.

“The chocolate in this contains stevia and the hazelnut powder is also sweetened. That’s why you felt it so sweet,” said Weber. “I gave this to my father to try and he too said it was too much. But when I gave it to an Arab friend, he added a little more stevia. So we presumed the local population like it a little sweeter”.

Weber explained that it was on one of her modelling stints in Argentina that she discovered a “wonder” called stevia.

“Stevia is grown in Argentina. In my profession it’s difficult to eat sweets or chocolates because of the fear of weight gain. Stevia is sweet but, unlike aspartame and other sweeteners, natural. It was like a dream come true. I came home from this trip and thought why not bake with stevia? So I hired a pastry chef who, over a period of six months, re-worked classic recipes using stevia. It took this long because stevia is 300 times more sweet than sugar, we needed to get the right amount in the recipes. From here I put the concept together. As my profession was, in a way, my motivation to create something healthy, I created a package that’s a fashionable lifestyle concept than just your regular healthy concept”.

As a German national, it was hard to digest that Weber would choose a place such as Dubai to open her first store.

“It was during my university days that I did an internship in the UAE. I had met an investment company then. So, when I came up with the concept, I sent them a business plan. I wanted to start in Germany but they wanted it here and they wanted it to be big right from the beginning. We’ve spent one and a half, almost two years, in building the plan and menu. But we have a task to educate people about stevia, as it only entered the market a year ago. Plus people feel if it is sugar-free, it’s unnatural. We will need time but we are ready. We had sold our products in Germany to check the market but in terms of outlets this is our first one. We are already in talks with Qatar and Bahrain. As more outlets open, I’m sure more people will realise us as a brand and even though there are so many brands in the market, they are all successful. So if we are offering something special why shouldn’t we be successful too?”

Success has already come to Icons. Barista Nouman Qureshi’s fire-spitting dragon painted in milk and espresso won him the UAE Latte Art Champion, 2013, at the International Coffee and Tea Festival held earlier this month. He will be going to the World Latte Art Championship in Melbourne, Australia, next year.

If coffee is not what you wish for, try the energy-boosting smoothies, milkshakes, and blooming teas.

“We’ve added other superfoods into our items to reduce the calories, rich in antioxidants, nutrients that will keep you young, energetic and beautiful. People need to empower themselves because in the end, if our food is mainly carbs, sugar and empty nutrition, how will we expect our body to run for longer?”

And don’t forget, if you choose to take your coffee in a ceramic eco-cup, it will get you a discount. Better yet, choose the bling-y charity cup and get your name imprinted in crystals.

“Be an icon,” said Weber.