Seattle’s Phin Cafe Represents a Deeply Personal Journey from Vietnam to Seattle | Eater Seattle

"I opened the shop in October 2020 as a cozy, 620-square-foot retail suite in Seattle’s Little Saigon, and on rare cloudless mornings the early sunlight through an alder gives the space a fuzzy, meditative glow. Preparing the metal phin filter is my ritual: I grind the beans (the loudest step), wait for aromas of chocolate, caramel, grain, and earth, tamp black sand into the phin, pour water from a kettle set at 205°F, and watch drops of black coffee slowly rain into a pool of sweetened condensed milk; with gravity pulling water through a finely ground, tightly packed puck it usually takes about 10 minutes to my first sip. I brew only Vietnamese roasts and use a 50/50 robusta–arabica blend that represents both worlds; the phin draws out complex flavors that paper filters would strip away. The cafe has nods to Saigon— a pseudo balcony and lime-painted walls— and while I look to the past for connection, the shop is meant to be an interpretation that can live in a city 7,000 miles from home. When my dad finally tried a cà phê sữa here, he critiqued it in classic fashion, but after finishing it he asked for another, which felt like approval." - Bao Nguyen