Vietnamese Egg Coffee Is Taking North America by Storm–but What Is It?

In 1946, when Vietnam was tormented by fight with France, a necessity of divert led Nguyen Van Giang, who was afterwards operative during a Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, to come adult with a surrogate for a precipitated divert traditionally used when scheming coffee. His solution? Whipped egg yolks.

The artistic invention held on and became a worshiped internal splash in a possess right, eventually heading Van Giang to open his possess shop, Giảng Cafe, that has given turn a inhabitant captivate in a city.

Traditional cà phê trúng (Vietnamese egg coffee) is a Northern Vietnamese specialty done with robusta beans, whisked eggs, sugar, and precipitated milk. As is a box with culturally defining culinary endeavors, it was usually a matter of time until a splash done a approach opposite oceans and continents, tickling palates and building devotees among folks vital outward Vietnam.

A note should be done about a many component form of Vietnamese coffee, that predates and is a basement of Van Giang’s stately invention. The normal java is of a dim fry kind—incredibly clever and bitter—with flavors counterbalanced by honeyed precipitated milk. Served prohibited or cold, coffee in Vietnam was initial introduced around 1857 during French colonization. Limited refrigeration capabilities, a use of cows usually as work animals, and nonesuch of uninformed divert led to a widespread use of precipitated divert for storing dairy prolonged term.

At Hanoi Soup Shop, that recently non-stop in Manhattan’s East Village, congregation get to splash a famous egg coffee reduction that’s renouned in Vietnam.

Today, a Southeast Asian nation is a second largest writer of coffee in a universe (Brazil is No. 1) and a initial when usually holding into comment a robusta accumulation (from a Coffea canephora plant, braggadocio high sourness and low astringency levels). Currently, many Vietnamese coffee in North America is indeed done with Café du Monde’s coffee and chicory beans—produced in New Orleans—a depart from a robusta beans still used in Hanoi and a surrounding areas.

And yet, while customary Vietnamese coffee and cuisine can be found via Western countries comparatively easily, egg coffee is not prevalent. In New York City, for example, aficionados probably have a singular option: Hanoi Soup Shop on St. Marks Place in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood.

“It positively could be a dessert,” says Sara Leveen, co-owner of Hanoi Soup Shop and Hanoi House, of cà phê trúng, whose season many report as tiramisu-like. “It is what we make of it: What did we have before? What are we craving? The custard itself tastes like it could really simply be a dessert,” Leveen explains. “It’s sweet, though afterwards we decoction in all that dim black coffee, and it is strong.”

Following a outing around a universe that enclosed stops in Vietnam, where they grown a ambience for a internal culinary offerings, Leveen and her now-fiancé Ben Lowell non-stop Hanoi House, a Vietnamese eatery, behind in 2017. “There were usually some dishes from Hanoi that we would find bastardized versions of in places in Chinatown,” she recalls. That is expected a outcome of a story of emigration to a United States: As many Vietnamese immigrants accost from a southern partial of Vietnam, they brought along informal specialties. Although now widespread in Vietnam, cà phê trúng is positively a northern creation.

Only portion cooking initially, a business partners eventually combined brunch use once a week, charity a menu that enclosed a egg concoction. “It was 3 egg yolks for one sequence of coffee, churned to order, with a drizzle of sugar and precipitated milk,” Leveen says. Needing to feverishness a divert with prohibited coffee as a eggs were whisked (so that, once they strike a coffee, they’d stay comfortable though not get shocked), any splash would take 4 mins to prepare. “It was a pain in a ass, though people desired it,” she says.

Manhattan’s Hanoi House didn’t offer takeout, so a owners motionless to open Hanoi Soup Shop (reminiscent of Vietnamese coffee shops, with opposite seats) for a lunch crowd.

This past April, a integrate non-stop an all-day Vietnamese café dual doors down from their initial shop. More of a takeout effort, Hanoi Soup Shop decidedly demanded a participation of cà phê trúng on a menu: But could a discerning takeout business offer a coffee that requires roughly 5 mins to be made? “We hacked it,” Leveen says. Instead of whisking a eggs directly into a drink, a staff now cooks a custard bottom and aerates it. Making vast batches, they prepare it, cold it, and afterwards flow it into a coffee, that can be served possibly prohibited or cold. According to Leveen, “out of 50 people that travel by a doorway each day, 6 to 8 of them are entrance usually for coffee.” Hanoi Soup Shop’s Vietnamese egg coffee costs $8, about double a volume for a café’s unchanging prohibited Vietnamese coffee.

Fans will also find true renditions of a provide adult in Canada. Following a Vietnam War, refugees who staid in Canada brought along with them food-related traditions that still peppers a local gastro scene—including cà phê trúng.

At Coffee Dak Lak in Toronto, open given 2016, a egg coffee ($4.99 Canadian) is done with dual whisked egg yolks, precipitated milk, coffee, and cocoa powder. (Like Hanoi Soup Shop, a egg custard during Coffee Dak Lak is prepared in advance.) The beans used here are alien directly from Vietnam and are a reduction of robusta and arabica beans. “An ideal ratio to make a good tasting coffee,” says Khanh Pham, a ubiquitous manager during a Canadian coffee shop. In terms of popularity, Pham estimates that about 80% of business who stop in daily do so singularly for a crater of coffee.

Cà phê trúng is not a usually Hanoi splash that claims a mark on Western culinary bucket lists: Coconut coffee is a renouned sequence during both Hanoi House and Coffee Dak Lak as well. In Toronto, Pham’s staff uses coconut cream and precipitated milk, pours it onto a Vietnamese coffee espresso, and tops it off with roasted coconut crumbs. In New York City, a Hanoi House group prepares a solidified coconut coffee done with coconut gelato, coconut milk, and coffee. As Leveen mentions, a Vietnamese approach of scheming a splash is somewhat opposite (“badass,” in her possess terms): honeyed coconut divert and ice are blended to form a arrange of frappé that afterwards gets soaked in coffee, giving arise to a glass dessert-like decoction that appeals to masses worldwide.

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