Anxiously I followed Jodi Ettenberg, the creator of Legal Nomads, who walked very fast crossing the intersection of Nguyen Avenue and Le Loi Boulevard at District 1 in Saigon. After all in the city, now called Ho Chi Minh City, motorcycles and cars sometimes neither stop in red lights nor in pedestrian crossings.

“Just don’t stop,” Jody said. Apparently she already mastered the tricks of how to cross the streets of Vietnam. 

We turned to Dong Khoi St., then entered dim alleys, walked between parked motorcycles, climbed two flights of stairs, and voilà! we came to a joint that I never imagine exist in such a surrounding.

L’Usine, a colonial architecture with large glass windows and high ceilings located at 151 Dong Khoi St., is a fashion boutique, café and art gallery rolled into one. The café section has communal tables and individual tables with photos from the bygone era decorating the wall. Its founders aimed for a space that showcases global fashion and celebrates modern Vietnamese creativity.

L’Usine serves Asian fusion, French and Vietnamese style food, but we were there for coffee. There are several choices of coffee but only one each for Vietnamese coffee and Vietnamese Iced Coffee.

I am not a coffee addict but settled for Vietnamese coffee and was extremely fascinated to see the coffee, served individually on a cup ¼ prefilled with condensed milk, dripped from a metal drip filter (phin filter). Click here to see how it works.

Before stirring the condensed milk, the coffee didn’t taste too strong for me, but there was a flavor that I could not identify. Jody later explained that Vietnamese coffee is often roasted in butter oil.

In the late 19th century the French introduced coffee to Vietnam and it was quickly adopted with regional variations. The story was, sweet condensed milk is used in Vietnamese coffee due to the limited availability of fresh milk in the old days.

The next day, with another set of friends I ventured into Trung Nguyen Coffee in 80 Dong Khoi St., not far from L’Usine and the place where I stayed at Nguyen Hue Avenue.

Trung Nguyen Coffeehouses are popular among tourists visiting Saigon. The company defines its coffee shops as a chain of spaces to explore creative inspiration, exclusively and specifically for coffee.

The outlet we visited is quite large for a corner coffeehouse.  It has two floors for guests to enjoy their coffee. A greenish wall is decorated with a flow of coffee processing. Sacs of coffee, coffee magazines and Trung Nguyen coffee products adorn the place.

It looks more like a restaurant than a coffeehouse and offers a full menu of coffee, food and drink. On the food menu, for example, the outlet serves braised vermicelli with crab meat; beef stew served with bread;  and Vietnamese special fried beef cubes with coffee sauce, served with French fries.

The yogurt with mixed fresh fruits was really delightful. Cold, sour, sweet, crunchy and creamy at the same time.

Out of curiosity we ordered Legendee, the most expensive cup in the house. Legendee claimed as “the Excalibur to the hero” turned out to be a version of Weasel coffee.” Served, also dripping, in a black cup made the coffee exclusive and tasted even stronger.

Dang Le Nguyen Vu founded Trung Nguyen Corporation in 1996 with an old bike as his initial investment. According to a recent report by Chris Summers for the BBC News Magazine, he is now a multi millionaire who owns five Bentleys and 10 Ferraris. Forbes magazine estimated him to be worth $100m.

Vu who has exported Trung Nguyen coffee products to more than 60 countries is destined to make Vietnam a powerful coffee nation and bring Vietnamese coffee culture to the world by planning to set up an international chain of Vietnamese-style coffee shops.

I wish him the best of luck and just hope that in getting into the coffee shops, wherever they are in the world, we do not have to face challenging traffic.

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Text: Amanda Niode

Images: Mr. Vu: Trung Nguyen, all others: Omar Niode Foundation