When you travel to Ho Chi Minh city, one thing that you couldn't afford to miss is their local Vietnamese coffee. It's not hard to find a coffee shop in Ho Chi Minh, but you will have hard time on which one you should go. There are some famous coffee shops featured by bloggers and forum-ers; we just went to the nearest coffee shop that located 2 mins walking distance from our Mayflower Hotel.
Trung Nguyen Coffee is quite famous in Ho Chi Minh (I guess, since we saw lot of branches for Trung Nguyen Coffee), my cousin did asked me to buy some coffee packets from here as well. Went there on our first day and last day, didn't pick other coffee shop on our last day as we really like their service, it's superb. Even though we might have communication problem (only few of them can understand English), they trying hard to serve us and give us the best coffee experience over here.
Trung Nguyen Coffee implements order-and-pay-upfront before you grab you seat, a number will be assigned to you and they will serve you your order once it is done. Here, they have more comfortable seats at 1st floor and a cup of bottomless water (I guess this is some kind of tea, doesn't taste like water at all) will be served to you.
Mother Land Coffee . VND 50,000
I tried their signature coffee on the first day, this is what I ordered on the last day. It share the same portion like espresso coffee, from this portion, I can imagine how bitter it will be before I started my first sip on it. I'm right on the bitterness of this coffee, end up I poured the whole pack of sugar in it so that I can finished it off. I prefer espresso more btw.
Break Through . VND 81,000
Here comes the signature iced coffee in the shop, when they first served this up, we totally had no idea how to make an iced coffee, never seen this is Malaysia pun. Normally, in other restaurant that we went during the trip, they straight away served the ready iced coffee to us, but here they let us try to make our iced coffee by own-self. They just served a glass of ice and a 2 layer cup (my first thought), then the friendly waitress came and helped us on how to make our own iced coffee. It was so fun to 'play' with the filter but it required 10-15 mins until the coffee is ready. Anyway, good coffee worth the wait. We looked like a pro on making this coffee during the second visit. I even bought a filter and coffee powder but didn't try it out yet at home.
When they served you the cup, they already placed sufficient coffee powder in filter chamber, a filter press is to flatten the coffee powder before the hot water being poured inside. The coffee will slowly drip through the holding tray and mixed with the condensed milk that already poured in the cup. You may need to grit the bottom of holding tray by using a spoon in order to accelerate the dripping process. Once the dripping process is done, take the filter chamber off the cup and stir the coffee so that coffee mixed well with the condensed milk. Pour the coffee into the glass of ice that was prepared earlier; if you like thicker coffee, you need to drink off the water inside the glass. Ta-dah! Our iced coffee is done.
Was not really a coffee lover while I'm in Malaysia, but became a decent coffee lover in Ho Chi Minh; really like the thick coffee (because they mixed with condensed milk mah) and we had it almost every meals. Stay tuned for more posts.
Location
82-84, Bui Thi Xuan, P. Ben Tanh, District 1, Ho Chi Minh.
Website
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A revolution is needed for up coming year.