Egg Coffee and Afternoon Tea: Hanoi’s Café Life

Hanoi is a city that sits down for coffee. On low stools on the pavement, on the balcony of an old house, or on a hotel terrace, the café is where the city meets, reads and watches the motorbikes go by. Here is how to spend a day at its tables, from the lake streets to the sky.

Hanoi is a city that sits down for coffee. On low stools on the pavement, on the balcony of an old shophouse, or on a hotel terrace, the café is where the city meets, reads and watches the motorbikes go by.

The coffee is strong, dark and slow-dripped, and the choice runs from a family café near the lake to a lounge high in a tower. Here is how we would spend a day at Hanoi’s tables.

Egg coffee by the lake

Start with Hanoi’s famous drink. Café Giảng calls egg coffee, cà phê trứng, its signature since 1946: strong coffee under a thick, sweet whipped-egg cream. Its original café is at 39 Nguyễn Hữu Huân, near Hoàn Kiếm Lake, with a second at 57 Tràng Tiền.

For egg coffee in a grander key, take a table at La Terrasse, the Metropole’s Paris-style pavement café on Ngô Quyền, which pours the hotel’s own version from 7am, with phở and French pastries alongside.

Old houses and hidden balconies

Part of the pleasure is the room. Cộng Cà Phê began in Hanoi and now has cafés across the city, several around the lake; order the coconut coffee. The Note Coffee, near the north end of the lake, has walls covered in visitors’ notes, and Loading T sits in an old house in the Old Quarter, near St Joseph’s Cathedral.

Sweet things

Hanoi has a sweet tooth. Maison Marou is the café and shop of Marou, which makes bean-to-bar chocolate from Vietnamese cacao, and Kem Tràng Tiền, at 35 Tràng Tiền, is the ice-cream shop on the boulevard between the lake and the Opera House. In Tây Hồ, Joma Bakery Café keeps the West Lake crowd in bread and coffee.

Hanoi sits down for coffee: on the pavement, on a balcony, or 38 floors up.

Afternoon tea, high and low

The grand hotels keep the other tradition. Le Club, under the glass roof of the Metropole, serves drinks and afternoon tea by the pool; at Fairmont Hanoi, 10 Central is a café by day and a wine bar by evening, and takes bookings for afternoon tea.

For height, go up to The Lounge Sky on the 38th floor of the Lotte Center, whose afternoon tea comes with fresh Southeast Asian fruit juices. Out west, The Lounge at the JW Marriott serves afternoon tea from 2pm to 5pm beside the hotel’s lake, to live music.

Did you know? Café Giảng ties its egg coffee to 1946, and still keeps its original café near Hoàn Kiếm Lake.

Our advice

Our advice: take egg coffee near the lake in the morning, before the heat, wander the Old Quarter cafés in the afternoon, and keep a sunset for tea or a drink up high. Check each café’s own page for the day’s times, and book the hotel teas ahead at weekends.