Egg coffee, and the milk shortage that invented it

Egg coffee is what a shortage produced. Hanoi had no fresh milk in 1946, a bartender whipped an egg yolk into condensed milk instead, and the substitute outlived the problem by eighty years.

What is actually in the cup?

Egg coffee is strong Vietnamese coffee under a thick, sweet foam of egg yolk beaten with condensed milk and sugar. The foam sits on top like the layer on a tiramisu, and the coffee underneath is dark robusta rather than anything mild.

The cup is small, and it arrives standing in a bowl of hot water. That bowl is not decoration: it keeps the foam liquid and the coffee hot for the ten minutes the drink takes.

What it does not taste of is egg. Whipped with condensed milk, the yolk reads as custard, and the bitterness of the robusta underneath is what stops it becoming a dessert entirely.

Who invented it, and when?

Nguyen Van Giang invented it at Cafe Giang in Hanoi in 1946, while fresh milk was scarce and condensed milk was what a bar could get. He had worked at the Metropole hotel, where the shortage was a daily problem rather than an anecdote.

The cafe is still there and still family run, which makes it the rare origin story a visitor can go and drink. The drink spread from that one counter through the Old Quarter and then across the country.

Saigon sells it now, and the version there is often iced. Hanoi is where it belongs, and the Hanoi page covers the streets where the old cafes sit.

Where should you drink it in Hanoi?

Cafe Giang on Nguyen Huu Huan street is the original, down an alley and up a staircase, and it sells the drink at street prices rather than at tourist prices. Cafe Dinh, up a dark stairway off Dinh Tien Hoang, looks over Hoan Kiem lake from a balcony that holds about eight people.

Giang and Dinh are hard to find on purpose. The entrances look like shopfronts selling something else, which is the normal arrangement for an old Hanoi cafe.

A dozen newer places sell a version with a view and a higher price. The coffee shop guide explains which kind of cafe suits which purpose, because these two are not places to sit with a laptop.

What does it cost?

Egg coffee runs 35,000 to 60,000 dong in Hanoi, or one to two dollars at about 26,000 dong to the US dollar. A plain iced coffee with milk is 20,000 to 35,000, so the egg roughly doubles it.

Hotel and rooftop versions ask 80,000 to 120,000 and are rarely better. The foam is the whole dish, and it is made the same way in a room with plastic stools.

Cash, small notes, and no card at the old addresses. The money guide covers which denominations a two-dollar drink can actually break.

How is it drunk?

Stir the foam through the coffee, or eat the foam with the spoon and drink the coffee beneath it. Both are standard, and Vietnamese customers do both.

Drink it hot. As the foam cools it thickens and separates, and the last third of a cold cup is heavy in a way the first mouthful is not.

Order water alongside if you want the coffee to register at all. Every Vietnamese cafe brings free tea or iced tea with a drink, which the coffee guide explains as part of the ordering habit rather than an upsell.

Is the egg a problem?

The yolk is whipped and then hit with hot coffee, which cooks it partly rather than fully. Cafes in Hanoi have sold it daily since 1946 and the drink is not a public health concern in practice.

Anybody who avoids lightly cooked egg at home should avoid it here for the same reasons. That includes pregnancy, and the health guide covers the wider set of food decisions a traveller makes.

Nothing about it is unhygienic by nature. The cup is hot, the milk is condensed and shelf stable, and the eggs turn over fast at a busy counter.

What else is worth trying alongside it?

Salt coffee, ca phe muoi, is the other Vietnamese invention worth ordering, and it comes from Hue rather than Hanoi. Salted cream over condensed milk and coffee, and it works for the same reason salted caramel does.

Coconut coffee is the third, blended with coconut milk and ice into something closer to a dessert than a drink. It is a modern cafe invention rather than an old one.

All three sit in one family: strong robusta with something sweet on top of it. The coffee guide covers the phin, the ordering words and what a Vietnamese cafe is actually for.