The Best Cafes In Saigon You Need To Know About Now (Pt.4, The Workshop)

The Best Cafes In Saigon You Need To Know About Now (Pt.4, The Workshop)

If there’s one thing you must make time for while traveling through Vietnam it’s visiting some of best cafes in Saigon, the Workshop.

At a place where the coffee culture is life, the city is experiencing serious and fast growth in the number of eclectic and unique cafes that are a world away from the traditional street cafes.

Everything from cafes that serve coffee, fashion and art side by side to quirky and quiet getaways that feel more like an Adventure in Wonderland.  Vietnamese iced coffee is the constant but where you sip it is a whole other question.

One answer to that could be The Workshop (Tripadvisor).

Located at 27 Ngô Đức Kế, Bến Nghé, Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam this hidden gem of a coffee house is impressive even by European or American standards.

Like most great cafes in Saigon the small entrance is hidden in plain sight and you know the saying “good things are worth waiting for?”  Well, with three full flights of stairs to get to The Workshop you’ll definitely be waiting and working your way to the best serious coffee lover experience ever. 

As you ascend up the stairs every step in the beautifully designed space is flooded with natural light. The higher you hike the more of a welcome you receive with a cooler kiss of air conditioning.

This blast of refreshing air could be reason enough to head up the stairs alone. A fact I know my fellow travelers will appreciate.

Of course, the real reason is the coffee and we haven’t forgot that.

Once you’ve made it inside The Workshop it’s pretty clear every step was worth it.

Quickly becoming known as Vietnam’s first specialty coffee bar, The Workshop takes Saigon’s respect for coffee to the next level by blending science, art and passion in pursuit of the ultimate brew.

The café is situated in a gorgeous and roomy airy loft-space.  It feels, in fact, a universe away from the streets and alleyways below.

The Workshop’s massively elegant French door windows open the café up making you feel like you’re in coffee heaven.  The high ceilings create a modern atmosphere and those panoramic views of the city streets are priceless.

Consider staying for a while and get comfortable at their robust wooden tables that make a great work space for the day.  The vintage stools are surprisingly comfy and the mere fact that it’s an open coffee bar concept makes you feel even more a part of something really special.

As for coffee, your wish is their high quality hand crafted command.

Every wish, that is, except for Vietnamese iced coffee as this place is “for serious coffee drinkers only”.

But if you’re particular on your type of brewing method or are curious to try something knew they have the equipment, locally sourced beans and talent to create.

From Chemex, pour-over, Aeropress, to espresso and more it’s a coffee lovers dream.

No matter what way you take it the coffee delivers on all its promises.  This is no doubt in large part to do with their highly trained staff of barista’s.  Not only do they look the part with their authentic “workshop” aprons but there skills are on point.

Making this one of the best cafes in Saigon is the bonus that they also serve a decent plate of food. It’s good to keep in mind that the menu is strictly Western style which means you can expect to pay Western prices.  This isn’t a big deal, especially after a few weeks of exotic travel, a hot plate of eggs, bacon and toast with your morning coffee can be the exact kind of treat you’re needing.

If you’re lucky enough to be there when the owners – a team which also includes two coffee farmers -host their annual barista competition be sure to check it out! It’s an amazing display of exciting talent emerging right in front of your eyes.

HERE’S A QUESTION…

What’s your favorite way to brew coffee?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

Subscribe to ChestBrew for more awesome stories and to get a coupon for a discount on our ridiculously strong coffee.

Nice to meet you

We're Minh and Teresa and we love coffee

buy Moon Bear

Premium Whole Bean Vietnamese Coffee

buy cold brew

Ground perfectly for 1-Step Brewing

The Best Cafes In Saigon You Need To Know About Now (Pt. 1, L’Usine)

The Best Cafes In Saigon You Need To Know About Now (Pt. 1, L’Usine)

If there’s one thing that Saigon has it’s a healthy coffee scene. Our own personal treks through Saigon have spoiled us with some of the best coffee tasting experiences we’ve ever had.

Best Cafes in Saigon

Keeping in mind there are thousands of cafes in Saigon to choose from whether you’re looking for your morning jolt, a chill place to get some work done, a place to duck in to avoid the drench of rainy season or a simple and sweet after dinner dose with friends the choices can definitely be overwhelming.  We spent quite a bit of time researching ourselves and hey, if you ever do find yourself in Saigon let us help you out.

In our Best Cafes in Saigon series we’ll share our favorite cafes that go above and beyond simply serving drinks, post a few pics so you can get a feel for the ambiance and toss in some of the details to get you there and enjoying a good cup of cà phê yourself.

Alright, first on ChestBrew’s Café Must Menu is L’Usine.

Are you like me and love when fashion and coffee come together? Well welcome to L’USINE: Fashion, Lifestyle, Cafe,Gallery.

Best Cafes in Saigon

With two locations in Saigon, the original is located at Dong Khoi. Hidden inside an alleyway with paintings and other crafts for sale this is one of my favorite places to go early in the morning for a tall and strong iced coffee alongside a yummy lemon tart.

The atmosphere is so pleasant with their contemporary furniture, faux trees lined with beautiful lights, large windows that allows tons of natural sunlight in and high Victorian ceilings.  L’Usine is a hidden gem and a quiet retreat from the busy streets below.

Their second location a few miles away at Le Loi is another great place to refresh and recharge yourself.

The cafe offers a full Western style breakfast menu with lunch and dinner options as well. Their tuna salad is delicious! Their desserts are divine and their coffee bar includes lattes, cappuccinos and of course Cà phê sua đá (Sweetened Vietnamese Iced Coffee). If you happen to be a tea drinker I highly recommend the blossom flower tea!

Best Cafes in Saigon

To top it off both locations have an attached eclectic boutique where you can browse clothes, shoes, jewelry and find some beautiful and unique gifts and souvenirs.

L’Usine also hold the occasional fashion show turning their café and boutique in a runaway for local fashion designers to showcase their talent.  How cool is that?

Keep in mind that both L’Usine locations are pretty busy from open to close but if you ask us it’s absolutely a must try at least once every trip.

HERE’S A QUESTION:

What cafes can you recommend in Vietnam?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

Subscribe to ChestBrew for more of the Best Cafes in Saigon and to get a coupon for a discount on our ridiculously strong coffee.

Nice to meet you

We're Minh and Teresa and we love coffee

buy Moon Bear

Premium Whole Bean Vietnamese Coffee

buy cold brew

Ground perfectly for 1-Step Brewing

How To Offer The Best Product Ever

How To Offer The Best Product Ever

A staggering 100 million businesses are launched annually, according to a GEM Global Report. With that information you can understand that the idea of having a unique product is one thing. The actual execution of creating that product and bringing it to the market is a whole other challenge.

How to offer the best product ever

(Image Courtesy of Flickr, Khánh Hmoong)

Like any good business great will tell you in order to meet the needs of the market you have to be able to fill a gap that currently exists. You must believe that you have a better offering than your competitors and you have to do the hard work to create a brand that brings the best of that offering to life.

We successfully identified “the gap” and figured out how to be the first supplier of 100% Vietnamese coffee to the United States.  It was common knowledge that we admired hard work and that the Vietnamese coffee roasting industry we would establish would employ some the hardest workers we knew.  To make the business model even more in line with our company beliefs, that coffee would be marketed to help hard working people in the Western world get stuff done.

Now the task was to actually find the bean that would fit the bill.

Before we first set out to find the best bean in Vietnam we knew that in order to find that bean we would have to know what else was out there.

And so with a round trip ticket in hand, a couple dozen TripAdvisor bookmarks on our Ipads and a thirst for purpose we mapped out all the best cafes in Saigon.

Now, if you’ve been to the capital city you’ll know this was no small feat. I mean cafes are to Saigon like the grains of sand are to the beaches of California.  Despite this we committed to the idea that no challenge was too big, especially when we had coffee as our go to research resource.

We narrowed down our points of caffeinated interest to specifically District 1, an area that has a population of 204,899 people and is located in the middle of the city. D1 is considered the financial center of Saigon and Vietnam and also happens to be known as the best spot for shopping in Vietnam with loads of shopping centers and fancy high end retailers.

With just over 2 weeks of dozens of early morning meetings with industry experts and suppliers to attend and late nights ahead of us we were sure that’d we’d be able to get a taste of the fuel we needed to help drive our own Project of Purpose.

We traveled the country and shook hands with some of the most noted players in the Vietnamese coffee game as well as some new players that were trying their hand in the market.  We discussed the ins and outs, the logistics, legalities and pragmatics of the proposal.

After our meetings we felt we were on the right track.  It was imperative to meet with the big guys but we didn’t stop there.  We knew how important the “little guys” were and how important it was to understand what the actual experience of drinking the coffee was.

How to offer the best product ever

We explored small mom and pop owned cafes that had no more than a few colorful child size tables and chairs outside to sip and enjoy the city scenes.  We took in the big 3 floor chain coffee shops that welcomed you with the most glorious blast of air conditioning. Not to mention trying the brews from the Vietnamese lady on the corner pouring drinks straight from her street cart.

It was much more of an experience than I ever thought it was going to be and we learned many things along the way.

Insights such as coffee is life in Vietnam. From morning to night the locals are drinking their hot and iced coffees as the rush of the scooters, taxis and people fly by.  It’s meant to be had in the morning, after breakfast, post lunch and most certainly after dinner.

There is not a corner you can turn without seeing a selection of cafes that are full of customers. Which means don’t be too hopeful if you hit up a café where there are no seats available because people don’t rush their coffee time.

And if you love a particular cup of coffee get your fill because unless you’re mapping out your every step you’ll probably never find the place again.

Most importantly we learned that coffee in Vietnam isn’t something that people drink to power through their day, it’s not just a daily habit and it certainly isn’t taken for granted.

Having coffee in Vietnam means that you’re sitting down to slow down your own perspective as the rest of world whizzes by.  It’s a time of day where you sit with others for hours at a time quite possibly not saying a single word but just observing the world around you.  It’s a tool to open the door to a solid session of self-reflection taking in all you can so that when you finally do rise from your chair you’re doing so having settled into your place in this world just a little more.

Did we find great coffee?  Absolutely, but far greater than that we discovered the “secret” to offering the best product possible.

We realized that in our quest for the perfect bean rather than getting caught up in nailing down the perfect “taste profile” what we should have been doing was taking notes from the Easterner’s lifestyle.

The coffee, no matter where we went was on point, that’s something the people of Vietnam have mastered.  But how, where, when and with whom you enjoy it has so much to do with how that cup of brew goes down.

And that’s a lesson that we’ll take refills on any day.

HERE’S A QUESTION…

What compels you to choose a product?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

Subscribe to ChestBrew for more awesome stories and for a coupon to get a discount on our ridiculously strong coffee.

Nice to meet you

We're Minh and Teresa and we love coffee

buy Moon Bear

Premium Whole Bean Vietnamese Coffee

buy cold brew

Ground perfectly for 1-Step Brewing