{"id":41027,"date":"2025-11-06T17:14:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/41027\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T17:14:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:14:06","slug":"vietnamese-coffee-thunders-into-san-francisco-with-trendy-pop-up-nau-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/41027\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnamese Coffee Thunders Into San Francisco with Trendy Pop-Up N\u00e2u Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ll wait at least an hour in line on Valencia Street to try San Francisco\u2019s buzziest drinks. N\u00e2u Coffee<\/a>, inside Bernal Cutlery, is serving Saigon-style coffee you can\u2019t get anywhere else in the city \u2014 Instagram-friendly concoctions that are tiger-orange and topped with enough salted cream to guide spirits back to the grave.<\/p>\n

Owners H\u00e2n Tran and Ki\u00ean Nguyen met while studying at Cal Poly, but they both grew up in the same district in Saigon. For the last three years they\u2019d drive hours around the Bay to get a taste of the cafe experience back home. At N\u00e2u, they tap into that energy with Vietnamese music, introducing Vietnamese expats to each other, and showcasing Vietnamese products and flavors to San Franciscans. They debuted their pop-up to a small group in Alameda in July, and in early September, it appeared at Valencia Street\u2019s super buzzy Studio Aurora<\/a>. At the end of that month, they took over Bernal Cutlery.<\/p>\n

If they stick around, their project will be San Francisco\u2019s first specialty Vietnamese cafe. And it\u2019s already a hit.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have sold out at each pop-up,\u201d Tran says. \u201cWe feel there\u2019s a real demand in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The menu is simple and tight. Pandan, salted egg, Saigon, and still-popular<\/a> egg coffees. They serve their own blend, almost unheard of for coffee pop-ups starting out, with beans they buy from roasters in the Vietnamese city of Bu\u00f4n Ma Thu\u1ed9t. At the pop-up, the tireless baristas open and close huge jars of their medley. The team won\u2019t reveal which roasters they buy from to create their blend. About a day before each pop-up, they alchemize the blends at home. Nguyen says the central coastal city is wildly popular for coffee farm tourism. Tran points out all the beans they use are robusta<\/a>, the most common species in Vietnam that\u2019s known as a resilient, higher caffeine plant. To pair, Aurora\u2019s owner Dario Barbone made a pho focaccia sandwich \u2014 a pho-caccia.<\/p>\n

Vietnamese cafes are nothing new in San Francisco. Haight Street has relative newcomer Angiday<\/a> and the Tenderloin\u2019s longtime M\u1ed9ng Thu Cafe<\/a> both serve dizzyingly sweet Vietnamese iced coffees. But specialty Vietnamese cafes is its own recent phenomenon, and one that\u2019s skipped San Francisco.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been an explosion of specialty shops in Portland thanks to Kimberly Dam (Portland C\u00e0 Ph\u00ea<\/a>, now breakfast heavy-hitter M\u00e9moire C\u00e0 Ph\u00ea<\/a>), Seattle\u2019s booming scene (Aroom<\/a> and Ph\u00ea<\/a>, among others). New York is home to darling cafe and roaster Sey<\/a>, a staple offering at multiroasters the country over, and the East Village\u2019s second wave-coded Le Phin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In San Jose both the restaurant H\u1ebft S\u1ea9y with its paired Vietnamese chocolates and Kasama C\u00e0 Ph\u00ea<\/a>, among a handful of other pop-ups and boba-esque shops including Lac\u00e0ph\u00ea<\/a>, have capitalized on the trend. But in San Francisco, only short-lived Open Book Project<\/a> has offered anything like N\u00e2u. And it\u2019s really just been a matter of time: Imbibe<\/a> called out the trend way back in 2021.<\/p>\n

Tran and Nguyen do plan to open a brick-and-mortar in the city down the road. For now, both work in consulting; neither. has worked at cafes before. They say they became \u201ccafe addicts\u201d when they moved here, driving two hours to San Jose to get a taste of the Vietnamese coffee they left at home.<\/p>\n

Even outside of specialty coffee, Vietnamese cafe culture is skyrocketing across the world. The country\u2019s most successful cafe company Trung Nguy\u00ean Legend Cafe<\/a> opened its third-ever location in the United States in Portland<\/a> to huge success after Southern California<\/a> and Texas. Nothing of that new school on that scale is in San Francisco. Compared to the old-school Vietnamese coffee shops in San Francisco, \u201cwe try to focus more on coffee and community-building,\u201d Tran says. \u201cLa Ca Phe in San Jose [is like what we do]. But we shouldn\u2019t have to drive hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

N\u00e2u Coffee<\/a> will pop up again at On Waverly<\/a> (162 Waverly Place) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 22.<\/p>\n