Cafés in Vietnam from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City

How coffee came to Vietnam

French missionaries brought the first coffee plants in 1857, and the first plantations were laid out in 1888 in Ninh Bình and Quảng Bình, in the north. In the 1920s the colonial administration opened coffee zones in the Central Highlands, mainly in Đắk Lắk province, and by 1940 the colony exported about 2,000 tonnes a year.²

Arabica arrived by the same route, from African seed, and took root around Đà Lạt.⁶ War and then collectivization kept output small until the Đổi Mới reforms of 1986 allowed private farming again, after which the industry grew quickly.² Production of 32.5 million bags in 2026/27 would be the largest Vietnamese crop on record.¹

Buôn Ma Thuột and the Central Highlands

The highlands are robusta country, and the plateau around Buôn Ma Thuột in Đắk Lắk is where the industry centered.⁵² Trung Nguyên, founded in the town in 1996, grew into one of the leading Vietnamese coffee brands, and its G7 instant coffee launched in 2003.³²

Buôn Ma Thuột markets itself as the destination of world coffee, and its coffee festival reached its ninth edition from 9 to 13 March 2025.⁴ Further north, the Đắk Hà area of Kon Tum, a province merged into Quảng Ngãi in 2025, has more than 9,000 hectares under coffee.⁵¹¹

Phin, butter roast and condensed milk

Most Vietnamese coffee is brewed one cup at a time through a phin, the small metal drip filter, using water at 90–95°C and coarse robusta grounds. Traditional roasters often add a little butter, or even cacao, to the beans, which pushes the flavor toward dark chocolate and nuts.¹⁰

The milk is a legacy of colonial shortages. Fresh milk was scarce under French rule and spoiled in the heat, so shelf-stable sweetened condensed milk took its place, and ice was added for the climate.⁷ Southerners call the result cà phê sữa đá; in the north it is cà phê nâu đá, "brown iced coffee".⁷

Hanoi, Huế, Da Nang and Hội An

Hanoi has the old cafés and the inventive drinks. Café Thái has served coffee in various forms since the 1920s, and yogurt coffee is a local staple.⁸ Egg coffee, a sweet foam of yolk over strong coffee, was born here and is a winter favorite.⁹⁸ Food & Wine has named Hà Nội among the world's top coffee cities.⁹

Huế, the old imperial capital and since 2025 one of Vietnam's six centrally governed cities, gave the country cà phê muối (salt coffee).¹¹⁹ A local couple devised it around 2010: condensed milk at the bottom, a layer of salted milk, and phin coffee on top. It has since spread to Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City.¹³

Da Nang and Hội An have formed a single city since Quảng Nam province merged into Da Nang in 2025.¹¹ Da Nang is a beach city whose first cups go out before 05:30, with kiệt (alley) cafés and riverfront terraces. Hội An is the heritage town of the pair, with shophouse cafés in the Old Town and rice-field and beach cafés a short ride out.

Đà Lạt, Nha Trang and Ho Chi Minh City

Đà Lạt, the hill resort the French founded in 1912, is the cool-climate end of the country, known for its coffee farms and its beans.⁶⁹ On the slopes of Langbiang mountain, the K'Ho Coffee cooperative, founded in 2012, provides work for 50 K'Ho families and serves its coffee in a garden café on the farm.⁶

Nha Trang is the beach resort of Khánh Hòa, a province that absorbed Ninh Thuận in 2025.¹¹ Its cafés include one on Nguyễn Trãi built beside the railway; as of 2024, six or seven passenger trains passed each day, usually around 07:00–07:30 and 18:00–20:00.¹⁴

Ho Chi Minh City, which took in Bình Dương and Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu provinces in 2025, keeps its cà phê vợt stalls, where coffee is strained through a cloth filter.¹¹⁹ Vinh Ngo began selling it at Cheo Leo, in an alley off Nguyễn Thiện Thuật, in 1938, and his daughters were running it in 2016.¹² Bạc xỉu, a milk-heavy coffee, emerged here in the 1950s among the Cantonese community of Chợ Lớn.⁷