Wandering through Hanoi’s coffee culture

No doubt about it, coffee was introduced to Indochina by the French colonists. From the roasting, grinding, and brewing methods to teaching the locals how to cultivate commercial coffee plants over a hundred years ago, nothing has really changed—not even the French names.

Of course, major cities like Hanoi and Saigon were the first places where Vietnamese people became familiar with coffee. However, even within the same country, the way people drink coffee in the South differs from the North. Many believe that because Saigon’s climate is hot all year round, people there always drink iced coffee. This reason is partly true but also not entirely convincing. The idea of adding ice to cool down doesn’t quite satisfy true coffee addicts. In Hanoi, iced coffee only became popular around the 1970s, starting with handwritten white chalk signs that said “Có đá” (meaning “with ice”) hanging on shop doors—sometimes displayed, sometimes not.

People in Hanoi who are around sixty years old now usually had their first cup of coffee when they were about five or six. Some secretly, some openly. But it always started by adding hot water into the coffee filter (phin) after the adults had taken the first brew. The dripping lasted about two minutes and then it was gone. A lot of sugar was poured in, and one big gulp finished it.

The Four Seasons state-run coffee shop by Hoan Kiem Lake in the 1960s was a popular gathering place for Hanoi’s young gentlemen and ladies. The wooden folding doors were taken off and stacked under the wall. Sitting inside, you could see the willow trees swaying by the lake. Soft tango blue music played gently. The coffee filter whispered drips. Women wore white sleeveless blouses shaped like pointed hats. Men wore light blue poplin shirts tucked neatly into their trousers. Many khaki pants with creases at the knees were sharply pressed, so sharp they could cut. This was how Hanoi people kept their touch of elegance during hard times.

Coffee must come with cigarettes. Drinking coffee without smoking was like “sleeping with a statue of your wife,” as a humorous rural man once said. Cigarettes came in two types for all brands: the regular pack and the silver pack. The common ones included “Truong Son” (back then the S wasn’t capitalized as now). Slightly better were “Tam Dao” and “Dien Bien.” The top-tier was the silver-pack “Thang Long.” When courting a girl, having a pack of silver “Thang Long” cigarettes hidden in your shirt pocket was already nine-tenths of success. The last step was to pull one out and offer her father a smoke.

The state-run coffee shops were places of great inventions. If these inventions were made today, they might be strong candidates for the Ig Nobel Prize. For example, people drilled holes all over coffee spoons to prevent theft. But spoons still got stolen as usual—because babies eating porridge can use any spoon. The next invention to fix the previous mistake was to stick a bamboo stick into every cup of state coffee. Whether that stopped theft or not, no one knew. But true Hanoi coffee lovers openly boycotted those “bamboo-stick coffee” shops.

In the 1970s, Hanoi youth often gathered to drink coffee at Quan Gio (Wind Cafe) in Thong Nhat Park. They invented a spoon-shooting game, almost turning it into a gambling sport after training many sharpshooters who never missed. Some even managed to shoot their spoon just right so it landed perfectly in a cup several meters away on another table.

Serious coffee addicts rarely drank at state-run shops. They preferred “Nhan, Nhi, Di, Giang” — famous cafes dating back to the French colonial era. Each cafe had its own distinctive coffee style. Mr. Giang was famous for his amazing egg coffee recipe. The former chef of the Metropole Hotel didn’t just add eggs to coffee, but also to mung bean powder, cocoa, and even beer. Mr. Nhi was rumored to add a little opium ash to his freshly brewed coffee. Truth or myth, his cafe was always packed. Interestingly, old Hanoi coffee shops usually had only one-word names — the owner’s name. After retiring his street coffee cart, Mr. Lam opened Lam Coffee shop. The only exception was “Hoi Coffee” near the Ba Trieu intersection, which had no signboard. Surely, the owner’s name wasn’t Hoi — just look at his bald head.

Hanoi coffee faced its two most shocking bans in coffee history in 1969 and 1972. The prohibition order still hasn’t been lifted to this day. Like the cement “No filming or photography” sign at the start of Long Bien Bridge heading to Hang Dau, which was put up back when people listened to “Security Stories” on the radio every Saturday night. The warnings stopped about forty years ago, but the sign remains intact.

Regular customers weren’t afraid. They could still sneak into Mr. Giang’s tea shop on Hang Gai street to get coffee served discreetly. Hoi Coffee was closed but still sold coffee. That might be the only shop in the world that sells only when it’s officially closed. After morning coffee hours ended, Mr. Hoi opened all doors wide, sat inside waving his bamboo fan like a model Hanoi citizen. Tuyen Coffee on the mezzanine at Tran Hung Dao street was somewhat more comfortable. Few people knew about that upstairs cafe tucked in a narrow alley of Hanoi. The phrase “Life is very hard but still must be cheerful” was born in those hidden Hanoi coffee shops back then. From those secret cafes to when Siu Black loudly sang “A cup of coffee seems to say…” in the song “Ly Ca Phe Ban Me” by “Silver Shop Cowboy” Nguyen Cuong, it took over twenty years.

Coffee shops in Hanoi exploded in the early 1980s. Old refrigerators brought from Saigon after liberation accidentally became money-making machines for low-paid government clerks, making ice day and night to deliver to new coffee shops. At that time, Trieu Viet Vuong street had only two shops: Thai Coffee and Tho Coffee — still single-word names. Now it’s a whole street full of coffee shops. The strangest thing is almost all of them are crowded, and their affordable coffee has almost the same strong concentration as if made by one hand.

Before Trung Nguyen Coffee introduced its numbered system to suit all tastes, Hanoi people had to choose coffee by “lifetime loyalty” to shops matching their taste. Artists often sat at Lam Coffee on Nguyen Huu Huan, Nhan Coffee in Hang Hanh alley, and Linh Coffee at the corner of Tran Quoc Toan and Tran Binh Trong. Office workers chose Mau Coffee on Nguyen Du and Trieu Viet Vuong Coffee. Long-time drinkers didn’t always prefer thick, strong coffee. Many chose relatively light brews to suit their blood pressure conditions.

Hanoi coffee drinkers now have fixed times for their cups, not only because of their biological clocks. Going to a cafe at the wrong time often means encountering amateur customers with excessive makeup and perfume. Nothing is funnier than drinking coffee as if drinking a whole bottle of perfume. After finishing, you might want to find another place to drink again.

In Hanoi, you never have to walk more than 50 meters to find a coffee shop on the street. Many cafes survive because of gullible customers. Where do so many gullible people come from nowadays?

Source: Collected.