Vietnamese coffee culture
When Obama – the president of the United States – visited Vietnam on May 2016, he said that he would like to enjoy some “Cafe sua da”, which means “Iced milk coffee” in Vietnamese”. I think he definitely should, since Vietnamese coffee is absolutely great and even praised by people around the world.
Formerly a colony of France, a country renowned for it’s café lifestyle, it was the French who first introduced coffee to Vietnam in the mid-19th century. Yet in the years since, the Vietnamese have turned it into a drink of their own, with somewhat unusual but delicious ways of drinking the black stuff becoming mainstream.
How Vietnamese drink coffee
Filter coffee is an specialty of Vietnam, Vietnamese always use filter to refine the coffee.On any given street in Vietnam, if you could look into the houses and the shops, the chances you’ll find someone enjoying traditional Vietnamese drip coffee are very high. It’s a simple but delicious drink; ground coffee is added to a metal filter, or phin, which is on the top of the cup. Water is then added, which seeps through the ground coffee and into the cup below.
How to experience Vietnamese coffee
Going around some big cities in Vietnam such as Hanoi or Saigon, especially in the morning, you can easily see many people sit on a chair or the pavement and drink coffee with a newspaper or smart phone in their hand. Vietnamese don’t want to be hurry when drinking coffee, and we love enjoying it while we are doing other things like reading books, newspapers or talking with friends, business partners or simply meditating.
The way people in Vietnam enjoy their coffee, as well as their preferences, are also varied which depend mostly on where they come from. For instance, in general, southern Vietnamese, especially Saigonese, prefer washier coffee, with lots of ice and sugar. They also have “Bac Xiu”( not Bac Siu ), which is simply iced milk coffee but with an extremely large amount of milk and just a little coffee. In the Northern Vietnam, when winter comes, people often use nau nong or den nong (nong means hot). But overall, den da (iced black coffee) and especially nau da (iced coffee with condensed milk) are the more regular choices.
Recently, some “modern cafeterias” like The Coffee House, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf or Starbucks have been popularized in Vietnam, especially by the young generation. It brings a lot of novelties to this country and somehow changes the way people enjoy coffee. However, just like Tet Holiday and Trinh Cong Son music, the traditional coffee culture – one of the exclusive types of coffee drinks will still play a crucial role in Vietnamese people’s life.
How to brew Vietnamese Coffee at home
How to brew Vietnamese EGG Coffee at home
