The coffee
What is bạc xỉu?
The name is Cantonese and means roughly a cup of white milk with a little coffee. It came out of Chợ Lớn in the 1950s. The drink, told straight.
· updated · Virgin Coffee
Menus in Saigon list bạc xỉu next to cà phê sữa without explaining the difference, and menus abroad often translate it as “white coffee”, which tells you almost nothing. It is worth ten sentences.
The name is not Vietnamese
It is Cantonese. The original is baahk dái síu fèh, which means roughly a cup of white milk with a little coffee. Vietnamese speakers transliterated that as bạc tẩy xỉu phé, and over time it wore down to the two syllables on the menu today.
The drink came out of the Cantonese-Vietnamese community in Chợ Lớn, Saigon’s Chinese quarter, in the 1950s.
Which tells you what it is
The name is the recipe. Cà phê sữa is a coffee drink that has milk in it. Bạc xỉu is a milk drink that has coffee in it. The proportions are the entire distinction, and they run in opposite directions.
That is also why it exists. Coffee here is strong, and a drink was wanted that kept the flavour without the weight of it — so the ratio was inverted rather than the coffee weakened.
What is in the glass
Condensed milk and fresh milk, with coffee poured over. The condensed milk does the sweetening, the fresh milk does the body, and the coffee is a measure rather than a base. Poured carefully it sits in bands before it is stirred: white at the bottom, brown across the top. Closest western comparison is a latte macchiato, and that comparison is about structure, not taste.
It is much paler than cà phê sữa đá. If someone hands you a glass that looks like coffee, you have been given the other drink.
How to order it
Say bạc xỉu. The default in Saigon is iced — bạc xỉu đá. Hot is bạc xỉu nóng, and it is a different experience, softer and rounder, worth trying once even in August.
If you have found Vietnamese coffee too strong, this is the one to start with. Not because it is a beginner’s drink — it is sixty years old and people who have drunk coffee all their lives order it — but because it was built for exactly that preference by people who had it too.
Bạc xỉu is on our menu at 42 Nguyễn Thái Bình, Bến Thành Ward, District 1.
Questions
- What does bạc xỉu mean?
- It is Cantonese, worn down from bạc tẩy xỉu phé — roughly a cup of white milk with a little coffee. The drink came out of Chợ Lớn, Saigon's Chinese quarter, in the 1950s.
- How do you order bạc xỉu?
- Say bạc xỉu; iced — bạc xỉu đá — is the Saigon default, and bạc xỉu nóng is the hot version. If you have found Vietnamese coffee too strong, this is the one to start with.
Sources
- The Cantonese origin of the name, its transliteration into Vietnamese, and the 1950s Chợ Lớn origin — Vietnamese iced coffee — Wikipedia
- Bạc xỉu as a drink built on a higher milk-to-coffee ratio than cà phê sữa — Bạc Xỉu: The Lesser-Known Vietnamese Coffee — Tasting Table