When I first heard about egg coffee it was through my wife, who has a liking for that stuff. It is a truly Vietnamese delicacy, particularly associated with Hanoi and northern Vietnam. We lived in Saigon at the time, so for years we had to rely on the local interpretations.
However, it was not easy to find good egg coffee in Saigon. Many claimed it, but few really had it. That's why Giang Cafe, the place generally credited with creating Vietnamese egg coffee, was on top of our Must-Visit-List when we spent a day in Hanoi in March 2017.
It was quite easy to find: just follow Nguyen Huu Huan Street until you reach number 39. There were already plenty of egg coffee shops around, but Giang Cafe had a tiny entrance that was just wide enough to push our daughter's cart through.
The place itself was just beautiful. So old, so simple and so focused on its product. The kitchen was tiny and Mr. Nguyen Tri Hoa, the son of the founder, was managing the place himself. He was a friendly man, proud of his product and yet very modest in accepting praise.
According to the family story, his father, Nguyen Van Giang, developed egg coffee in 1946 while working as a bartender at Hanoi's Metropole hotel. Milk was scarce at the time, so egg yolk became part of an improvised substitute. Giang later opened his own cafe, and the drink eventually became one of Hanoi's best-known coffee specialities.
The exact family recipe remains a secret, but the coffee served at Giang is traditionally described as strong Vietnamese coffee topped by a thick, fluffy mixture based on egg yolk and condensed milk, with ingredients such as butter and cheese also reported as part of the recipe.
We paid 115.000đ in 2017 for a total of two egg coffees, one egg chocolate and one egg coffee with rum. The chocolate was not really my thing, but our daughter loved it and guarded it jealously (yes, in our family you have to guard your food). The egg coffees were perfect and the best I had ever tried. And the egg coffee with rum had a proper amount of real rum in it.
Delicious.
What I particularly liked was that the place did not feel as though somebody had designed a tourist attraction around a famous drink. It was a narrow, slightly hidden old cafe whose reputation had grown around something the family had been making for decades.
And unlike quite a few places from my old Vietnam articles, Giang Cafe is still there. The original location at 39 Nguyen Huu Huan continues to operate, while the family business has since added further locations in Hanoi.
For current information, visit the official Cafe Giang website.
