Hanoi Egg Coffee

A small glass of coffee wears a layer of yellow cream on top, thick and smooth. That cream came into being precisely because, for a time, Hanoi was short of milk.

It is just like a household running low on rice, only to find its rice pot growing fuller.

In a small cafe in the Old Quarter of Hanoi today, the barista begins with the coffee. A drip filter goes on top of a little glass, and hot water is poured over the ground coffee already waiting in the filter. Steam rises gently from the top of the filter. The water soaks through the grounds, then slips out through the tiny holes in the bottom of the filter. Glossy black drops fall into the glass, one at a time, in no hurry at all. The bottom of the glass darkens, and the black coffee rises bit by bit. The filter is hot, the glass is hot, and only the barista touches them.

Hanoi coffee is often made this way, dripped very slowly into each glass, strong and bitter. Adults drink it black, or add condensed milk to sweeten it. Here, a glass of milk coffee usually means Robusta coffee made with condensed milk. But the glass dripping on the counter is waiting for something else.

Back then, Nguyễn Văn Giảng worked behind the counter of a large hotel in Hanoi, making drinks for the guests day after day. According to his family, the story began in 1946. The hotel where he worked gives the very same year.

In those days, fresh milk was very scarce, and expensive too. With so little milk, people who worked behind the counter, as he did, had to invent drinks of their own.

Giảng thought of egg yolk. He whipped the yolk into a foam, then used that foam in place of milk. The golden layer on top of the glass began with a yolk like that. In the final days of that same year, Hanoi entered the war with France.

Today, the barista in the small cafe reaches for a yolk as well. The barista cracks an egg, separates the yolk with practiced hands, and drops the round yellow yolk into a small cup. This is a drink for adults. The coffee is very strong, and the yolk is only whipped, never cooked.

Into the cup goes a little ivory-white condensed milk, and the whisk begins to turn. Round after round, on and on it goes. Under the whisk, the yolk and condensed milk slowly rise, airy and light, like a small yellow cloud.

The arm holding the whisk has to work just enough, and no more. Whisk too much, and the cream loses its body. Whisk too little, and the egg and the coffee will not blend. Without a machine, the barista has to rely on a strong arm.

The hotel, for its part, recalls that Giảng wanted to make a drink quite unlike the usual ones. By that account, he whipped egg yolk with sugar, warmed it gently, then spread it over the bitter coffee. The cream softened the strong taste of the coffee. He needed no fancy tools at all.

His family, in turn, lists egg yolk, condensed milk, ground coffee, butter and cheese in his recipe. The rest is a secret, and the family keeps it close.

On the counter, the coffee in the glass has finished dripping. The barista lifts off the filter and spoons the yellow cream onto the coffee, which is still hot. The black coffee quietly slips underneath. The yellow cream floats on top, growing thicker until it covers the mouth of the glass. Seen from above, there is only fluffy cream, and the black coffee is hidden away below. The small glass has turned a single color, yellow.

Giảng made his new drink for the regular guests. Then he left the hotel and sold it in a small cafe of his own. His family says he opened the cafe in those very years, while the hotel remembers it as many years later.

In the early years at the cafe, Giảng whipped the eggs by hand. There was no machine yet, only the whisk and a patient arm. The whisk kept turning in the cup until the foam thickened just the way he wanted. Every cup of that cream took him a very long time. The drinks of those days still smelled strongly of egg, so not every customer loved them right away.

Later, the cafe began using a blender, and whipping the eggs became much easier. The cafe also adjusted its recipe little by little, so the smell of egg grew softer. By the 1980s, more customers than ever were coming for cà phê trứng, egg coffee. Today, his cafe sits in the Old Quarter, and his children look after it.

From a hotel counter, and then a small cafe of his own, egg coffee has traveled far. It has reached Ho Chi Minh City, and even cafes in other countries. And in Hanoi now, many cafes serve egg coffee, both hot and iced.

The golden glass is waiting for one last step. The barista sets it in the middle of a small bowl of hot water. The hot water surrounds the foot of the glass and keeps the coffee warm for a long time. When all is ready, the barista carries the bowl and the glass together to a table. Holding them steady with both hands, the barista sets them down in front of a customer.

Adults who have drunk it describe the taste like this. Someone writing for a foreign newspaper said the coffee did not taste of egg at all. A traveler said it had no raw, eggy smell whatsoever.

At the table, the customer picks up the spoon and stirs very slowly. The spoon passes through the yellow layer first, and only then reaches the black coffee lying below. In this glass, the place once kept for fresh milk has been taken by a layer of yellow egg cream, so thick that it can only be sipped one spoonful at a time.