Xin chào Vintnerds!
We’re sharing our trip to Vietnam all week long! When we visited over Thanksgiving we noticed there were two distinct drinking cultures in Vietnam and the dominant one was coffee. So we know you don’t usually come to us for non-alcoholic drinks, but hopefully you enjoy our caffeine crawl through the streets of Saigon.
Thanksgiving is the holiday to skip in our books. Erin isn’t a fan of the food or celebrating colonization, so she started an annual tradition of fucking off to literally anywhere else! Melissa finds the price of domestic plane tickets appalling for what is tantamount to a long weekend, and when the cost of a ticket to Vietnam was cheaper than a flight to Utah, she decided to join in.
Vietnam has always been on our joint travel bucket list, for its beautiful climate, renowned food scene, and emerging cocktail scene. The coffee and cafe scene ended up being one of our favorites that we have experienced while traveling.
The Basics
Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of the robusta bean, responsible for around 40% of the world’s supply. Vietnam was introduced to coffee by the French, who colonized the country from the late 1800’s to 1954. Naturally, the farmers who grew the beans were left to the most bitter and undesirable part of the bean harvest, leading to a distinct style of preparing coffee.
Vietnamese coffee begins by roasting robusta beans in butter and salt, sometimes with chicory, corn, or rice added to improve the bitter flavor. After that, the beans are ground and processed through either a vot (cloth strainer) or a phin (metal strainer).
Our Recommendations in Saigon:
Phin Coffee: Lacaph (Upstairs, 220 Đ. Nguyễn Công Trứ, Phường Nguyễn Thái Bình, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam)
Located in the heart of Q1, Lacaph is a coffee roaster that provides beans to most of the top hotels across Vietnam. Working with a small collective of farmers, Lacaph’s mission is to share and elevate the story of Vietnamese coffee across the world. We were lucky to catch a spot in their signature history of Vietnamese coffee class, where we walked away with an understanding of how to make traditional phin coffee with salted cream (Cà Phê Muối) and with condensed milk (Cà Phê Sữa Đá). We also walked away with bags of beans, and a phin coffee maker each. What can we say, we loved it!
Vot Coffee: Cafe Cheo Leo (109/36 Nguyen Thien Thuat Street, Ward 2,District 3, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam)
We went to the oldest cafe in Saigon (over 80 years!) for a taste of ca phe vot, the traditional cloth strainer method of preparing vietnamese coffee. Nestled in a residential area, this felt like a hidden gem- despite topping best coffee in the city lists.
Egg Coffee: Little Hanoi Egg Coffee (2nd Floor, 212 Le Lai Ben Thanh Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)
Egg coffee is a rich indulgence, custard and coffee coming together in one cup. But it was actually invented out of scarcity. With a milk shortage caused by the First Indochina War, a bartender at Legend Metropole Hotel, Nguyen Van Giang, came up with the idea of mixing egg & sugar to recreate the taste and consistency of condensed milk. The end result has taken the nation by storm, and is proudly touted as “Vietnamese style coffee”. However, not everyone agrees. I was told by a local to Ha Noi (where Nguyen and egg coffee originated) that egg coffee was, in fact, too “new” (invented in 1946) to be THE Vietnamese coffee.
Regardless of its title, it's definitely worth trying, and pretty easy to make.
Some resources for learning more about Vietnamese coffee:
Nguyen Coffee: With the mission of making robusta just as respected as arabica beans, Nguyen coffee was founded by a first generation Vietnamese American woman. While we haven’t personally tried their brews, the equipment looks legit and we love the messaging
LaCaph: Unfortunately, you can’t shop LaCaph in the US (trust us, it hurts us more than it hurts you), but luckily they have a YouTube where you can watch videos of the experts to help you in your coffee journey!
Next up: Cocktails & Wine!
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