Morning Coffee: Coffee on Demand
Coffee is a big part of the social life of Saigon, a city that somehow manages to be both languid and relentlessly energetic in nearly equal measure. Hundreds of cafés and coffee stands dot the city: relaxed neighbourhood hangouts with a few plastic seats out front to watch the city go by; leafy park cafés where middle-aged women chat and men bring birdcages; multistoried cafés with elaborate fountains and gardens, oases hidden in unremarkable lanes. But even when there isn’t a café, it’s still easy to get coffee.
On a warm afternoon earlier this week, a few friends and I found ourselves in a small park in District 1, just around the corner from the Notre-Dame Basilica and Saigon’s tourist hub. Not long after we sat down, a woman came up to us and asked us if we wanted any coffee. We ordered three cà phê sữa đá (iced coffee with condensed milk) and one black iced coffee. About five minutes later, a man on a motorbike arrived with the coffees in a wire tray and the woman brought them to us. We paid 26,000 dong (about $1.80) for the four drinks.
Somehow, the fact that the coffee woman was wearing a Parasuco t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Montréal, Québec, Canada” made the candy-sweet coffee even more delicious.
Tags: Cafés, Morning Coffee, Parks, Saigon, Streetlife
Montreal Apartments
Patrick says:
Condensed milk is under-used in the west.
February 7th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
David Maloney says:
Interesting to see the Parasuco t-shirt in Vietnam.
How is the coffee there? In Korea, coffee was everywhere, extremely expensive, and terribly weak.
February 7th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
It’s great. Vietnam is one of the world’s great coffee growers and it’s a staple beverage in the same way that it is in many European countries. Vietnamese coffee is quite distinct in the way that it is ground and brewed too.
February 8th, 2009 at 5:26 am
Zvi says:
What great service! Did you know how much it would be before you placed your “order”? I assume that the coffee there is similar to the “Vietnamese coffee” that one finds at Vietnamese restaurants elsewhere? Made very strong (and almost syrupy in consistency) in a single-portion sized caffetiere-type thing, and then served over ice with optional condensed milk.
Happy travels….
February 8th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
It’s made in exactly the same way, but I think the roast is different, since North American restaurants usually use French roast coffee.
My friend speaks Vietnamese so I’m not actually sure how the actual transaction went, but there’s pretty much a guarantee that it will be cheap. The most expensive coffee we had was only about $2 CDN.
February 9th, 2009 at 11:53 am