Nam Nguyen’s slender fingers manipulate a slightly vintage-looking coffee machine. In a few minutes, Hanoi Corner, its coffee shop located in 9e district of Paris, will be scented with the sweet smell of coconut coffee, a specialty of northern Vietnam and a favorite beverage of Nam Nguyen’s clientele. With his wife, Linh, he opened the first Vietnamese café in the capital six years ago. “Now there are at least five of us doing the same thing,” he says smiling.
Shiba café, Laïzé, Kafé Buki… these addresses, most of which have been open for less than five years, have the particularity of using the codes of the traditional American or Nordic-inspired coffee shop with an Asian influence. Chez Kapé, a Filipino coffee shop recently opened in 11e district, customers can opt for a “Filipina kapé”, an arabica from the Philippines, or a “ube latte”, a latte enhanced with purple yam from the archipelago and which gives a vanilla taste to the whole thing.
According to figures from the International Coffee Organization, which brings together exporting countries, coffee consumption in Asia, historically a tea drinker, ” has progressed (…) more than in other regions of the world, [la] transforming into the future global coffee epicenter.” Emperor Wuinfluencer specializing in Asian gastronomy, confirms the increasingly important place of coffee on the continent: “In Korea, you would think that girls don’t eat and only drink americanos,” she laughs.
Cultural enhancement
In Paris, the opening of Asian coffee shops is no stranger to the revival of cultural scenes in Asian countries around the world. From the global resonance of K-pop to the opening of Hot Pot Noodle, the continent is at the center of multiple trends, culinary or artistic, as explained by Eve Bantman-Masum, anthropologist specializing in expatriation and author of a study on Parisian coffee shops: “The center of the geopolitical world has shifted. The fashionable places are no longer London or New York, but China or Korea. The Asian coffee shop is a bit of the quintessence of this phenomenon. »
This new shift is not ignored by baristas. According to Nam Nguyen, the Parisian coffee scene, after having been invested for decades by the famous bistro then by transnational giants like Starbucks, is opening up “on a new cycle where restaurateurs want to show that coffee also comes with a whole culture. “That’s what’s happening with Asian coffee shops.”
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