A new Vietnamese café has quietly slipped into downtown San Francisco's Financial District this week, serving Hanoi-style egg coffee and a tight banh mi lineup to the office crowd and wandering visitors. The spot pairs a custardy egg foam with robust Vietnamese beans and keeps the drink list focused on iced specialties built for people dashing between meetings.
Location and hours
Cà Phê Việt has set up shop on New Montgomery near Minna and lists its hours as seven days a week from 9 AM to 6 PM, according to Cà Phê Việt. The cafe's site also highlights a small retail shelf stocked with packaged beans and classic phin filters. The whole operation leans into a compact, grab-and-go layout calibrated for downtown foot traffic.
Founders and the egg coffee pitch
Founding partners Kiet Truong and John Tran launched the cafe after testing beans and recipes on research trips to Vietnam, as reported by Eater SF. Truong told the outlet he prefers a Robusta that delivers “a nice, strong bitterness” so it can hold its own against condensed milk and the rich egg foam. The team is already at work on a second location in Union Square at 418 Sutter, with hopes to open that outpost in June.
Menu highlights
The drinks skew heavily Vietnamese: salted-cream iced coffee, a black sesame cream iced coffee with coffee grass jelly, and pour-overs offered either as 100-percent Robusta or a 70/30 Arabica-Robusta blend, according to the cafe's online menu. The shop also pours two fruit-forward options, an iced dragon fruit topped with cream foam and a guava version. Within the next three months, the owners plan to roll out a soft-serve machine with flavors including vanilla, guava nectar, and durian. The streamlined menu aims to keep orders quick and pricing straightforward for the downtown rush.
Banh mi and local suppliers
On the food side, the counter turns out four banh mi: a cold-cut combo with pâté, barbecue chicken, grilled pork, and a vegan option, according to Eater SF. The cafe sources custom-sized baguettes from Oakland's long-running Bui Phong Bakery, and many of the drinks use Robusta beans from Vietnamese roaster Mr. Viet, which notes its beans are roasted in Nha Trang and sourced from the Central Highlands and parts of northern Vietnam. Those local and Vietnam-based partnerships are central to keeping flavors as close to the originals as possible while tailoring portions to a downtown crowd.
For now, Cà Phê Việt is positioning itself as a quick stop for workers and visitors looking for something a bit different from the standard coffee rotation. The cafe's website lists the full menu and hours, and the Union Square sibling is still slated to follow in June.
