Favorite Café Shop In Hanoi

My favorite café shop in Hanoi

Brought to Vietnam by the French, nowadays having café become one of many people’s daily activities, I still remembered how my father treasured the morning café. Boiling the water by a small aluminum kettle, keep the filter clean, get the café powder from a tin box, he carefully prepared it.

I talked with some old men, they told me that in Hanoi there used to be 4 most famous café shops: Nhân- the owner has secret in roasting and grounding café beans to get it best taste; Nhĩ, café with milk and ice; Dĩ, now disappeared and Giảng, the strangest café maker so his café served with egg yolk and tastes even better Italian cappuccino.

I have tried café at 3 of them however; I am impressed by another one: Café Đinh. Located on the second floor of an old tube house (the typical house in old quarter, used to be the private home but after 1954, it was shared by many families), you need to go through a pack back shop, a very narrow staircase and a small smoky room will appear. Receive a smile from the owner (if you are frequent customers) or she just gently shows you where to sit. Sit back, order a drink. Later, I found out that the owner is the daughter of Mr Giảng, who created the famous café with egg yolk as mentioned above that why this café also serves egg yolk café.

Dated back 1990s, the students came to this café for two reasons: good, reasonable drinks and rock music. It was said that the owner, a lady is fan of Pink Floyd. Now, the young people keep coming over to find something that maybe they also cannot figure out exactly what they are looking for there. I doubt that, they come for the atmosphere, stories, color of time on the wall of this café that it cannot be found at any modern café in town. The room is quite small but nobody finds it uncomfortable. People come to meet friends, share the hobbies, sometime show off the latest hi-tech devices or just sit silently to enjoy café.

For me, I just need a corner out of the noisy busy streets to enjoy my café, it is not only drink, it is drops of time.