Vietnamese Coffee

Vietnamese coffee is not for people who order "Americanos" at Starbucks. I happen to be addicted to coffee and consider myself a coffee sommalier of sorts. Vietnamese coffee is very strong, sometimes sludgy and a little rough around the edges. It will peel the enamel off of your teeth, put hair on your chest and burn a hole through your stomach. It's not for the faint of heart. That's how strong it is!

I liken it to the Brazilian cafezinhno I've tasted while vacationing in Rio de Janeiro. One cup is sufficient to power you for the rest of the day. It's the southeast asian cousin of the Italian espresso, except Italian espresso is a little sweeter and a bit more suave.

A lesson on brewing: much like the French Press, one to two spoons of coffee are placed in a small tin container. Next, hot water is added. Then, a small, round piece of tin with punctured holes is then dropped into the small tin container. The pressure pushes the water through the end of the small tin container for a perfect drip coffee right over your cup.

If you prefer your coffee with a little low fat skim pro-biotic milk, you can just about forget about it. The Vietnamese often use condensed milk, which means that there's no need to add extra sugar to your brew. And despite the texture of the condensed milk, the coffee normally lightens only to one one hundreth times a lighter shade of brown. Yes folks, did I mention that Vietnamese coffee is very strong?

A domestically owned upscale coffee shop called "Highlands Coffee" has several franchises around the city, and is akin to a Starbucks or Second Cup, with sleek modern furnishings, tasty pastries and cakes and moody lounge music playing in the background. Here, you can order a "tall skinny latte, no foam, with sweet n' lo" without having anything lost in translation.

My friend Monica and I joke that Highlands Coffee is also a favourite hang out of adoptive North American parents. On any given day, you'll see at least two sets of new parents with their Vietnamese babies strapped to their chests, chatting over iced mocaccinos. They must be trying to get their caffeine fixes on after staying up all night with their newborns...