Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

colonelsmoothie t1_jef7wr7 wrote

Cafe Du Monde + condensed milk = Vietnamese-American starter pack

79

backcountrydrifter t1_jegebyz wrote

I’ll die on the hill of claiming that Vietnamese and Cambodians have coffee dialed.

From the flavor to the coffee shop experience. In a just world, every neighborhood on earth will have a Vietnamese run coffee shop with macarons and the most attentive polite wait staff in the world. It’s an art to them and it should be rewarded.

57

theflyingpupusa t1_jefxqjs wrote

Wait talk to me what do I need to do?

2

colonelsmoothie t1_jeg5dec wrote

I believe the traditional way is you get a Vietnamese coffee filter. Viet people like the Cafe Du Monde brand and sweetened condensed milk because it closely replicates what they had from VN. All the stuff is easily available online these days (like Amazon) and there are now multiple brands to choose from.

It takes a long time but the coffee is really strong. If you just want to try it, any Vietnamese coffee shop or pho restaurant will have it. They usually give you the cup with the filter on top and you wait for it to finish, so you can check the coffee/condensed milk ratio that way and mess around with the filter to see how it works.

I usually just use a regular cone filter on weekdays because I'm short on time.

15

ksdkjlf t1_jegmv22 wrote

If you live in a city with a sizeable Asian community there's a reasonable chance you can get actual Vietnamese coffee these days, usually cheaper than any of the New Orleans chickory blends. (Trung Nguyen, the leading Viet brand, seems to've greatly expanded their availability in the US in the past decade or so.) And a Vietnamese coffee filter is usually only 3 or 4 bucks. Cafe du Monde is often available at regular American grocery stores, but at a pretty steep markup for what it is.

The key is that Vietnamese coffee generally isn't Arabica coffee, the smooth variety most common in American coffee these days; it simply doesn't grow well in Vietnam. It's mostly Robusta, which is rather bitter, along with other 'inferior' varieties. This, combined with the long extraction of a traditional Vietnamese drip filter, leads to a very strong, bitter brew that stands up well to the cloying sweetness of the sweetened condensed milk. Chickory provides that same bitterness, which is why New Orleans coffee is often basically half coffee and half milk (and usually with some sugar too). If you try to make either New Orleans or Vietnamese coffee with an Arabica, even a strong, dark roast, it just doesn't have the bitterness you need to make it taste right.

6