I recently read Connla Stoke’s “Once upon a time in a Hanoi café” and thoroughly enjoyed it. It transported me to a different time (and a different pace).
I’ve been walking more in Toronto recently, especially drawn to the strip-mall lands in the East end. On Friday, I ended up at Pho Metro at Warden and Lawrence where they made me a nice dark coffee with condensed milk. The next day I read Connla’s piece about Hanoi cafes. It got me thinking about my relationship with coffee, Vietnamese coffee, and the city of Toronto.
I first started drinking coffee back in 2010 when I was Felix. Somewhat like the Procrastinator in Connla’s story, I did it to while away my time. I had “figured out” my main project and it wasn’t mentally stimulating anymore. There was no “next thing” lined up for me, so… may as well start sitting around in cafes.
The big eye-opener cafe, the Platonic ideal for me, was a place called “The Communal Mule”. The coffee was tasty. The space was sparsely furnished with refurbished wood items, and it had enormous windows that let in lots of sunshine on chilly days. I would sit there and pretend to be someone confident, knowledgeable and mature.
The Communal Mule closed a few months after I discovered it. But that just kicked off my exploration of other cafes in the up-and-coming Dundas & Ossington neighbourhood.
My regular hangout ended up being a place called “Full of Beans“. What I liked was the solitude – whenever I’d come in, there might be a maximum of 3 other people there besides me. It had bookshelves filled with books I was never interested in. An active bean-roasting operation. Good coffee.
Sometimes there would be a musician hired to play to the patrons (all 3 of them) and I would feel obligated to keep up the performer’s spirits by clapping politely.
My girlfriend (now wife) would point out that “no other patrons” is a sign of ill health and that this place was likely to close soon. This was a sharp observation. But, somehow, Full of Beans is still open 16 years later1…
Unlike Hanoi, Toronto is not a “sit down with your coffee and watch life go by” kind of place. The city is so sparse that the amount of life-per-square-kilometre is very low. Chances are: not much is happening outside the cafe.
No. Toronto is a “grab your coffee and walk” town. You’re more likely to encounter life when you roam around.
That’s what I did on my Friday walk. I grabbed my cà phê sữa to go, got an assorted meat banh-mi, put on DJ Mosko’s Rick Ross mix, and shuffled my stompers down Lawrence street. Here’s some of what I saw:
My favourite condensed-milk coffee in town is at Pho Xua at the far end of St. Clair West. When I first had it, I asked them if they’d forgotten the condensed milk. It was that dark. They said “no, it’s in there”, and as I drank… it began to taste like a deep thick chocolate drink. Like a Dark Heaven.
As I learn a little more about Vietnam’s coffee industry, I think that what I like about these coffees is the flavour of Robusta beans. The vast majority of cafes serve a completely different variety called Arabica. Most Robusta beans aren’t available at cafes – they’re used for instant coffee production.
Having Vietnamese coffee in Toronto is not an experience that stretches out time. That’s because the coffee served in restaurants – in a loud, hectic environment alongside food. It is either pre-mixed with condensed milk for you, or the phin sits on an opaque glass that hides the slow drips from you.
Before reading Connla’s piece this Saturday, it never occurred to me that watching the coffee drip is an “enforced pause” in your day. A meditative moment. Afterwards, I made up my mind to go to a Vietnamese cafe, request a coffee with a phin, then sit there and daydream while the coffee drips.
Today, on Sunday, I again found myself at a Vietnamese restaurant and had a serendipitous surprise.
I ordered a coffee. And, for the first time, it came with the full setup to enjoy that languorous drip:
- Jacob’s Grand Unified Cafe Theory dictates that no cafe in Toronto shall go bankrupt, unless due to some extreme transgression. Cafes are a rock-solid business here. Even during COVID, in the super-sleepy neighbourhood where I live, no cafes have closed. Even the absolute worst cafes are still open and operating.
An example: after the pandemic, a new cafe opened and its proprietors immediately shut it down for a 1-month vacation. A ridiculous thing to do when you’ve just opened! That place survived. It is wildly successful. ↩︎
