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A New Home on the Gulf Coast
More than 130,000 South Vietnamese refugees arrived in America
in 1975 after the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War.
About 15 percent — 20,000 people — found a new home on the
Gulf Coast, many with help from Catholic Charities and area
churches. Many Vietnamese families made their way to fishing
communities like Bayou La Batre, Alabama, Empire and Grand
Isle, Louisiana, and suburban areas of New Orleans, including
Gretna and Avondale on the West Bank and New Orleans East.
They quickly became entrenched in their new communities.
Coffee was first introduced to Vietnam by French colonists in the
1880s. Today Vietnam is the world’s largest grower and exporter
of robusta coffee beans. Vietnamese robusta coffee is dark and
intense, with a bitter edge due to its higher caffeine content.
Chicory coffee has a similar flavor profile, and brands like Café Du
Monde, which is a mixture of chicory, robusta and sweeter Arabica
beans, offered the new immigrants a taste of home. Because sourcing
authentic Vietnamese coffee was so difficult, chicory coffee quickly
became the go-to replacement, then the coffee of choice. Today
Vietnamese restaurants in America and all over the world get their
ground coffee from local companies like Café Du Monde.
Deliciously Sweet
Vietnamese coffee is drunk cold or hot and sweetened with condensed
milk — a practice that dates back to the French colonists. Because
milk was scarce at the time, the colonists sweetened their robusta
coffee with the more readily available canned condensed milk.
At Tan Dinh in Gretna, one of the New Orleans West Bank’s
most popular Vietnamese restaurants, owner Ngat “Maria” Vu uses
a mixture of Café Du Monde and Trung Nguyen, a Vietnamese
robusta grind. She prepares our coffee tableside. The grinds are
filtered slowly through a single-serve, stainless-steel Vietnamese
coffee filter into a cup containing condensed milk. This slow press
process, which is similar to that of a French press, extracts sugar
from the chicory and flavor from the coffee.
The brew is stirred gently, then poured over
ice while still hot for a classic
café sua da
, or
“coffee, milk, ice.”
This ritual is repeated at Dong Phuong
in New Orleans East, where a meal of
cha gio (egg rolls) and grilled pork Bánh
Mì (a Vietnamese po-boy) is followed by
hot or cold French-dripped chicory coffee
sweetened with condensed milk. The
ca
phe sua
is equally popular at Pho Tau Bay,
a favorite of chefs Emeril Lagasse and John
Besh. The Takacs, owners of the popular
venue, recently relocated their restaurant
from the Westbank Expressway in Gretna
to Tulane Avenue in New Orleans.
There are exceptions to every rule, of course,
and one is Dang’s in Baton Rouge, which is
located in the Florida Boulevard strip mall
anchored by Vinh Phat Oriental Market.
There’s no better cure for the rainy day blues
— or just a case of the Mondays — than a steaming bowl of pho, and
the pho at Dang’s is some of the best in Baton Rouge. It’s complex and
doesn’t need much hoisin sauce to bring out its rich flavor. Dang’s uses
a dark-roasted Vietnamese brand of coffee rather than the more typical
Louisiana coffee and chicory. But like all Vietnamese blends, their hot
and iced coffees are deliciously sweet from the condensed milk.
In its long and storied culinary history, the Gulf Coast has been blessed
with offerings from a variety of cultures. It’s really not surprising that
some — like the Vietnamese and New Orleans coffee styles — have
overlapped to create even more tempting delights for our palates, and
palates around the world.
Coffee and Chicory
Most coffee and chicory brands originated in
New Orleans, including Café Du Monde. One of
the city’s major coffee purveyors, William B. Reily,
got his start with a wholesale grocery business
in Monroe, Louisiana. Reily moved to New
Orleans in 1902, where he founded the Luzianne
brand. Reily Foods owns Luzianne, CDM, French
Market and Union, which are all produced in New
Orleans. Folger’s Coffee, a national brand, is also
produced in New Orleans, as well as PJ’s brands
and local micro-roast French Truck.
COFFEE
New Orleans born coffee chain PJ’s opened locations
in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2016.