Specialty coffee cafés in Ho Chi Minh City

Robusta and liberica as specialty coffee

Every Half began in 2016, when Trần Lê Minh Trúc started an online channel to talk coffee with friends. The first café and roastery opened at 232/23 Võ Thị Sáu in District 3 in 2021.³ For one liberica harvest it tried seven processing methods, including koji fermentation, which it took to the Coffee Expo in Portland, Oregon.³ It roasts light, on a Giesen W6A for production and a W1A for samples.¹

96B Cafe & Roastery, at 96B Phan Ngữ in Đa Kao, has used liberica since it opened and puts Vietnamese-grown beans into its filter coffee, its espresso and its retail bags.¹ Its founder, Hana Choi, was born in Korea and raised in Vietnam.¹ In Thảo Điền, Aramour Coffee Roasters at 7 Lê Văn Miến roasts its own Vietnam-origin beans for every drink on the menu.²

What a specialty cup costs in Saigon

An October 2026 survey by Znews priced many drinks at Bosgaurus Coffee Roasters at about 75,000–95,000₫. It set a plain black coffee at under 50,000₫ and a drink made with special beans or by hand-brewing at 70,000–100,000₫.⁴ One specialty café in the city charged 500,000₫ for a single cup of a rare Colombian lot, from green beans costing about US$120 a kilo.⁴

The raw material explains part of the gap. In May 2025 Vietnamese farmers were selling ordinary green coffee for about 100,000–130,000₫ a kilo, while specialty lots fetched more than 600,000₫ and some graded lots 1–2 million₫.⁵ For comparison, The Dot Magazine found Dolphy Café, which has a branch at 1441 Nguyễn Văn Linh in District 7, charging 45,000₫ for a large cappuccino as of 2026.²

Where Saigon's specialty cafés cluster

District 3 has Cà Phê The Yellow Chair Specialty in an alley at 48C Hẻm 46 Võ Văn Tần and Y coffee roastery on the same street, plus Hoff Specialty Coffee and The Hummingbird Café & Roastery on Võ Thị Sáu. In Đa Kao & Tân Định, 80+ Coffee Roastery is at 5E Trần Nhật Duật and 96B on Phan Ngữ.

District 1 has Tonkin Speciality Coffee at 91 Lý Tự Trọng and VCR Coffee Roastery at 4 Nguyễn Siêu. In Bình Thạnh, Bosgaurus sits in the Saigon Pearl complex at 92 Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh.² Farther out are Cà Nhà on Trường Sa in Phú Nhuận, Seven Coffee Roastery on Phạm Văn Bạch in Tân Bình and Gate 7 Coffee Roastery on Nguyễn Trường Tộ in Tân Phú.

Other coffee-focused cafés work with similar beans. The Workshop Coffee at 27 Ngô Đức Kế in District 1 uses Đà Lạt arabica.²

Hours and what to order

Specialty bars keep daytime hours with a long tail. Cà Nhà opens at 06:00, earlier than the other specialty cafés, and Bosgaurus at Saigon Pearl at 07:30. 80+ Coffee Roastery stays open until 22:30 and The Yellow Chair until 22:00, while 96B closes at 18:00.

Bosgaurus makes its signature cà phê sữa đá (iced coffee with condensed milk) only with Vietnamese-grown arabica, brewed in a custom phin, the small metal drip filter.¹ Its filter list sometimes includes rare lots from producers it works with closely, so ask what is on that day.¹ Every Half's menu runs to cold brew, matcha and soda-based drinks, and its regulars are mostly students and young professionals in their 20s and early 30s.¹