In Hanoi, Old and New Ways With Coffee

One of the best things Vietnam has going for it is coffee.

I'm certain that the easy availability of a cup or iced glass of rich chocolate-y coffee almost any time of the day or night, for the equivalent of an American dollar or less has helped make Vietnam such a popular tourist destination. The language is difficult to master, travel can be a hassle and the locals can be at times, um, crusty. But no matter where in Vietnam you find yourself good coffee is likely to be within reach.

While in Hanoi last August Dave and I must have each downed eight or more glasses a day. It's easy to roll out of bed at the crack of dawn when you know a nice coffee is steps from your hotel. It's easy to keep moving in the wilting heat when there's always a glass of the iced stuff nearby to restart your motor. At home we're generally a.m. coffee drinkers only but when we're in Vietnam coffee is an integral part of our entire day.

In Hanoi we found two more reasons to love Vietnamese coffee: ca phe trung (egg coffee) and ca phe sua chua (yogurt coffee).

Both were introduced to us by Hanoi Cooking Centre chef and proprietor (and co-author of a beautiful new book on Vietnamese street food) Tracey Lister. We'd gone to Hanoi to do a story on HCC and its Vietnamese staff, and the evening we arrived we met up with Tracey to lay plans for the week. She suggested we meet at Cafe Pho Co on Hang Gai street. The entry is a souvenir shop but behind is a lovely bordering-on-crumbling building whose breezy rooftop offers one of the best views in Hanoi. 

The hour dictated beer but as we drank Tracey told us about the house specialty, a concoction of raw egg whipped with coffee that she described as something akin to warm coffee custard. Ca phe trung has been a Hanoi drink for generations and Cafe Pho Co has been serving it for decades. It's a morning libation, though the cafe serves it throughout the day. As difficult as Ca Phe Pho Co can be to locate, their ca phe trung justifies the effort.

I'd equate the beverage to my mother's warm eggnog, sans the booze and nutmeg and shot through with notes of caramel and chocolate. It's part dessert (though it's not cloyingly sweet), part restorative caffeinated beverage. It's also reminiscent of wonderful egg-enriched tea we once drank at a food market in western Sumatra (read about the tea and see how to make it here).

There's no reason not to adore a hot ca phe trung (we also tried it iced but found that the drink doesn't benefit from dilution), although the caloric content probably dictates restricted consumption. I can't imagine a more delicious way with eggs and coffee.

A few days later, after a gut-busting lunch at HCC, Tracey took us to Cafe My to try ca phe sua chua. Coffee with yogurt is a more recent invention than egg coffee, it seems, and you'll see signs for it all over town. But Cafe My is an old, not at all trendy shop known for the high quality of its beans (it also inspired a Cafe My chain).

Its lightly sweetened yogurt is especially rich, which makes it the best place to down this treat. It's an inspired and fantastically refreshing combo (opening photo), the light bitterness of the coffee bouncing off the creamy sweetness of the yogurt. We returned to Cafe My specifically for this specialty, which we sometimes preceded with glasses of iced coffee, several times before we left Hanoi.

On one visit a downpour commenced just as we were finishing our coffee yogurts. We'd not brought umbrellas so had no choice but to mine the rest of the yogurt section of Cafe My's menu.

The slightly alcoholic fermented red rice with yogurt (above) received thumbs up from Dave, but while I loved the rice's chewy texture I was ambivalent about its flavor. I'm generally a fermented foods gal, but I wasn't entirely won over by this one.

Creamy ripe avocado mashed with creamy fresh yogurt -- what's not to love about Cafe My's avocado yogurt? Nothing really, except a disappointing mildness flavor that's especially pronounced after you've tried a coffee yogurt.

Comments

[lili]

Coffee with yogurt is one of my favourite things. I've had two kinds in Hanoi, the more common flaked ice, vinamilk yogurt, condensed milk and coffee combination, but the frozen yogurt version is my favourite. I've only had the frozen version at Cafe Duy Tri on Yen Phu near Truc Bach lake, which is definitely worth a stop next time you're in Hanoi.

[Manisha]

We were in Saigon over Thanksgiving week but did not come across these fascinating coffees!

[Meister @ The Nervous Cook]

This sounds completely heavenly. I'm going to have to either track down or master that egg coffee myself!

[Jilly House]

Coffee is an essential part of my life, I need at least three cups a day to feel good, maybe I am a coffeeholic, but I accept this weakness of mine!What I want is to try new and different ways of preparing coffee, so if you have possibilities, please publish some recipe with prepare guidance!

[Florence Anna]

Hi Robyn,
I tried Ca Phe Trung at Cafe Pho Co last month and can't argue with you: absolutely delicious, and surely a very nice alternative to eggnog during the festive season in South East Asia!
Thanks for bringing back some sweet memories with this post..
Florence

[Trish Anderton]

These both look delicious. But 8 glasses of Vietnamese coffee a day?! Just two gave me the shakes until midday when I was there!

I've been buying ground Vietnamese coffee at the Asian mall here and mixing it into my daily brew. No other coffee has that wonderful chocolatey flavor.

[Tracey@Tangled Noodle]

Suddenly, my morning coffee seems more like a cup of *meh*! And that avocado-yogurt...? I am buying a big-azz avocado today. Then I'm going to book a flight to Hanoi.

[Pooja Singh]

Wow nice post guys. I really did not know that there are so many different types of coffee. Thanks for sharing it.

[Account Deleted]

This post seriously makes me want to go to Vietnam.

On the egg custard drink, we have a similar thing here in the Philippines called kinutil. Except it is made with hot cacao, egg, milk, and palm wine. Like egg nog with cacao. Something different. It's not for everyone, but a few are crazy about it. They sell it in gallon jugs for people vacationing by the ocean.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b166/bvmisa/_MG_6282.jpg

[Robyn]

Wow Beatrice -- that sounds fantastic! I love, love Philippine cacao. In fact I have some in my cupboard. No palm wine though. Perhaps rum will do? Thank you for the comment and the heads up.

Tracey - you would LOVE Hanoi. If you go contact @stickyinhanoi and @vietnamesegod (on Twitter) for a street food walk. We ate so very, very well with them. Fun guys too.

Trish, I need 2, sometimes three to get me going in the am. Then there's mid-morning, post-lunch, mid-afternoon, early evening .... it adds up! Couldn't drink coffee like that in Italy but something about the heat in Viet.

Florence, you're welcome. Thanks for reading.

Jilly, have a look at the link to the tea with egg on Sumatra ... I suspect the preparation is similar.

Hi Manisha -- I believe these are n Viet/Hanoi specialties. We lived in Saigon for 2.5 yrs and never came across either, haven't seen them on return trips either.

Lili, thanks for the tip, noted for the next trip! I just love the creaminess of the yogurt at Cafe My, and it's not *too* sweet.

[Account Deleted]

Ack.. message me your address and I'll post you the best cacao tablea I've tried locally!

[Marc]

Never tried avocado with yogurt but alwats had it with condensed milk growing up in Manila in the summer, with crushed ice of course.

[Velops]

Here's a recipe for ca phe trung:

http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/diaryofafoodie/2008/05/coffeezabaglione

[Brighton Restaurants]

Fantastic coffee stories.Some of them were really new to me, such as the avocado yogurt coffee.

[xexpat]

Oooh, I remember ca phe trung well. I lived there in the 90s, and made it my point to investigate this treasure of a libation (even got them to teach me how to make it before I left; the gourmet link above seems quite close, and note that unlike the Sumtran egg tea, this drink only uses egg yolks). It was the invention of this very cafe (housed above a luggage store), and not (as I had supposed), some long-standing but obscure Vietnamese tradition - at least that is what i discovered from my investigations (in the pre-internet days...)

It was always called Cafe Sinh Vien, since it was populated by sunflower-seed-peeling students all day and night, who could only rarely could afford the ca phe trung specialty.

[Kitt]

Do you remember where Cafe My is? Not finding it on Google. We thought we would give it a try while we're in Hanoi for the next few days! Thanks!

[Mike]

Wow great article, and love the pictures. The Vietnamese coffee bar looks great. I never made it to Vietnam, but the coffee in Laos was good (so long as they didnt put condensed milk in it!)

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