Why We're Loving the Vietnamese Cocktail Scene

Pouring a Pho Cocktail photo credit Neil Strachan

A small but growing subculture of Vietnamese distilling and mixology professionals are creating drinkable expressions of the regional flavors they love, and now this trend is coming to America.

Picture a towering inferno of alcohol and spice; three levels of molten-blue flames and a cascade of deep orange liquid, pungent and rich. When Pham Tan Tiep invented the Pho Cocktail, he aimed to create a liquor-based ode to Vietnam’s best-known dish, but also an expression of living history, one that was being unearthed nearby as he worked at the bar of the colonial-era Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi. “At that time a bomb shelter was found under the inner courtyard while doing some structural renovations and lots of stories, including Jane Fonda and Joan Baez, about war and bombings came to light,” explains Tiep, “So I wanted to create something that it’s truly Hanoian and it remembers also a dark page of our history.”

Cocktails That Tell Stories

With a mix of flaming gin and Cointreau passing through three tiers of copper vessels filled with cinnamon, start anis and cardamom – three of the main ingredients for pho – and sparking all the way down as the liquid steeps, the experience is as potent visually as it is intensely flavor-focused. “It looks like a bombing,” Tiep states directly, underpinning his desire to fuse together different elements of his culture into a glass. “I wanted to show that Vietnamese can use local flavors to surprise the palate of the drinkers,” he says. And that surprise worked so well that Tiep won best mixologist in Vietnam in 2012’s Diageo Reserve World Cup with the drink and has subsequently gone on to open multiple bars of his own, including Hanoi’s Nê Cocktail Bar where the Pho is a house classic.

Sông Cái founder Daniel Nguyen with tribal farmers

History, heritage, culture, food and lived experience are the driving factors behind a new movement of distillers and mixologists bringing the Vietnamese cocktail scene to the world stage. For Sông Cái Distillery founder Daniel Nguyen, the impetus to create the first Vietnamese gin, made with a combination of 16 botanicals sourced from Vietnam’s northern highlands sparked out of a desire to conserve the land through ethical farming. Nguyen’s background as an ethnobotanist combined with his skills as a distiller to lead him toward finding a way to support the Red Dao, H’mong, H’re, and Kinh communities by offering living wages for sustainable farming paired with reforestation and native seed banks. Nguyen’s work creating a gin made with ingredients including green turmeric, jungle pepper, black cardamom, and heirloom pomelo feeds back into the desire among Vietnam’s bartenders and mixologists to work with local flavors. “We are seeing more and more bars incorporating scientific and culinary knowledge into ingredient processing, creating a more diverse range of drinks, says Nguyen, “Things that Vietnamese once thought we could only eat, or even not edible, are now drinkable in a liquid form, one way or another.”

The cocktail scene in Vietnam

Hanoi’s Hermit Cocktail Bar — Hermit Cocktail Bar

At Hermit Cocktail Bar based in Ho Chi Minh City, master mixologist and author of The Câu Chuyện Cocktail Bartender’s Guide Conor Nguyen works with ingredients including sticky rice, ambarella and rambutan to intrigue and delight palates of tourists and regulars alike, while at Nha Trang’s groundbreaking Hybrid molecular cocktail bar, seasoned pro Liam Duong whips up deeply complex drinks like his milk-washed Urchin Gimlet made with actual sea urchin, and his Anchovy Punch which features cured anchovy, coconut, fish sauce and fig leaf. But why this desire to make the edible drinkable? To make local dishes into high-end drinks?

According to chef, restauranteur, YouTuber and bar owner Calvin Bui, the cocktail scene is “an evolution of the people and the country itself.” Bui, a regular cocktail drinker who frequents Saigon’s upscale bars at least three times a week, is eloquent in his explanation as to why Vietnam’s mixologists are taking this approach. “The young Gen Y and Gen Zs are really into learning and very proud of where they are from,” he explains, going on to detail the four main geographical regions of Vietnam, north, central, south and the islands, and how the cocktail scene is growing in each, with a focus on regional cuisine. Young professional Heidi Hanh Nguyen, another regular in Saigon’s bar scene, is also keen to emphasize the importance of regional specificity. “Vietnamese flavor is an umbrella term for the multitude of cultural and culinary influences that come from centuries of cooking all over this 100 million people country,” she says. “It would be at best reductive to say any brand represents ‘Vietnamese flavors.”

Sông Cái Việt Nam Dry Gin with botanicals

The impact of Sông Cái

Both, however, highlight the positive impact of Sông Cái as a Vietnamese-made gin with foraged heritage ingredients that offers a terroir-based drinking experience of the region of northern Vietnam. “Did Sông Cái take one aspect of this wondrously rich spectrum that is the vast biodiversity of Northern Vietnam and nurture it into an unapologetically original gin? They emphatically did,” says Hanh Nguyen. Bui agrees, citing that Sông Cái has put Vietnam on the global stage as a gin producer. He also emphasizes the importance that the Pho Cocktail has played in the evolution of the scene, adding that “[The Pho Cocktail] really encapsulates the personality and mindset of someone who has grown up with Vietnam — to take technique and taste to create something that screams Vietnam.” Read more about Sông Cái gin.

When I ask about the influence of tourism on the growth of the scene, both are skeptical. Bui strongly believes that the growth is locally driven, resulting from increasing enthusiasm from young people around the country, both mixologists and patrons with disposable income. “Though bars do serve tourists, most of the menus have a Vietnamese touch to every cocktail – instead of us going out to the world we are inviting the world to see our interpretation of what cocktail culture should be.” Hanh Nguyen places emphasis on local support as the backbone of longevity. “Consumers in Vietnam are quick to keep up with trends and the up-and-coming, hence you’d see new bars mushrooming around the city, driving through a popularity cycle at a surprisingly fast pace. But those with staying power enjoy a regular stream of patronage.”

An evolution in Vietnamese drinking culture

Vietnamese drinking culture has historically centered around beer. Speaking with academic Dr Chung Chuong, he explains how “[Vietnamese people] drink beer on the sidewalk, in restaurants, and the regular ‘quan nhau’ a huge beer hall.” How have cocktail bars drawn customers away from this traditional way of drinking? The answer seems to be that they haven’t. There is a consensus among Chuong, Hanh Nguyen and Bui that cocktail culture is dominated by a younger demographic, while older generations still consume beer as their primary means of alcohol consumption. However, this appears to be less a clash of cultures and more a phasing in and out of drinking habits alongside one another. “Young professionals, college graduates and office workers – the people who are building the future of Vietnam,” dominate the cocktail scene, says Bui, adding that cocktail bars are “Where they go to catch up with their friends and wind down at the end of the day – and cocktails are a great way to build business relationships.”

Bars in the Vietnamese Diaspora

Quynh Bee cocktail created by Quynh Pham for Phởcific Standard Time. Photo courtesy of Phởcific Standard Time.

And business itself has played a key role in spurring on the growth and development of Vietnamese-inspired drinks, both in Vietnam and in the diaspora – both in terms of the demand for and appeal of terroir-based cocktails and the desire to invest back into local communities. For Daniel Nguyen, the sense of responsibility he feels towards the 70+ tribal families Sông Cái employs has been integral to his drive in pushing the business forward, and in exporting Sông Cái to the US. Pham Tan Tiep’s success with the Pho Cocktail catapulted his career sufficiently to enable him to open his own cocktail bars. And in the diaspora, Vietnamese-owned bars and restaurants have picked up on the trend and are creating their own Vietnamese-flavor-inspired cocktails, such as New York’s Madam Vo’s Vietnamese Espresso Martini and Brooklyn’s Bolero’s Dirty Eggplant Martini. Seattle’s intimate Phởcific Standard Time cocktail bar is focused on making drinks that feature Vietnamese ingredients and flavors, such as the Tofu Martini with sesame oil-washed rice wine and ginger and the Qùynh Bee with jasmine honey, lemon and cinnamon flower, and make many of their drinks with Sông Cái. “The objective of PST is to bring Vietnamese flavorings into craft cocktails from our knowledge of Vietnamese food,” says co-owner Yenvy Pham. For Pham, using Sông Cái in her cocktails helps to elevate the flavor and authenticity of her drinks. “[Sông Cái is] made for us by us - it complements our ingredients to make our style of cocktails.”

Exploring Vietnam in a Glass

For drinkers in the US looking for something different, the availability of Vietnamese-inspired cocktails and spirits is opening up exciting new opportunities to explore different flavors and offer a new way to understand flavors they may have experienced in food. David Pangilinan is a food and drink expert with his finger firmly on the pulse of NYC’s cuisine scene and sees a growing market for this imported trend. “I do believe that with the surge of food influencers, especially over TikTok, are opening up the aperture to flavor profiles that traditionally weren’t sought after. From lemongrass to hibiscus, and star anise to cardamom, Vietnamese cocktails set themselves apart from their light yet bold flavors that are appealing to cocktail seekers,” he says. Pangilinan is positive about the potential for authentic expressions of Vietnamese cuisine, culture and terroir in the US drinks scene. “I see this as a larger trend that is in ode to many menus being created that are finally honoring the origins of flavors. The ‘liquid to lips’ approach that most beverage companies use to introduce flavors to consumers is evolving, leveling up and turning into a storytelling opportunity for restaurateurs and bartenders to develop a menu focused on bringing experience to life,” he observes.

Looking Ahead

What started as a few local experimentations a decade ago is now a young but burgeoning scene with the potential for greater evolution through increasingly dynamic and ambitious recipes and an expanding audience both in Vietnam and now also in the US. As the reputation of the Vietnamese cocktail scene grows internationally, via social media, travel blogs and expats, the sense of Vietnam as a cocktail destination appears to be growing. Heidi Hanh Nguyen believes that quality and professionalism are continuing to improve. “One thing I can attest to is the learning curve that bartenders in Vietnam have been through in the past 5 years. Establishments are eager to host guest shifts, supporting competitions, and exchanging knowledge; this has allowed me to sip from drinks that can easily rival those from World’s 50 Best,” she says. As international tourism opens back up, it’s unlikely that the unique cuisine and terroir-based drinks coming out of the Vietnamese cocktail scene will stay out of the limelight for long.