The Bearded Man Who Roasts on Both Sides of the Counter

by Jiaqi Chen · March 27, 2026

I keep thinking about the word "râu." Beard. The whole place is organized around one drawing — a bearded man's face over script lettering, glowing backlit behind the counter, hanging round and black on the facade, stamped onto every cup. In Guangzhou we'd never name a café after facial hair. In Saigon, somehow, it works. It feels like someone's neighborhood joke that got serious.

Here's what got me curious: the menu has a split personality, and it's completely deliberate. On one side, phin truyền thống — the slow drip, the condensed milk, the thing my Saigon friends' grandfathers drank. On the other, cà phê máy — machine espresso, the modern register. And right there by the counter, an actual drum roaster humming away, roasting the house's own beans ("Cà Phê Rang Xay 500gr" is right there on the wall menu). Most cafés pick a side — old or new. Râu refuses to choose, and honestly? The refusal is the point. It reminds me of Chợ Lớn, where the Cantonese bakeries sell bánh mì next to char siu bao and nobody thinks that's strange.

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Old-school phin on the left side of the menu, modern machine on the right — and a real roaster humming in the middle, settling the argument.

The room itself is a corner shophouse on Sư Vạn Hạnh: black-and-white storefront, hanging plants, string lights, polished concrete inside. Nothing fancy. The surprise was the tropical board — monstera, hibiscus, and six sinh tố at one flat price: bơ, xoài, dừa, mãng cầu, sapoche, dâu. Thirty-five thousand đồng, every one. In a city where a smoothie in D1 can cost you 80k, that flat-35k badge is the punchiest fact on the menu. I asked for the mãng cầu (soursop, for the uninitiated — tart, creamy, tastes like a place you've been before) and it was thick enough to stand a straw in.

The overlap I live for, the familiar in the foreign: sitting under the bearded man's backlit sign, drinking a soursop smoothie, listening to the roaster hum behind me. Guangzhou and Saigon, machine and phin, beard and all. Some places you visit. This one felt like it was already mid-conversation with me.