What Is Vietnamese Egg Coffee?

Drinking coffee topped with a foam made of raw egg yolks may seem strange at first, but those who have tried the velvety Vietnamese egg coffee, or cà phê trứng, are often instant fans.

For Emmy Le, egg coffee was the sole inspiration behind opening Le’DRIP in Houston with her sister. “Three years ago, I was in Vietnam [and] I tried egg coffee for the first time in Saigon, and it blew my mind,” says Le. “I discovered coconut coffee and egg coffee, and I am telling you, I was so addicted that I was drinking three to four coffees a day on that trip.”

Egg coffee is considered a signature drink of Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, but has become so popular that it’s now available throughout the country. In the late 2010s, the drink began to make its mark on the United States. 

The drink is so rich and creamy that it might be hard to imagine that egg coffee was first created out of dairy scarcity.

What is egg coffee?

Vietnamese egg coffee is first prepared with a strong, short coffee brewed using a phin filter, a slow-drip method that is the traditional way of brewing Vietnamese coffee.

Vietnamese coffee is traditionally made using robusta coffee — the Southeast Asian country is the world’s largest exporter of the highly caffeinated beans. “The beans are [strong] and bold in flavor with a chocolatey flavor profile,” says Jennie Tang, of H & L Wholesale Food Corporation, the Los Angeles-based distribution company that brought the popular Vietnamese coffee shop chain Trung Nguyên Legend Café to the U.S. “It also has double the caffeine content than the arabica counterpart.” 

To whip egg foam for a proper egg coffee is a delicate process. “It’s like flan,” says Vince Nguyen, founder of the California-based Vietnamese coffee importer and roaster Nam Coffee Roasters.

Two egg yolks are whisked with some sugar or condensed milk, or both, until the consistency is foamy and creamy. “The amount of time you whip it up affects the texture as well as the taste,” says Tang. “So we have to whip it up to a certain consistency, but not too much where it loses flavor.”

The egg foam is then placed on top of the hot black coffee. 

According to Nguyen, when the sweet, creamy foam mixture is combined with a robust, almost bitter coffee, “it’s really well balanced.”

The history of egg coffee

Vietnamese egg coffee is said to have been created by Nguyen Van Giảng in Hanoi in 1946. During the first Indochina War in the 1940s, there was a milk shortage in Vietnam. Giảng was working as a bartender at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. When looking for something creamy to replace the milk in the hotel’s coffee drinks, Giảng came up with the idea of whisking egg yolks along with some sugar and condensed milk. Surprisingly, the egg foam turned out to pair nicely with Vietnam’s strong coffee.

Giảng’s creation became so popular that he opened his own coffee shop, Café Giảng, in Hanoi. The café is now run by his son and still specializes in egg coffees. 

Until about five years ago, egg coffee was primarily found in Hanoi and cities in northern Vietnam. As the popularity of the drink grew, it became widely available throughout the country. It is one of the signature drinks at Trung Nguyên Legend Café’s 110 locations in Vietnam.

Vietnamese egg coffee in the U.S.

The Vietnamese coffee landscape in the U.S. has changed significantly in just the last few years. Vietnamese Americans have opened coffee roasters and cafés across the country, in cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Houston, as well as franchising Vietnam-based coffee brands like Trung Nguyên Legend.

Nam Coffee Roasters has a café in Los Angeles where Nguyen serves up several egg coffees daily. “I go through about 3 lbs of eggs every day,” says Nguyen. 

American coffee drinkers seem to prefer the cold version, however. Unlike the traditional Vietnamese egg coffee that’s served hot, you’ll most likely find iced variations in the U.S. 

Trung Nguyên Legend Café opened its first U.S. location in Westminster, California, in 2023 and now sells 150 to 200 egg coffees a day. When Tang first discussed opening the U.S. location, the franchise didn’t have an iced version of the egg coffee, as the drink is traditionally enjoyed hot. “But here in the States, a lot of people just really love iced drinks,” says Tang. They added an iced version to the menu, and it’s by far the more popular version of the two. “We don’t really do a lot of hot egg coffee unless it’s wintertime,” Tang says.

Nam, Trung Nguyên Legend Café, and Le’DRIP all do one other modification to the original recipe: the egg foam is served on top of Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk, instead of just black coffee.

While Nam and Trung Nguyên Legend Café both still use the strong, 100% robusta coffee, Le’DRIP opts for a custom blend imported from Vietnam that isn’t as strong and bitter to cater more to the young professionals in the U.S. 

No matter which version it is, people seem to love egg coffee. All three shops say that the egg coffee is one of their top sellers.

What happens to all the egg whites from all these egg coffees, you might ask. Not to worry, as they aren’t going to waste. Tang lets her staff at Trung Nguyên Legend Café take the egg coffee byproducts home.

“Our team likes the egg whites,” says Tang. “They take it and they cook it at home. The eggshells are really great for fertilizers, too. My mom comes in and grabs the eggshells.”