Photos by Quân Nguyễn Trần Bảo
First there was only one. A very small one. Just big enough for owner Linh Dung and her friends. Seven years on it seems not a month passes without another couple of Cộng Cà Phê opening their khaki green doors. They blend in nicely, yet have subtly started to shape the face of the city.
Cộng Cà Phê’s latest incarnation is being set up right across Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, bang in the middle of the Old Quarter. It is due to open on 20 April 2014.
& Of Other Things found Linh Dung squatting amidst the building site that is to become Cộng Cà Phê number 9, putting the finishing touches on a pile of low wooden tables. It is workmanship at its finest when the owner herself makes sure all the furniture is just the right shade of faded. The former singer came up with the interior design style, which she calls ‘Vietnamese vintage’, that Cộng Cà Phê has become synonymous with.
The idea had always been to preserve a Hanoi not so long gone. One which Dung remembers from her childhood days and her mother’s own coffee shop; less plastic, subtler greens and greys and making do through necessity. It is in this spirit that all the Cộng Cà Phês are being decorated. What is being discarded by one person, who cannot move towards the future fast enough, is being treasured by Dung’s able hands and keen eyes. “We collect what to other people is garbage,” she says, “and repurpose it.” Photographs, posters, pamphlets. All those are filling one Cộng Cà Phê after the next. And there seems to be no stopping. Not until the smell of Cộng Cà Phê’s own brand of coffee has infiltrated every district of the city.
