{"id":922,"date":"2018-07-25T04:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-25T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/2018\/07\/25\/vietnamese-coffee-comes-full-circle-at-hanoi-corner-in-paris\/"},"modified":"2018-07-30T15:17:53","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T01:17:53","slug":"vietnamese-coffee-comes-full-circle-at-hanoi-corner-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/2018\/07\/25\/vietnamese-coffee-comes-full-circle-at-hanoi-corner-in-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnamese Coffee Comes Full-circle At Hanoi Corner In Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hanoi<\/p>\n

25\"hanoi<\/span><\/p>\n

The streets around the Saint Lazare train station churn with a current of hurried office workers, wandering tourists, delivery trucks, and city buses. In the shadow of the austere \u00c9glise de la Sainte-Trinit\u00e9 church, Hanoi Corner<\/span><\/a> is a little haven of calm welcoming passersby for lunch or an afternoon cup of tea.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cafe, specializing in Vietnamese filter coffee, Vietnamese tea, and street food staples like banh mi sandwiches, is Nguyen Nam and Nguyen Linh\u2019s love letter to their Vietnamese-French heritage. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to create a Vietnamese coffee shop, but I didn\u2019t want to just serve a good cup of coffee,\u201d Nam says. \u201cI wanted to take customers on a voyage to discover Vietnamese culture.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Nam is Vietnamese, but grew up in France; his wife, Linh, came to France from Vietnam to study. For Nam, a former IT project manager, coffee is an opportunity to stop and enjoy the moment. In Vietnam, he says, coffee is never taken to go. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCoffee made with a Vietnamese filter takes time,\u201d Nam says. \u201cIt\u2019s coffee that invites you to sit down and share it with someone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Vietnam is a major coffee producer, the quality of the beans, mostly Robusta, is generally considered inferior to those produced in other regions. But as interest in coffee grows, so has the demand for locally grown Arabica and lighter roasted beans. Cafe culture is developing in new and exciting ways in Vietnam, particularly in cities in the south<\/span><\/a>, where a number of cafes are taking a specialty coffee approach that includes different extraction methods and a special attention to provenance. Hanoi Corner tries to capture the diversity of this movement for a French audience, sourcing both darker-roasted beans as well as more modern interpretations from\u00a0The Workshop<\/span><\/a>, a specialty roaster in Ho Chi Minh City.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this side of Vietnam that many French people aren\u2019t aware of. We wanted to show traditional coffee, specialty coffee, and what\u2019s happening in between,\u201d Nam says. In addition to offering straight up Vietnamese filter coffee, the couple also prepares a beverage with iced coconut milk, as well as egg coffee, which is topped with whipped egg yolk and condensed milk. Nam admits that purists might be put off by the idea of coconut and coffee mingling, but also insists that different occasions call for different coffees. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love eating at gourmet restaurants, but that doesn\u2019t stop me from enjoying comfort food now and then,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi<\/span><\/p>\n

For Linh, it was important that teas also appear on their menu. A staple beverage in Vietnam, green tea is consumed in the morning, after meals, during ceremonies, and with family. In addition to two native green tea varieties and three native black teas, the cafe serves a lotus-infused green tea produced within the traditional Vietnamese style, with no artificial flavors\u2014for this drink, green tea leaves are infused six times with lotus flowers harvested from the West Lake area in Vietnam. All teas are procured from small producers who work with local communities in Vietnam\u2019s mountainous tea-growing regions. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur work here in Paris has to give something back to Vietnam, it can\u2019t just be about making money,\u201d Linh says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nam\u2019s decision to exclusively serve coffee brewed with the Vietnamese Phin filter is unique in Paris, and even more so because he has developed a specialty-inspired brewing method specific to the filter. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to work with the beans and filter from Vietnam, and the methods I learned in France,\u201d he explains. When he first began learning about extraction methods, he found the Vietnamese filter often presented as a quaint element of local culture rather than a serious way to make a good cup of coffee. So, initially he concentrated on learning\u00a0V60<\/span><\/a>\u00a0techniques.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi<\/p>\n

But there were things about the V60 that bothered him, namely a nagging sense of irregularity, no matter how precise his measurements were. \u201cThe Vietnamese filter is even simpler than the V60, which meant I could concentrate on precision of grind, temperature, and ratio,\u201d Nam says. He spent a year poring over books and adapting V60 techniques to the filter, eventually refining a brewing process that produces coffee with a flavor and mouthfeel somewhere between an espresso and a filter brew.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nam\u2019s hard work paid off earlier this year when he won the\u00a0R\u00e9seau Barista de France Brewing Contest<\/span><\/a>\u00a0with his method. In the past, he\u2019s been reluctant to enter competitions that don\u2019t include blind tasting, because he\u2019s sensed some condescension within the specialty coffee community toward the Vietnamese filter. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn my experience, people have had preconceived ideas about my coffee before they even taste it. They\u2019ll say, \u2018It\u2019s not bad,\u2019 but they don\u2019t dare say it\u2019s good,\u201d he says. The blind tasting was an opportunity.\u00a0<\/span>\u201cTo show people that it\u2019s possible to make a modern, relevant cup of coffee with a Vietnamese filter. It\u2019s not just a quaint bit of folklore to play on nostalgia about Vietnam.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The couple takes the same approach to food as they do coffee, using Linh\u2019s family recipes to create banh mi sandwiches, bo bun bowls, and manioc desserts that break with a nostalgic or static approach to Vietnamese cuisine. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to show there\u2019s another face of Vietnam than what you find in the restaurants in the 13th\u00a0arrondissement. There\u2019s nothing wrong with them, but they were opened by people who came after the war with an older vision of Vietnam,\u201d explains Linh. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut we can show something new, with good pastries, tea, cake, a good banh mi\u2014a blend of French and Vietnamese culture, based on traditional recipes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi <\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi<\/span><\/p>\n

The slow evolution of Vietnamese cuisine in Paris may arise in part from the stigma Nam says many Vietnamese families attach to working in the food industry. Growing up, for example, Nam says his parents emphasized the importance of higher education and getting a well-paid job in a company, and his decision to open a cafe left them perplexed. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a level of fear in saying you work in the food industry, it implies that you\u2019ve failed in your studies, in your life,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut I went to school, I worked and eventually I realized I had nothing to prove to anyone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After just three months in operation, Hanoi Corner landed a\u00a0Time Out<\/span><\/a>\u00a0mention as one of the best places to seek out Vietnamese food in Paris. It may be a sign that the city is ready for what the new generation of Vietnamese creators have to offer.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"hanoi <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny because the French brought coffee to Vietnam and now we\u2019re bringing Vietnamese coffee to France. The circle is complete,\u201d Nam says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hanoi Corner is located at\u00a07 Rue Blanche, 75009 Paris<\/a>. Visit their official website<\/a> and follow them on Facebook<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Kate Robinson (@KateOnTheLoose<\/a>) is a freelance journalist based in Paris. Read more\u00a0Kate Robinson on Sprudge<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Vietnamese Coffee Comes Full-circle At Hanoi Corner In Paris<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

25 The streets around the Saint Lazare train station churn with a current of hurried office workers, wandering tourists, delivery trucks, and city buses. In the shadow of the austere…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,41],"tags":[63,45,65,47,61,49,59,67,55,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":954,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922\/revisions\/954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}