Coffee in Hanoi is not a drink you order on the way somewhere. It is the somewhere.
Hanoi runs on coffee the way other cities run on conversation, and it has invented at least one drink the rest of the world has not caught up with yet. The stools are low, the glasses are small, the robusta is strong enough to rearrange your afternoon, and nobody is in a hurry.
This is where I drink it, in the order I would drink it, from the one everyone comes for to the rooms nobody writes about.
The courtyard rooms, which nobody writes about.
Egg coffee at Giảng, where it was invented in 1946.
The one you came for
Egg coffee. Invented in Hanoi in 1946 by Nguyễn Văn Giảng, a bartender at the Metropole, who whipped egg yolk with condensed milk because there was no fresh milk to be had. What arrives is closer to a hot tiramisù than a coffee. Cà Phê Giảng is still run by his family, down a corridor off Hàng Gai into a back room of low stools; Cà Phê Đinh, up an unmarked staircase on Đinh Tiên Hoàng, is the same family and a separate business, and has the better window – straight out over Hoan Kiem Lake. Take the window seat and order it hot.
The daily one
Cà phê sữa đá. Dark robusta dripped through a little steel phin onto condensed milk, poured over ice. This is what Hanoi actually drinks, all day, everywhere, for about a dollar. Vietnam is the largest robusta producer in the world and it shows – the coffee here is bitter, chocolatey and absurdly strong, and the condensed milk is not a compromise, it is the recipe.
Drink it at a pavement stall on a stool eight inches off the ground, facing the street, which is the correct posture. The good ones have no sign.
The new rooms
Hanoi’s cafe design scene is genuinely excellent now and nobody writes about it. The pattern is the same and it works: a French villa or an old shophouse, stripped back to lime plaster and dark timber, a courtyard with one big tree, and extremely good light.
The best of them are in the lanes off the Old Quarter and up around West Lake, and the way to find them is to look up – the ground floor will be a motorbike shop and the cafe is on the second floor behind the shutters. Ask your guide which ones are good this season; they turn over fast, and the ones with queues outside are usually the ones to walk past.
And the ones I would skip
The big domestic chains – you will see them everywhere – are perfectly fine and exactly like chains everywhere. Coconut coffee is a pudding, enjoyable once. And salt coffee, which you will be told is a Hanoi thing, is actually Huế’s.
The one most people miss
Not a cafe at all – the pavement tea stalls. A kettle, a low table, a jar of sunflower seeds and a flask of green tea, usually run by a woman who has had that corner for thirty years. Tea is a few thousand dong, you sit as long as you like, and it is the single best place in the city to watch an hour of Hanoi go past. Point at the flask and hold up a finger.
How I would do it
Egg coffee at ten on the lake, a pavement cà phê sữa đá in the early afternoon when the heat is worst, and a courtyard room in the hour before dinner. Three stops, three completely different cities.
When I plan Hanoi for clients I build the coffee in deliberately – it is the best way to rest between the walking, and it is where you watch the city being itself. A guide who knows which doorways are worth going through turns it from a drink into the nicest hour of the day.
My agency, Coco Tran Travel, would love to arrange it.
Inquire about a private Hanoi day
Pair it with Hanoi: The Shortlist and The Rolodex: Hanoi.
A French villa, stripped back, with very good light.