Hanoi Coffee Lovers Tour

A great way to continue your Hanoi experience is to enjoy one of Vietnam’s most profitable exports: COFFEE!  Vietnamese people love their unique take on coffee, and coffee culture has always been a huge phenomenon here.  In the north, Hanoians take coffee to another level altogether, which you will discover on this unique coffee tour. 

 

You will be collected from your hotel and taken to Giang Cafe in the Old Quarter to try an “Egg Coffee”. Egg is not code for milk or sugar… it’s actually ‘egg’!  This drink is a unique blend of chicken egg yolk, coffee, sweetened condensed milk, butter and cheese.  As strange as it may sound, we urge you to give it a try!  Stroll down the narrow streets of the Old Quarter that are lined with little cafes - some have shop fronts but some are in the front room of local family homes, with small plastic stools and little tables to sit at. Visit cafe Nhan and order a classic black coffee, where you can watch your drink as it slowly filters through the phin (traditional Vietnamese filter), and emerges thick, dark and oil-like. 

 

Continue your walk and explore Cafe Lam - one of the oldest coffee shops in Hanoi, its walls covered completely in paintings from various decades.  The story is that before the coffee shop became famous many starving artists would come to hang out here.  They would exchange their latest works for credit and drink coffee for free until it was time to create another one.  This exchange did two things for Cafe Lam: it was able to adorn itself with countless paintings that are now worth quite a bit of money and it also fostered an atmosphere attractive to artists and intellectuals, something that endures to this day.   

 

Pop into Trung Nguyen Cafe beside Hoan Kiem Lake and try a weasel coffee.  You can also visit Cafe Mai for some weasel coffee to go, where there is a price board showing the various coffee grades and prices in kilograms. Your last stop is Highland Coffee - the local version of Starbucks. It’s a great place between the Hilton and the Hanoi Opera House. Here you can enjoy any kind of espresso or cappuccino, as well as Italian sodas, snacks, sandwiches, pizzas, and good breakfasts, all while looking out over the lake or watching the hustle and flow of traffic below.