A Vietnamese Coffee Movement Is Brewing Across America
When chef Thai Dang set about opening Beard-nominated Vietnamese kitchen HaiSous, in Chicago back in 2017, he also planned for an attached all-day coffee and street food bar called Cà Phê Dá (“coffee with ice”). So, as is common practice in a diasporic community, Dang, a one-time refugee, asked around and found a sister-in-law whose family had been growing coffee on a small plot of land in the southeastern province of Đồng Nai. “This was old-school roasting with no fancy machinery—they roasted the coffee over old rambutan trees,” he says of the ramshackle operation. “I didn’t want to ship in raw beans and roasting gear. I wanted to keep that same flavor profile, a deep roast, that my sister’s family had been doing for 30 years. It’s the caramel-y notes; it’s the butteriness. These are the characteristics that make Vietnamese coffee what it is.”
But it wasn’t just Vietnam’s beans that Dang was importing—it was also its traditional beverages. The drinks menu, created by Dang’s wife and business partner, Danielle, draws inspiration from the couple’s travels in Southeast Asia, running the gamut from simple drip coffee with condensed milk (cà phê sữa đá) to Hanoian-style egg custard coffee (cà phê trứng) and a traditional coffee with yogurt (cà phê sữa chua), which the duo makes in-house.