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old coffee shops Café Giang
Smell the coffee - old coffee shops Café Giang
One of Hanoi’s most famous old coffee shops Café Giang is no longer on Hang Gai street, but its tradition of serving great coffee in a simple setting lives on, says Thanh Dat.
Nguyen Tri Hoa sits at the foot of his staircase looking down the narrow alley that connects his house-cum-café to Nguyen Huu Huan street in Hanoi It is a new beginning for an old faithful, Café Giang, which had been an institution on Hang Gai street for nearly 40 years.
“We have been here since November last year,” says Hoa, looking around as if he is still unsure of his surroundings, though inside the café is nearly an exact copy of its previous incarnation. Café Giang was a typically old fashioned Vietnamese coffee shop. At its new location you can still hear the melodies of Trinh Cong Son, one of Vietnam’s most famous singer songwriters. A crew of the old regulars has also followed the family across the Old Quarter.
Now when they speak of the old days, they speak of the café at Hang Gai. The name might not mean much to teenagers today, but Café Giang is well known amongst older generations in the capital city. Hoa’s father and the founder of café Giang, Nguyen Van Giang was praised for his hospitality as well as his exquisite coffee brews. When he was 10 years old, he left his village in Ha tay province for Hanoi where he hoped to earn a living. He managed to get work in the Sofitel metropole hanoi where he learned how to make coffee in the French style.
Over time he became one of the hotel’s leading baristas. He could make coffee that suited either the tastes of French or Vietnamese customers. Later on he also worked at Le Coq Hotel, which used to be located by Hoan Kiem Lake. But in 1946, Giang left Le Coq hotel to open up his own café at 90 Cau Go street, where he also lived at the time. “My father said he stayed awake for nights on end trying to think of a name for his café and in the end he just named it after himself!” says Hoa.
As Vietnam entered a period of socialist reform, Giang was forced to leave that house in 1956 and he lived on Ta Hien then Hang Be streets until 1969 when he re-established Café Giang at 7 Hang Gai street. Although Vietnam exercised a policy of cooperative economic development between the years 1954 and 1986, Giang and his family still did “a bit of work on the side” to get by, explains his nephew, 57-year-old Vuong Thai Son. Each of Giang’s six kids learned how to make coffee with their father’s secret recipe. Giang liked to mix and match.
He would grind up a mixture of Arabica, Robusta and Liberia beans to create a blend he called moc, which means ‘simplicity’ in Vietnamese. Café Giang was also famous for ca phe trung, literally ‘egg coffee’. The sweet and potent concoction, made with coffee, whipped egg white, sugar and milk is only found in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.
“Only Café Giang offers ca phe trung made in the original French style in Hanoi,” says Hoa. “The recipe sounds simple but it took us years to get it just right,” says Hoa’s wife, Nguyen Thi Mau. Ca phe trung is traditionally served in a small cup which is then placed in a small bowl of hot water. This way the hot coffee can be slowly sipped and savoured throughout the morning. However, Mau says that nowadays during the summer people will often order it served on ice, ca phe trung da.
“One of the most important stages in making a good cup of coffee is when you roast the coffee beans. That determines the flavour of the product,” explains Le Van Bang, another of Giang’s nephews, who worked as the roaster for Café Giang as a young man. Despite the fact that coffee was a luxury drink for Vietnamese, Café Giang was always a busy little spot in the old days. “We liked to go there every morning. We would sit and enjoy every last drop of our coffee,” says Son.
“In those days more elderly people came here between 5am-6am and sometimes they would chat in French. Then from 6am onwards, younger people came in. Most of them were intellectuals and artists,” says Bang with pride. The attraction was purely the coffee and the company. The café was nothing but a hole in a wall and there was little by way of decoration. “We enjoyed our coffee sitting back to back. There wasn’t even any music,” says 75 year old Nguyen Van Ba, a retired teacher, who used to walk three kilometres from his house to the café every morning.
“But Café Giang was our daily bread and coming here cemented our friendship.” In 1988, Giang passed away leaving the café to Hoa and Nguyen Van Duc, Giang’s first born child. The brothers continued to uphold their father’s simple vision of high quality coffee in a relaxed setting. Time passed by for the outside world, but nothing changed in Café Giang. As Vietnam’s economy improved and people’s living standards rose through the 1990s, café culture became more popular amongst Hanoians.
People from all walks of life came to try the coffee at the fabled Café Giang. But in recent years Hanoi has also seen thousands of privately owned cafés shoot up while chains such as Highlands and Gloria Jeans enter the fray. I suggest to Hoa perhaps this increased competition influenced his family’s decision to sell up in November late last year. “For many reasons we decided to sell the house and café on Hang Gai,” he says. “We actually sold it to a neighbour, who is a property dealer.”
The price of their modest property was probably too tempting. Thanks to its central location, land on Hang Gai sells for small fortunes. As recently as May this year a tiny 12-sqm retail outlet was snapped up for $35,000 per square metre. You can hardly blame Giang’s children for cashing in their chips in such a buoyant market. Although the original café is now history, the spirit of Café Giang lives on. Hoa has opened his café on Nguyen Huu Huan street while Duc opened another Café Giang on Yen Phu street and Nguyen Thi Bich, Giang’s second-born child, also opened a Café Giang on 13 Dinh Tien Hoang street.
As I sit with Hoa in his café a foreign tourist appears at the end of the alley and starts to make his way inside. “Is this Café Giang?” he wonders, before recognising Hoa and realising he is in the right place. The tourist joins us and orders a ca phe nau da (iced coffee with condensed milk). When I ask how he found the new location he explains how he had spent weeks hanging out in the old Café Giang on his last visit to Hanoi two years ago.
As soon as he arrived back he had jumped onto the back of a xe om and headed straight for 7 Hang Gai only to find a Segafredo Café, a global chain of Italian styled coffee houses. This ultra chic spot is a sign of modern times in Hanoi – offering wi-fi, antipasto plates, lattes and cappuccinos for upwardly mobile Vietnamese and foreigners. A member of staff there had kindly directed the tourist to Hoa’s new café, where, despite the new address, the tourist is pleased to see little has changed. The same old chairs and tables are used. The same old faces come and go. The same quality coffee is served.
(Source: Timeout)
Tag: Culture , Foreigners , Ha Tay , Hanoi , Hotel , Old Quarter , Tour , Tourist , Vietnam , Vietnamese Smell the coffee - old coffee shops Café Giang
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