REVIEW | At Georgetown's Voi Cà Phê, Black Garlic Belongs in a Latte

Seattle has always been at the forefront of what's novel in the world of caffeinated morning beverages. But one of these "trends" is less trendy and more of a movement by café owners to share the non-Western coffee cultures they grew up in.

Along Georgetown's main drag, Voi Cà Phê sits at the corner of Airport Way and 13th Avenue. It's a small walk-up window without indoor seating, but there are public benches where people can enjoy their coffee and bánh mì.

The Vietnamese café opened in 2022, founded by the husband-and-wife duo Khôi Phùng and Hiền Đặng. Đặng's mom is the head chef.

"I was a barista at an independent Seattle coffee shop for a number of years," Đặng said. "I realized that there wasn't a lot of Asian coffee representation at that coffee shop."

Growing up, Đặng's family ran a small café off Martin Luther King Jr. Way where they offered coffee and bánh mì made by her mom, just like they do now at Voi Cà Phê. Her husband's family also ran a café in Saigon, where he grew up. His family still owns a coffee farm.

"It grows at lower elevation than the standard arabica bean that you see everywhere in the U.S.," said Đặng, explaining the nuance of the Vietnamese coffee bean. "It also grows in hotter climates and is more exposed to pests. Because of that, the plant has evolved to have more caffeine."

The traditional way to brew Vietnamese coffee is with a phin — a metal filter almost like a pour-over cone. This method takes more time and produces a highly concentrated cup of coffee.

"There's a perspective that we're missing here [in Seattle], which is the Vietnamese coffee perspective," Đặng said.

Since 2020, a wave of coffee shops has introduced Seattle to Vietnamese coffee, which Đặng says can mean the way the coffee is brewed and also where the beans are from. Vietnam is the second-largest producer of coffee in the world. And the majority of the coffee grown there is robusta.

Voi Cà Phê's menu includes a variety of phin coffee in addition to lattes that take inspiration from Vietnamese flavors not usually seen in local cafés. The menu has three sections: Under "easy" are pandan tofu and miso caramel lattes, while "intermediate" has jackfruit and a phở spice latte, which includes the broth's foundational spices like star anise and cardamom. "Advanced" dares visitors to be adventurous, offering a Red Boat caramel latte that uses fish sauce and an intriguing black garlic latte.

When it came time to place an order, I decided to go standard — an iced condensed milk phin coffee — and then give in to my curiosity about what a black garlic latte tastes like. And to my surprise, it did taste like garlic, but in a subtle manner that made it a delightful discovery.

"We let the beans kind of dictate where we go with the flavors," Đặng said. "We realized that pandan and kumquat and ube, those were the things that we thought we were going to put on the menu, but they didn't work well with our beans."

Instead, they leaned into what they felt were underrated flavors — like black garlic and tamarind.

Similarly, the café's bánh mì menu is divergent from the usual offerings you'd expect. Its most popular offering, the pork sausage patty, is inspired by the dish bún chả.

"I think that here in America, there's this anxiety about keeping Vietnamese food traditional," Đặng said. "Whereas in Vietnam, we were kind of inspired by how they don't care — I mean, it is by default Vietnamese — so we were kind of freed by that notion."

The tantalizingly creative menu also includes a ginger chicken sandwich, a cold cut special, claypot braised veggie "fish," a phở spice beef, and sardines in tomato sauce. The last one may seem unorthodox, but Đặng says it's actually a lesser-known classic.

"We go by the street food scene or just by what other dishes in Vietnamese cuisine that we love and just kind of want to put into the sandwich," Đặng said.

My favorite part of the café's menu is the option to get a "mini" bánh mì. They're half the size, which means you can try more of their sandwiches, which is exactly what I did. To round out my coffee order, I got mini versions of the pork sausage patty, sardines in tomato sauce, and coconut curry tofu. Plus a shrimp spring roll and a cup of their phở broth.

Each sip and each bite of the meal was satisfying. From the soft buns of the bánh mì to the sweetness of the iced coffee, all of my taste buds were tickled.

I loved everything about this little shop. The cultural intention behind it seeps through the menu and into the food, challenging customers to rethink Vietnamese cuisine and coffee while paying homage to classics that Đặng and her husband grew up with.