One of Vietnam’s own home-grown coffee shops.

Long before that big American chain put a coffee shop on every corner around the world, coffee was king of the street in Vietnam. Where-ever you go in the country, you’ll find coffee shops, cafés and even street carts selling the uniquely Vietnamese style of coffee. No matter what time of day it is, you’ll also find people sitting around these shops, relaxing or even doing business in them.

Vietnamese coffee is strong, and often thick with condensed milk added. Different roasters have their own secrets to blending, roasting and added flavorings. The most favored variations often have an aroma of chocolate as well, even though there’s no chocolate in the blend.

Small shop selling coffee beans in Ho Chi Minh City

Coffee is traditionally served in a rather unique way in Vietnam as well. Coffee is brewed using a small drip filter that sits on top of the coffee cup. The coffee will usually be bought to your table with the filter still on top. It’s part of the café "culture" that you will need to sit and wait for perhaps several minutes for the coffee to slowly drip into the cup. Even if you order an iced coffee, it may still be bought to your table as a hot drink with a glass of ice for you to pour the coffee into once it’s ready.

On menus, coffee is written in Vietnamese as cà phê. Hot black coffee is cà phê den nóng while hot coffee with milk is cà phê sua nóng in the south or nâu nóng in the north. Iced black coffee is cà phê dá and iced coffee with milk is nâu dá in the north or cà phê sua dá in the south.

Western chains have not opened in Vietnam as yet, although there’s rumors that the big green machine is coming soon. Some local cafés serve western style cappuccinos and lattes. There’s also a locally owned nationwide chain of coffee shops called Highlands Coffee, which has branches in all major cities.

Coffee on sale in a Rantepao market.

Everywhere you go in Tana Toraja, in the mountains of central Sulawesi, you’ll run into coffee. As you travel around the countryside, you’ll see coffee, and cocoa, trees planted around the traditional houses in most villages. There was a time, back in the late 1960s, when Toraja was one of the world’s leading coffee exporters. While true Torajan coffee is still considered one of the best, many of the farmers haven’t kept up with the higher expectations of today’s market, so the total output is not what it was.

Still, there’s a long tradition of drinking coffee among the local residents, so you’ll find coffee sold in the markets of Rantepao and Makale. The coffee is often pan roasted in a large wok, and then ground for you at the market. Like most of Indonesia, coffee is finely ground to a powder and then simply spooned into hot water. They don’t use filters, and certainly not espresso machines.

Note: This text was given to me by coworkers several years ago. I doubt they wrote it on their own, so it’s possible (very likely in fact) that this was copied from a book or the web. If you know who the original author is, please contact me with the information.

Note: This text was given to me by coworkers several years ago. I doubt they wrote it on their own, so it’s possible (very likely in fact) that this was copied from a book or the web. If you know who the original author is, please contact me with the information.

Green coffee cherries on a tree.

So called "gourmet" coffee shops may be appearing on every corner, but few people are aware of coffee’s long history and the sometimes curious ways it has traveled the tropics. Columbian coffee growers have done a lot of advertising to create "Columbian coffee" as a brand, but in fact coffee isn’t native to Columbia, or to any part of Central or South America. "Java" may be one of coffee’s nicknames, but it doesn’t originate in Indonesia either. In fact, coffee originates around the horn of Africa, in what is today Ethiopia.

It’s thought men began to drink coffee in the 12th century in Africa. A legend says that around the year 1400, a shepherd in Ethiopia named Kaldai noticed his goats jumping merrily after they ate a red fruit. He tried to eat it and felt refreshed. His wife then gave it to the priest who baked it for reducing its power. But perceiving its attractive smell, he pounded it and added water. He drank the water and reportedly “felt vigorous.” Shortly after, the coffee trade began.

Another legend about the history of coffee says that the first man to have known and drunk coffee was a Mufti of Aden in the 9th century. Still another legend says that the first coffee drinker was an imam named Deli of the Middle East, who often felt sleepy while praying. Later, he overcame his drowsiness by drinking coffee boiled in water as someone had told him to do. After that, the coffee drinking habit reached to the laity and became a way of life in Middle East.

In the 17th century, coffee became known to Europeans adventurers. The man who made coffee popular was Suliman Alga, an envoy to the court of King Louis XIV 1715. After that the price of coffee soared because French noblemen became coffee-addicted. Europeans began to know and like drinking coffee around the 19th century, but this was confined to writers, poets and rich people only.

The French attempted to grow coffee in the southern part of their country to no avail. The Dutch tried to do the same in Ceylon and East India (Indonesia), and succeeded, then the French followed. The two people jealously guarded their own coffee seeds. Upon the rise of border dispute in Ghana between France and Holland, the King of Brazil sent an envoy to mediate, who sneakily took coffee seeds to reproduce in Brazil creating one of that country’s biggest industries.