Thai Coffee is completely different from many other coffee shops in the city, because of its peacefulness and simplicity. As a family-run coffee shop, up to now, Mr. Nguyen Duc Hieu (37 years old) has been the 4th generation member to continue the work of preserving the unique coffee flavor of his family. Not only inheriting the recipe from his father, he also plans to bring his own changes but the coffee still retains the identity that his family has built for nearly 100 years.
Trieu Viet Vuong Street is a famous street in Hanoi, where many old houses built in the 1940s of the last century are still preserved. A short street but well-known for its sidewalk coffee shops, there are estimated to be hundreds of shops opened along both sides of the street.
Give up your own path to follow the family business.
Thai Coffee Shop was established in 1926, starting with the coffee cart of Mr. Nguyen Van Den (from Hung Yen) roaming the streets of Hanoi. From that simple cart, Mr. Den's son, Mr. Thai (Mr. Hieu's grandfather) took over the business and opened a coffee shop at 27 Trieu Viet Vuong.
Although he did not intend to inherit the family business from the beginning, in the end, Mr. Hieu still chose to put everything aside to return home to help his father take over and preserve the family's traditional profession. Mr. Hieu confided, "I studied abroad in Germany for 6 years, experienced many different jobs such as banking, marketing, communications, and learning how to be a "farmer" and "bartender". In the end, I decided to return to the shop that my father left behind."
From a very young age, Mr. Hieu enjoyed his first sips of coffee: “I drank coffee when I was 3-4 years old. When I was playing outside, customers liked me and let me drink with them, and I gradually got used to the taste.” For him, the taste of coffee has become a familiar taste.
"I feel responsible for preserving the culture of the coffee corner, responsible for the family brand and for the regular customers. There are customers who have been regularly enjoying coffee at my family shop for over 50 years, that is the motivation that helps me maintain the brand and is the pride of the family" - Mr. Hieu confided.
Talking about the recipe to make a cup of coffee with a distinctive flavor, he revealed that each stage is meticulously done: “The process to make a batch of coffee takes nearly 30 minutes. First, the coffee beans are put into a roasting mill, then rotated evenly on a wood stove. Wood roasting is very difficult to control, for coffees with flavors that have high and pure notes, it is very difficult to regulate the temperature so that it is standard with the roasting quality. During the roasting process, I often have to open the mill to check, ensuring that the coffee beans are evenly cooked and roasted at a temperature of 220 - 230 degrees Celsius to meet the standard.
Mr. Hieu said that roasting with firewood has its own unique characteristics, specifically the closed roasting block will create a light smoky smell inside, the smoky smell brings a very distinctive flavor to traditional Vietnamese coffee.
With a certain number of regular customers, Anh Hieu sells more than 100 cups a day, the shop is usually most crowded in the morning and at noon. The time from 7am to 9am is concentrated by elderly customers, at noon it is office workers and the number of young customers will be crowded in the evening. The shop has 2 floors, customers can sit both indoors and on the sidewalk, suitable for those who like quiet spaces or like to watch the street scene, sip a cup of coffee, and chat with friends.
According to Mr. Nguyen Quang Thai (62 years old), a long-time regular customer of the shop, "I have had the habit of drinking morning coffee here for many years because this place always maintains its own unique flavor, which not every place has. Even though the space of the shop has changed, the quality remains the same."
Preserving old traditions in the new era.
Facing the current wave of modern coffee shops with advanced machines to save time and labor, Thai coffee still chooses to keep the traditional coffee roasting style even though it takes a lot of time and effort.
“When a process is built well enough, it will be less dependent on machines. Until now, when modern machines are very supportive, I still roast coffee by hand with firewood. Every step is 100% manual, from roasting on a roasting stove, pouring into a bamboo basket, then cooling by hand" - Mr. Hieu confided.
After nearly 100 years, the process of roasting coffee with firewood has been improved a lot, but the most laborious step is cooling, which must be done within 2-3 minutes, because if not, the coffee will continue to heat up and burn, making the coffee taste bitter and very diluted, losing all the good compounds," said Mr. Hieu.
According to Mr. Hieu, to keep the “soul” of the Thai coffee brand stable, it is necessary to control the quality of the beans. The coffee beans are personally selected by him from the Central Highlands. For that reason, drinking a cup of coffee in Thailand will feel the gentle aroma of the mountains and forests and the strong intoxication of the great Highlands.
“I started to be interested in continuing the coffee business since 2017, the first thing I did was read and research about coffee. Then I went to Son La to stay there for half a year. Living like a normal farmer, I stayed with a Thai ethnic family, a young couple but very knowledgeable about coffee. They are also a great motivation to improve the quality of coffee, now I still import coffee from their farm. After a while, I also had a farm there to build a process to reform the coffee harvesting and processing. Currently, they are my farm managers. What I need to improve is that I focus on the raw materials and of course, to have a good, unique and strange product, the raw materials are an extremely important factor that directly determines the product" - Mr. Hieu shared.
Rustic and simple, that is the unique quality of Thai coffee. Although many things change from year to year, but with the desire to turn Thai coffee into not only a familiar place for customers but also a "living heritage", Mr. Hieu carefully preserves every item in the old house. He finds ways to revive the old objects of the shop, keeping the chairs that his grandfather left 40 - 50 years ago. Each chair that customers sit on is made from the wooden surface of the stairs, or the old folding door, the tiled roof are all kept with the hope that the old objects have a new identity, a new story.
Thai coffee retains customers by its steadfastness with its simple but nostalgic traditional values. Up to now, Mr. Hieu has cherished the idea of opening an art gallery to preserve his family's memories. "Quality is the top priority that helps Thai coffee retain customers over the years. In addition, in the future, I plan to open an art gallery to preserve paintings of many generations of my family, along with paintings by many young artists to support them to have the opportunity to bring their works to many people, especially the elderly, so that they can have closer access to art" - Mr. Hieu confided.
Although he has been a long-standing coffee shop, he has no intention of developing it into a chain of brands, but only focuses on this one establishment. He focuses on serving old customers, regular customers comfortably enjoying this familiar space. Not using English in any decoration at the shop, Mr. Hieu affirms that this is not a shop for tourists, with the desire that tourists coming here can enjoy the style of a true local.
As one of the young customers who often come to the shop, Ms. Vu Le (Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi) said: "The unique coffee flavor of the shop is the reason why I come back every time I pass by Trieu Viet Vuong street. I am only loyal to traditional coffees such as black and brown. I find the coffee here to be very strong. When I drink it, it has a slightly burnt taste of smoke because of the characteristic of coffee roasted with firewood, but the most prominent is the aroma, not diluted like other shops."
Nearly a millennium has passed, Thai coffee is not only a familiar, peaceful place for diners to enjoy and sip the flavor that has been preserved intact over the years, but more importantly, this nostalgic coffee shop has become a special part of the coffee culture of Hanoi people.
Source: https://kinhtedothi.vn/gioi-tre-me-man-voi-quan-ca-phe-rang-cui-co-tuoi-doi-tram-nam.html
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