If you ask a college student to show you his favorite place in Hanoi , there’s a chance he will lead you to an old tube house on Dinh Tien Hoang Street , up two flights of stairs that smell of moss and soil, into a little coffee shop overlooking Sword Lake .
The 68-year-old owner would greet him by name and serve him his “usual” without asking.
Nguyen Thi Bich’s café began attracting a following among students in the late 1980s.
“Students started to come in with their own rock and roll CDs to play,” said Bich, who has many stories to tell about her first student customers, some of whom have grown into “fine” young men like the well-known television sports presenter Long Vu.
Though coffee has never been as popular in Hanoi as in the winterless Ho Chi Minh City , where people drink ice coffee as if it were water, the old capital still has a vibrant coffee culture.
From spacious garden coffee bars, slick Highlands Coffee outlets and crowded cafes in ancient streets to instant coffee from the supermarket, Hanoi ’s coffee lovers have many choices.
Bich’s place, which has no sign but is commonly called Dinh Cafe, occupies a special place in students’ hearts.
They first came because of the music. Bich let them play their favorite songs, with just one exception - no “yellow” songs (a northern term for sentimental pre-1975 music from the south).
Now, the café’s tiny rickety lake-view balcony looks a little out of place, surrounded by high-rise buildings, exuding a nostalgic atmosphere that perfectly suits their taste.
They like the legendary coffee milk egg recipe passed down by her father as well. And the story about the old man only adds to the coffee shop’s charm.
Bich’s father Giang, a former bartender at a French restaurant, opened one of the first coffee shops in the French-colonized Hanoi . He served coffee brewed in the French style – with a filter - and added butter and rum to give it a distinctive taste.
At his original shop on Cau Go Street right behind Bich’s current café, Giang sold pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) in the morning and coffee in the afternoon.
Every day before switching to coffee, he had to scrub the whole house to erase the lingering pho smell which would have ruined the taste of the coffee.
“His pho was very good too,” Bich said of her connoisseur father, who is now remembered in the popular catch phrase “Nhan-Nhi-Di-Giang” – the names of the four most famous coffee brands in old Hanoi .
The Giang and Nhan names are a little older than the other two and have grown into an informal franchise.
There are now two official Giang cafés, run by his sons, on Yen Phu and Nguyen Huu Huan streets.
Bich could have put up a sign calling her shop Giang Café too, which would have attracted customers familiar with her father’s shop, but there was no need.
The students spread the word and many customers find their way there despite the lack of a sign.
It was to this café that Do Minh Trang took a friend who had returned to Hanoi after many years of living abroad.
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For a taste of Vietnamese coffee in Hanoi
Giang offshoots
Bich’s Dinh Café: 13 Dinh Tien Hoang
Giang Café: 39 Nguyen Huu Huan and 106 Yen Phu
Nhan: 39d Hang Hanh (original)
Nhi: 2 Hang Ca
Lam (whose late owner was famous for his passion for painting): 60 Nguyen Huu Huan
Mai: 79 Le Van Huu (for ground coffee) and 52 Nguyen Du (for drinks)
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For Trang, who also loves the more stylish cafes on Ly Thuong Kiet Street, this place feels like home, just like Sword Lake, Hanoi’s old quarter, narrow tube houses and drinking hot coffee in winter.
Some customers have known Bich for so long that they make their own coffee and just leave money on the counter.
Bich’s coffee is strong, not too bitter and free of artificial fragrances.
“Southerners often add nice fragrances to their coffee which vanishes the moment you sip it,” Bich said.
“But if you put a pinch of ground Hanoi coffee on your finger tip, the smell remains for half a day.”
Bich mostly buys her coffee beans from the Central Highlands city of Buon Ma Thuat , the coffee-growing region in Vietnam .
But she prefers beans grown in the less known Phu Quy area in the northern province of Nghe An for their stronger taste.
Like all old coffee shops in Hanoi , she creates her own blend of ground coffee. Her recipe is half Arabica, half Robusta.
Another common formula is an even mix of Arabica, Robusta and Cherry but bent on quality, Bich dismisses the cheaper Cherry as inferior.
As for spraying exotic ingredients like rum on the fried coffee beans before grinding, she says it’s impractical.
“You don’t make a lot of profit per coffee cup in the first place. Rum is simply too expensive.”
Every afternoon around 2 p.m., Bich leaves her shop in her son’s care to go home, turn on the TV and settle on her bed with her coffee bean sieves.
There she starts working with the beans, separating the good and the bad, until late in the evening.
“I opened the shop in desperation to earn an income,” the former school teacher said. “But it has turned into my source of happiness.”
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