Vietnam’s food & drink culture lives out on the streets. Cities and towns here are brimming with roadside vendors: old ladies serving soups from portable metal carts, handcrafted stalls selling coffee and juice, traders slowly pedalling around backstreets on bikes piled high with food, blasting pre-recorded messages on tape recorders. Street-selling is a tradition here that’s been around since long before the existence of most food and drinks that we think of as traditionally Vietnamese.
On a run-of-the-mill backroad in Binh Thanh District, Tùng darts back and forth, working away at his espresso machine. As the sun pokes it head up, the steady stream of commuters begins to rush by. Motorbikes pull up and stop, forming a short line of punters eager to get their caffeine fix. A few customers, less rushed for time, perch on chairs and sip slowly away at their cà phê sữa đás as the traffic flows by.
Tùng runs Mật: a quintessentially Saigonese, modern street-cafe. Every morning this sidewalk coffee shop serves up Viet-Italian style coffee to hoards of people readying themselves for the day’s work. It offers everything you would expect from any good cafe – ample seating, brilliant customer service, well-brewed beverages – just without the building.
Mật is archetypal of 21st Century Saigon. As the coffee culture here continues to thrive and grow, many cafes are moving towards less traditional methods of brewing. Yet as vendors trade in vợt clay pots for espresso machines and the like, Vietnam’s unique coffee culture remains as strong as ever, and so does the tradition of street-selling.
It’s thanks to the mishmash of native tradition and big-city modernity that you can pull up a seat at Mật Cafe and enjoy a uniquely-Vietnamese iced americano with condensed milk (cà phê sữa đá). And it’s thanks to the country’s ever-booming culture of informal commerce that you are able do so for as little as 15K ND as you sit roadside on a colourful plastic chair and take in the craziness of Saigon’s morning motorbike rush.
Coffee aside, Mật is probably the most welcoming street-cafe you’ll find. Tùng is characteristically charming and friendly. Even when inundated with customers, he somehow manages to make time for a conversation. A quick coffee here often turns into a hour-long pitstop.
As with many good street-stalls, Mật only operates during the morning. It’s open every day from dawn until just before midday so be sure to drag yourself out of bed early; swing by in the afternoon and you’ll find no evidence that this cafe even exists.
Prices range from 13K VND for a medium cà phê đá (black iced-coffee) to 20K VND for a large bạc xỉu (iced-coffee with fresh and condensed milk).
It’s located near 35 Võ Oanh, Phường 25, Bình Thạnh, Hồ Chí Minh. Check our map below for more accurate locations.
To view the location, click in the top right of the map (to open) and search for ‘Mật Street-Cafe’.