While I usually opt for specialty coffee and the third wave café culture wherever I go, this guide is a little bit different. When traveling to Vietnam for coffee you just can’t ignore all those traditional cafes and coffee beverages like Ca Phe Sua/Da made with the phin filter, brewing dark roasted coffees, using lots of sweetened condensed milk or salted cream, which turned into one of my favs (more on that later).
This café guide is about Da Lat, former French recreational town (during the French colonization in the mid 20th century) due to its mild climate that reminded the French of their own country, and which is now a bustling mid-sized city with about 260,000 people.
It’s located in the Vietnamese highlands on 1,500 meters above sea level surrounded by forests that not only hold coffee- and tea farms, but also pine trees, which was very surprising to me finding those in a tropical country when I first got there.
The Vietnamese love their coffee dark and bold, but they’re also open to new trends, especially the younger (digitally connected) generations. Hence the café culture in Da Lat is embracing both, the Vietnamese traditions and new trends, such as matcha latte, signature beverages and more.
During my stay in Da Lat this spring I let my palate guide me through all of the flavor experiences coming from both worlds and found some tasty gems that you’ll find below.
Before we dive in…
My café guides often are walking guides, where I’d add some interesting sightseeing spot or a delicious other treat – because you gotta eat, too, when try-tasting coffees all day, right? So watch out for those places, too.
But don’t worry; you don’t have to walk to get to all those coffee places. The App Grab is your best friend in town, especially when travelling alone, providing a ride with one of the many motorbike taxis for a small price at any time of the day.
You’ll find all the places I mention in this Da Lat cafe guide in the map below this article.
I’m not your usual coffee drinker, as you may already know, when you’re familiar with my Blog. As a coffee professional I have tried different beverages throughout the years. So the question that I often get What do you usually drink?, when entering a café isn’t the right one. You’re better off asking me, how my taste buds would like to be tickled today. ;-)
Hence I always get to try something different and unique, not your usual Lattes or cappuccinos or cold brews. Being very open and curious, I’m often opting for a signature beverage or the seasonal specialty of a place. So, expect beverages that I introduce you to, that you probably won’t find at your next-door-neighbor café, but only when getting out of your own comfort zone and hop on a plane.
Ready? Let’s dive in…
My favorite cafes in Da Lat
My recent trip to Da Lat wasn’t my first in the city. In December 2017 I visited for the first time and have checked out some cafes and roasteries as well. Coming back this spring I was happy to see that some of those places opened bigger or additional locations, or were exactly the same as I remembered. Which felt kind of comforting with a bunch of places also having found closed.
Wee Cafe
This is one of the cafes that I had visited back in 2017, when they had just started out. I’ve still kept my Instagram story saying that the owner is roasting his own coffee on a sample roaster and baking his own cookies in the small toaster oven sitting next to the counter. The tiny space wasn’t only a café; it was a place for analog photography and art. I was also mentioning their great playlist –The Beatles at the time.
Fast forward 7.5 years and I’m finding myself in a Wes Anderson style much bigger space somewhere else in town. Same brand, and the same people (friends as I learned), yet even more fun interior to enjoy during your stay, doggies trying to steal your cookies, and new as well as traditional style coffee beverages that I try-tasted during my stay. I managed to go there at least 3 times, since it was so close to where I was staying.
The most memorable coffee beverages I tried were a Lemony Smooth Cold Brew and the combo of a traditionally made phin filter coffee with cold rice milk, served on ice that tasted super hazelnutty. I’m an epicurean, so my eyes always drink along, as we say in Germany. Many cafés in East and South East Asia are doing such a great job in presenting their coffee beverages you just can’t not photograph it.
Bicycle up cafe
Checking that one out again after more than seven years felt very nostalgic, since it hadn’t changed at all. Well, maybe some of the furniture had been moved around, but other than that it still was the same very photogenic space that I had a matcha latte at in 2017 (and took a great photo of it now and then). Lots of plants and fresh cut flowers – something that’s being grown a lot in all of those gigantic high tunnels all over Da Lat – fill the space; a big bathtub is sitting just at the entrance.
Now that I think about it, I’ve never actually sat inside of the café. But there’s definitely a reason for why it’s called bicycle up, even if it is only the bicycle that’s hanging on the wall. The interior makes the impression of an old living room from back in the day with lots of old cupboards, chairs and bookshelves. The piano that was there in 2017 unfortunately is gone.
It’s more of a classical café beverage wise, although they’re serving some specialty coffee – local Arabica and Robusta beans, from light to dark roast – that you can pimp with some extras as I did during my 3rd visit there. What I received was a gigantic jug of cold brew coffee with kumquat, honey and lots of ice cubes. I could barely finish it – haha!
La Viet Coffee
This is probably the biggest café and roastery in town. They don’t roast and serve specialty coffee, but still decent and tasty coffee. Back in 2017 I was impressed by their big roastery, showroom and cupping space. Now in 2025 they grew even bigger in their original location and added a restaurant. The 2nd cafe was close to the place I was staying at the time, so I went there quite often to do some laptop work.
La Viet Coffee has quite the impressive signature beverage menu with cold brew coffee and espresso based mocktails and cocktails using local ingredients, such as juice from mulberry fruits. I try-tasted some of the mocktails during several visits and wasn’t always a fan. Despite the fancy look, the taste of this espresso based mocktail called Black Velvet didn’t convince me, I just didn’t like the salted lime in there. Vietnamese like their salted ingredients in coffee apparently and I do know about the impact of a pinch of salt in coffee. Yet this one didn’t get me.
The very first cold brew mocktail I had after I just got to Da Lat this spring was a cold brew that was topped with a sweet cream of raspberry puree. Alas I was still jetlagged and didn’t have my big camera with me, so no photo of this one.
What I really enjoyed and appreciated every time I went to La Viet, was the obligatory green tea, usually served warm, that you get for free with each order. If you’re a fan of filter coffee like me, try the different processing methods (Natural, Honey processed and Fully Washed) and different brewing methods – you get to choose between V60, Kalita or the traditional phin filter. The croissant was also pretty tasty, even though I’m not an expert when it comes to croissants and never actually had one in France. You like baked sweet treats? Read on!
Hai Nguoi
Speaking of adding salt to your coffee you definitely gotta try Ca Phe Muoi. That is a phin filter brewed strong coffee sweetened with sweetened condensed milk and topped with salted slightly whipped cream. Every small café offers those, usually as an iced coffee beverage. This one quickly turned into one of my favorites, I even served it to my friends at home after I got back.
(Note to myself: Now that I think about it, I actually promised to jot down the recipe and share it with everyone. Noted!)
Back to that café – Hai Nguoi – , it’s more of the Vietnamese traditional coffee places, that doesn’t serve specialty coffee, they don’t even offer filter coffees. Yet this place is super instagrammable or tiktok-able, if you like. The interior, the drinks, the whole space is super inviting to take lots of photos. In fact while I was there, I observed several young folks taking photos of their food and drinks … and themselves posing with the food and drinks, of course. If this is your thing, check out this place.
A great plus at Hai Nguoi was also their sustainable way of serving all of their beverages. And I’m not only talking cups, mugs and glassware. Vietnam still is one of those countries that isn’t the environmentally friendliest, to put it this way. So you often get plastic cups and bags and straws for everything. Not this place, though! I truly acknowledged their approach of only using glass straws or paper straws, for times when they were being too busy and every glass straw was already in use by the customers.
Walking Guide tip
If you’re checking out the area anyway and are up for some walking, the 2nd café location of La Viet Coffee and Wee cafe are in walking distance. For example La Viet to Wee is approx. 25min on foot, La Viet to Hai Nguoi is only 10min.
The area around Hai Nguoi is also very interesting with the old train station nearby and quite a few of those old villas that you can see in the back of the photos below from back in the day, when French colonialists flooded the city (1930-50s) and that young girls were using as backdrops for their photo shoots, which was quite entertaining to watch for me.
While you’re there and their coffee cart is open, do make sure to try another one of those salted cream topped iced coffees at quyen, usually your Barista will impress you – as she did me – with quite the cocktail-shaker-show that reminds you of a really good bartender.
Mew Roastery
This one is a bit off track, but totally worth the visit, if you’ve been missing true specialty coffee so far in Da Lat. Quite frankly speaking, Da Lat can’t quite compete with the coffee scene in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City yet). But it’s coming. There are more and more young folks who know and appreciate good quality specialty coffee that is not coming from Vietnam only, but bringing in different origins such as Colombia, Peru or Ethiopia. Mew serves really decent filter coffee that I got to try for free during my visit and a proper cappuccino, which I had ordered that morning.
You will be surprised by the prices at Mew, though. They remind you more of the prices you get back home, but not to Vietnamese prices. So you probably won’t really see the average Vietnamese coffee drinker in there. In fact this place was completely empty except for the two staff members while I was there.
Mew is super new and very hip – I loved the display of all the different brewing devices on the wall behind the counter. But it could’ve also been somewhere else on this planet if you wouldn’t have known it’s in one of the outer skirts of Da Lat.
The Married Beans
We are back in downtown Da Lat now for this last cafe in my Da Lat cafe guide and if you’re planning to check out this area anyway, put Bicycle Up on your list, since this is just a short walk away from the coffee place I’ll be introducing you to now.
Comparing other cafes and roasteries, and overall gastronomic spaces, the Vietnamese are usually super friendly and very hospitable. Not at Married Beans. I don’t know really why, since it actually is a pretty nice place, a multi roaster cafe that sells quite the range of different Vietnamese coffee brands, both Arabica and Robusta. But the two times I’ve visited them, I’ve always felt like an intruder disturbing the quietude of the staff sunken into their phones.
Yet the coffee is still good, especially their signature beverages. I’ve had a cold brew with lime and sugar added called Black Citrus. I’ve noticed that a lot of the more decent cafes served their signature beverages in wine glasses. See La Viet Coffee and Wee cafe above.
Bakeries
During my first visit at Married Beans I sat there for a while observing what was going on across the street. In front of a tiny shop window I could see a crowd of people. Curious as I usually am, I decided to leave the cafe and check this place out: Kimi Bakery. It’s supposed to be a Korean Style bakery serving sweet (very sweet in fact for my German palate) mini cakes with a cream cheese and egg filling. It was super popular, as many other Korean (street) food options in town.
Lien Hoa bakery is a Vietnamese or even Da Lat local bakery chain. Not the most superb quality as I’ve been told. Yet I didn’t go there for the croissants or other European style breads and cakes, but for the Vietnamese sweet treats, as you can see them in the last two photos. Most of those are containing red bean paste and sesame seeds. Delicious.
My tips for some fun activities in Da Lat
Da Lat has some really cool and fun places to check out while being in downtown, two of them are Maze Bar and Crazy House. Both are labyrinth style multiple story buildings that you can explore while sipping on a drink (at Maze Bar), and climb all the way to the top to enjoy the view over downtown Da Lat. At Crazy House you can even spend a night or two, since it is also a guesthouse.
