Some drinks do not need a fancy name to stay unforgettable, and Bac Xiu is exactly that kind of drink. To the people of old Saigon, it was never just a milk coffee. It was a small piece of the bustling Cho Lon district, of sidewalk coffee carts, and of the way Vietnamese people took something borrowed from elsewhere and quietly made it their own.
A Name That Sounds Strange, Until You Hear the Story
Taken on its own, the name Bac Xiu gives almost no hint that it is even a coffee. If anything, it sounds closer to a random pair of syllables than the name of a warm, milky drink. And yet that unfamiliarity is exactly what makes it so memorable.
Bac Xiu is a shortened form of Bac Tay Xiu Phe, a phrase rooted in Cantonese, the language once widely spoken among the Chinese community living in Saigon’s Cho Lon district in the middle of the twentieth century. Bac means white, standing in for milk. Tay refers to a cup or glass. Xiu means a little, a small amount. Phe refers to coffee itself. Put together, Bac Tay Xiu Phe translates roughly to a white cup of milk with a little coffee added in, the exact reverse of a standard Vietnamese milk coffee, where coffee is always the dominant part.
From a Worker’s Breakfast to a Symbol of an Entire City
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when fresh milk was still hard to come by, breakfast for most working people in Saigon was simple: a baguette alongside a cup of warm sweetened condensed milk. From that humble starting point, the Chinese community in Cho Lon began adding a small amount of coffee to the milk, creating something gentler and easier to drink than a strong milk coffee, a version friendly even to people who never cared for bitterness.
Thanks to that soft, comforting sweetness, Bac Xiu quickly spread beyond the Chinese community and into sidewalk coffee stalls across Saigon, eventually becoming a fixture of everyday life in the city. In many ways, it strips coffee down to its gentlest form, keeping only the warmth and none of the sharp bitterness.
Bac Xiu, Reimagined at Cong
At Cong, Bac Xiu is told through a slightly different lens, one that keeps its original spirit intact while giving it a new layer to wear. Instead of stopping at the usual balance of strong phin brewed coffee and smooth condensed milk, Cong adds rich coconut cream into the mix, building an extra dimension of flavor that still feels familiar rather than foreign.
The taste of slow roasted robusta coffee gently seeps into the white milk base, blending with the richness of coconut cream to create something that feels both nostalgic and new from the very first sip.
This is not a replacement for the traditional Bac Xiu, it is a way of keeping this heritage drink alive and relevant today, echoing how the people of old Saigon once turned a simple cup of warm milk and coffee into a defining piece of their own culture.
Familiar and Reinvented at the Same Time
Sipping a cup of Bac Xiu at Cong, you will notice two things that seem like opposites blending together with surprising ease: the nostalgia of a drink with more than half a century of history behind it, and the freshness of a recipe reworked for today. That is exactly the spirit Cong wants every cup to carry, holding onto the soul of old Saigon while never being afraid to experiment and let that soul take on a new life.
If you are in France and curious to try this particular reinvention of Bac Xiu for yourself, stop by Cong Ca Phe at 18 Rue Volney, Paris, open every day. Familiar yet reinvented, give it a try, you might just fall for it!
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