Recently, Sahra Nguyen, founder of the coffee brand Nguyen Coffee Supply, organized a 2-day coffee tasting experience in Brooklyn, USA. She was completely surprised by the overwhelming response from the people: "I really couldn't believe it when people lined up for more than an hour just to try Vietnamese coffee." Although she has only 3 years of experience in the profession, Sahra was the first person to bring the typical roasted coffee beans of Vietnam to America.
Sarah Nguyen - owner of Nguyen Coffee Supply brand
Over the past few years, many Vietnamese coffee roasters in the US have gone from being virtually unknown to becoming a phenomenon across the land of the stars and stripes. Many coffee shops have appeared in cities known as “caffeine meccas” such as Philadelphia, Seattle, Austin, Portland, Oregon… “The increasing number of Vietnamese coffee shops shows that the Vietnamese business community is eager to build a Vietnamese coffee market in the US” - Thu Pham, co-founder of the brand Cà phê Roasters in Philadelphia, shared.
Thu Pham’s Café Roasters opened its first Vietnamese coffee roastery in Philadelphia in late September, while Sarah Nguyen’s are located further afield in San Francisco, Texas, and in a Vietnamese coffee truck in Kansas City. While many businesses have struggled during the pandemic, Sarah’s coffee orders have increased exponentially. She says her business has grown 13-fold in 2020.
Thu Pham - co-founder of the brand Cà phê Roasters
From Vietnamese coffee cups that do not have any "Vietnamese" taste at all
Most Vietnamese coffee that can be found in the US does not originate in Vietnam.
In fact, Vietnam is the world's second-largest producer of coffee beans and has also been a country that has preserved a special coffee-making tradition for the past 150 years; USA Today has commented that "Vietnam has the strongest coffee culture in the world." But for decades, Vietnamese coffee has been difficult to procure in the United States. At long-standing Vietnamese restaurants in the United States, when someone orders a cup of Vietnamese coffee, it is actually Cajun. The most popular Vietnamese coffee drink in this country is made with chicory-roasted coffee from the Cafe du Monde brand, which originated in New Orleans.
Sarah Nguyen has seen the problems that come with this confusion. Following Asian flavor trends like bubble tea and matcha, many American cafes have started mixing ground black coffee with condensed milk and calling it Vietnamese coffee, even though they have no connection to coffee products in Vietnam. Food bloggers have even figured out the tricks to make a Vietnamese iced milk coffee at Starbucks.
Many American cafes brew Vietnamese coffee from beans roasted with chicory originating from New Orleans.
“This happens all the time, big businesses want to profit from Asian culture, but they don’t respect the cultural integrity,” said Sarah Nguyen. “In fact, every time I order Vietnamese coffee in a cafe, it tastes completely different. I ask the barista what’s in the coffee and they usually say, ‘That’s Ethiopian coffee. We add sweetened milk to it.’” Sarah has tried many cups of Vietnamese coffee everywhere in the US, from old cafes to trendy restaurants, but none of them are actually Vietnamese.
Somehow, Vietnamese coffee has become popular—but without authentic Vietnamese flavors or ingredients, and without Vietnamese hands. This is part of the motivation for Sarah Nguyen to start a Vietnamese coffee roasting company in Brooklyn.
Redefining Vietnamese coffee in America
Both Sarah Nguyen and Thu Pham agree that the lack of authentic Vietnamese coffee in the US is "unfair."
There are two main types of coffee beans: arabica and robusta. The South American and African beans used by high-end roasters are arabica. They are popular for their sweetness and acidity, as well as their blueberry or cherry aromas. However, growing arabica beans is difficult in Vietnam due to the hot and humid climate. Instead, 90% of Vietnamese coffee is a harder bean called robusta, which has less sugar and a fuller flavor. Robusta beans have nearly double the caffeine content of arabica. Because of the relatively low cost of growing, robusta has become popular in large-scale instant coffee production plants.
Robusta coffee beans are roasted and ground by hand.
However, mass production of coffee has given robusta a bad reputation. Mass production plants rarely practice the same quality control as artisanal roasters. “But quality control is not what defines the true quality of robusta,” Thu Pham said.
To prove this, Thu Pham used a robusta coffee filter sourced from a farm in the Central Highlands. She poured hot water in, waiting for the carbon dioxide to bubble away – a sign of freshly roasted coffee. The result was a rich, aromatic cup of coffee with a hint of chocolate.
Sarah Nguyen also said that she heard a lot of feedback from people who claimed to be "very passionate about coffee" after the taste tests in New York. They all had quite surprising reactions such as: "Before, I always thought robusta beans were very coarse so I never thought of trying it, it turns out I was wrong."
For the "integrity of culture"
Since Thu Pham and Sarah Nguyen started their coffee roasting shops in late 2018, Vietnamese coffee has spread across the United States. They emphasize that they do not see the wave of Vietnamese coffee roasting as a competition between brands, but rather as partners in changing the perception of Vietnamese coffee in the United States, as well as bringing more value to Vietnamese farmers' crops. In fact, as Thu Pham shared, many American businesses have contacted her and expressed interest: "We are thinking about doing this model. Where do you source your coffee? How do you roast the coffee?...".
Thu Pham is currently working with the Fat Milk coffee brand in Chicago. In Seattle, four Vietnamese coffee shops have opened since 2020. Vietnamese coffee roaster Portland Coffee expanded so rapidly this year that it had trouble finding enough robusta beans to meet demand. In Anaheim, Trung Nguyen opened its first US coffee shop earlier this year, King Coffee. Tong's Phin Coffee Club beans, roasted over rambutan wood and coated in chocolate and butter, are now sold in several locations in the Central Market in Texas.
Cute and "friendly" package from Nguyen Coffee Supply
“It’s amazing how people here know about pho, banh mi, or Vietnamese hand-roasted coffee,” said Phat Nguyen, a Vietnamese American who runs Pittsburgh Ineffable Coffee, which uses Thu Pham brand coffee alongside traditional American coffee. “It’s a great feeling to see our culture spread to so many people. I think if we don’t spread our culture, we will eventually stop it from existing.”
