Crack coffee

Vietnam is a great place for a cup of coffee, if you wanna dice with decapitation. The Trung Nguyen coffee shop chain serves a killer cup of caffeine called Weasel coffee. I haven't indulged so far, but (so the story goes) each bean is consumed and excreted by weasels, or Civet cats to be more precise, before being ground, mixed with boiling water and poured into your cup. Some sellers believe the story, other folk are more sceptical. (Hmmm... every single bean... excreted...???) Vietnamese coffee is invariably a chocolatey, Mocha heavy brew, almost always made from low quality Robusta beans grown in Buon Ma Thuot in the Central Highlands. The bean is more robust than the Arabica plants (hence the name), but produces an "inferior tasting beverage with a higher caffeine content."

Fortunately, the Vietnamese have a nifty way of turning a bad cup of coffee into a good one - at least for sugarfiends. Cafe sua da (Iced coffee w. milk) is a winner. No common or garden cow juice used here though, only sweetened condensed milk. You stir the sticky dollop of milk in with the coffee to produce a high-sugar, high-caffeine, ice cool tipple that will have you apoplectic for the rest of the day and your dentist seething. Feeling adventurous? learn to make Cafe sua da ice cream here.

Comments

[Reid]

I heard that Nguyen is the undisputed "King of Coffee" in Vietnam and actually heard that they have many stores there...sort of like Starbucks here...and I also heard that the coffee is much better.

[DanNguKhuDen]

I used to have reallhy good coffee from street vendors. They called it "Ca fe bi tat" literally meant coffee brewed right out from a sock!!! Geez, talking about backward country...