While incomparable to New York City or Los Angeles, Seattle is home to many amazing, up-and-coming Asian restaurants and food shops. As a millennial foodie, I love to explore new places to eat that have aesthetically pleasing and tasty food. A huge bonus if the atmosphere is also super aesthetic! Welcome to the age of Instagram.
There’s Asian food and there’s modern American food. And then there’s the Asian fusion, which can be entirely hit-or-miss. But in our case here, it’s a really amazing combo! I’ve found that there’s a particularly higher rate of the younger Vietnamese population opening some incredible shops around the Seattle area and I simply want to give a shout out to how amazing they are!
A little background: I didn’t used to be a coffee drinker, and I can’t say that I truly am one currently either. However, I do love a great drink with awesome flavors! It was a plethora of Starbucks gift cards that implored me to branch out from drinking hot chocolate to mochas. And when the gift cards ran out and I wanted to work in a coffee shop, I looked towards lattes and cappuccinos. It’s another story to talk about public places to do work, but coffee shops are one of my favorites, and sometimes the seasonal offerings will get me! And I’ll shell out a couple extra dollars for that special drink. Everywhere I go now, I’m a little addicted to finding special drinks in new places. So here we are, let’s embark on some cool Vietnamese coffee around Seattle!
Hello Em
My friend, Hannah, first recommended Hello Em to me after she visited with her husband for a weekend date. It looked incredible, so I went to visit the next time I was near the area. I was blown away by all the options. Not that there were an overwhelming variety of coffees, but just that they all seemed so foreign to me. They use coffee grounds sourced from Vietnam but use the espresso method for making their coffees. The flavors are reminiscent of ones I found during my visit to Hanoi and Ha Giang, which I wrote about here.
You’ve got the usual suspects like egg coffee and coconut coffee. But some of the modern touches that Hello Em adds are the brûlée egg coffee, which toasts the egg. The everyday specialty item is cà phê chuôi, consisting of caramelized banana, coconut, egg cloud, salted peanuts, and banana chips. Truly more of a dessert because it is incredibly sweet, especially if not mixed together.
Another nod to the asian culture is the Milo mocha. I grew up with Ovaltine and Milo, lightly sweetened malt powder drinks that are enriched in vitamins. It’s great as a morning drink or nightcap. Pandan is the other asian flavor Hello Em uses in their drinks. The best description of pandan flavor is an Asian vanilla taste. It’s green because it’s made from a broad leaf and a relatively weak flavor. It’s hard to notice in this drink since coffee can easily overpower the delicate pandan flavor, but it is present!
Aroom
Aroom is relatively new to me, but their iced coffees are super fun and colorful! They’re based in Fremont and they make their coffee in the traditional Vietnamese way, using the phin. If you’ve ever been to a Vietnamese restaurant and ordered Vietnamese coffee and they serve it to you still dripping into the cup, that’s exactly the same! And you’ll know that they always serve the traditional coffee with a side of condensed milk. My dad would always get this when I was a kid and I would secretly take a spoonful of condensed milk sans coffee.
At Aroom, they also serve the familiar Vietnamese flavors of egg coffee and coconut creme coffee. For the people who prefer less added flavors, you can get Saigonese style coffee black or just with milk. But for the adventurous, they’ve got signatures like avocado coffee and sesame latte.
Not only do they offer delicious coffees, but Aroom also serves teas that are more impressive-looking than their coffees. I like the Gloomy Matcha, a normal matcha drink with sesame creme on top. They’ve got plenty of other color teas that would be great in the summer months.
Coffeeholic
This is the one that started it all for me. Coffeeholic now serves 3 locations: Columbia City, Greenwood, Bellevue. They’ve got some of the most extravagant looking coffees without being too sweet. Their Instagram account is quite funny too! Not all of their shops have a sit down area.
Like Aroom, Coffeeholic has traditional phin drip coffee as well as espresso. They’ve got your usual suspects, pandan, sesame, coconut, egg, plain. But they’ve got a gorgeous twist to them all if you want! The egg coffee has a nod to tiramisu. The pandan coffee can be made with either pandan cold foam or coconut milk seeped with pandan flavor.
If you’re like me, you’ll head straight towards the purple ube drinks! There’s so many varieties of them! One with egg cream or use foam. One that is matcha based. One that has no coffee. You can even get their ube syrup to take home!
Drip Drip Coffeehouse
I liked that Drip Drip drinks are not too sweet. I think they balance everything well, without making drinks overly complicated, it’s exactly what you’re looking for in a specialty coffee. Like the above coffee shops, Drip Drip also offers similar flavors like ube, pandan, matcha, and sesame. There’s a lightness in their drinks which sits well for an afternoon pick-me up!
Bonus shoutouts to Phin Little Saigon Cafe and Sip House for also serving delicious looking Vietnamese coffee that I’ve yet to try!
