Ba Lu Sock Coffee

A 63-year-old sock-filter coffee shop handed down through three generations inside Phung Hung market

The shop opened in 1953, founded by Lam Thieu Dien, known as Ba Lu. Today the original shop is kept by Chung Quoc Hung, his eighth child, together with Chung Thi Hoang, the sixth. Ms. Hoang has just opened a second shop at the corner of Nguyen Trai and Chau Van Liem streets, hoping to restore the exact taste of Ba Lu coffee and win back her father's name. Sock coffee is Saigon's old brewing method: ground coffee goes into a cloth bag shaped like a racket, boiling water is poured over it and the brew is then kept warm in a kettle, quite unlike an aluminium phin filter or an espresso machine. The coffee here is roasted by hand with butter, salt and liquor to a family recipe, which gives a light cup with a fragrant, buttery finish rather than a harsh strength. The shop is open almost all year round and closes only on the first day of Tet.

English text: machine translation from the Localis platform — proper names kept in Vietnamese.