Nguyen Van Giang invented egg coffee here in 1946, whisking egg yolk and sugar into a meringue-like cloud when milk was scarce. His family still serves it at three Hanoi locations, including inside Lotte Mall Tay Ho.
Best for Original egg coffee (ca phe trung), invented here in 1946
Cafe Giang's claim to Hanoi's coffee history rests on a specific act of improvisation: in 1946, with fresh milk hard to come by, Nguyen Van Giang began whisking egg yolk and sugar into a meringue-like foam and spooning it over strong Vietnamese coffee, inventing what the city now knows as ca phe trung -- egg coffee. The recipe has stayed in his family since, served at the original shop at 39 Nguyen Huu Huan, reached down a narrow passage off the street in the Hoan Kiem district.
That single address has grown into three. Alongside the original Nguyen Huu Huan location, the family now runs a counter at 57 Trang Tien and a third inside the Lotte Mall Tay Ho shopping center -- a modern setting a long way from the original alley shop, serving the same drink. The company's own framing leans on that continuity rather than expansion for its own sake: its stated mission describes each cup as carrying 'craftsmanship, family memories, perseverance and a spirit passed down through generations.'
For a drink invented as a wartime substitute for milk, egg coffee has outlasted the shortage that created it by nearly eighty years, and Cafe Giang's three Hanoi counters are still the direct line back to Nguyen Van Giang's original recipe.
Founded by former New York pediatrician Mark Rapoport and his wife after they moved to Hanoi in the early 2000s, this Ba Đình gallery at 44B Hàng Bún Street is devoted to the antiques and textiles of Vietnam's 54 recognized ethnic groups, with themed rooms including tribal textiles and shamanic ritual objects.
Best for Vietnamese ethnic textiles, jewelry, and ritual objects
54 Traditions Gallery was founded by Mark Rapoport, a former New York pediatrician, and his wife after the couple relocated to Hanoi in the early 2000s and began collecting cultural artifacts from Vietnam's ethnic minority communities. It is now, by its own account, the only gallery in Vietnam dedicated specifically to the arts and material culture of the country's 54 officially recognized ethnic groups. Spread across three floors and seven themed rooms at 44B Hàng Bún Street in Hanoi's Ba Đình district, the collection includes tribal textiles and costumes, Buddhist statues, tribal jewelry, ceremonial swords, ritual scrolls, and ceramic pieces the gallery says were salvaged from centuries-old shipwrecks, alongside dedicated rooms on the Central Highlands and on shamanic tradition. The gallery offers free guided tours led by staff versed in the archaeological and cultural background of the pieces on display. According to the gallery, some of the Rapoports' original finds have since entered institutional collections, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.
Sells Bat Trang ceramics from its shop at the Bat Trang ceramics market in Gia Lam, Hanoi, including tea sets, altar wares, decorative vases, ceramic lamps and dinnerware. Pieces are finished with crackle glaze, cobalt blue glaze, hand-painting or relief decoration.
Hanoi ceramics shop selling handmade pieces from Bat Trang Ceramic Village, about 20km outside the city. The collection favors playful, unconventional shapes such as watermelon bowls and octopus-print mugs.
Best for Handmade ceramics from Bat Trang Ceramic Village near Hanoi
Cerender's ceramics are made in Bát Tràng, a village on the far bank of the Red River southeast of central Hanoi, whose potters have worked in continuous production for more than 700 years, making it Vietnam's oldest and best-known ceramic-making center. The Hanoi shop itself sits in the Old Quarter near St. Joseph's Cathedral, putting it within walking distance of the district's cluster of small independent retailers rather than out at the village workshops themselves — a common arrangement among Bát Tràng-sourced ceramics sellers, who maintain a city storefront for tourists and expatriate residents while production stays in the village. Beyond the shop's better-known novelty pieces, Cerender's range extends to export-oriented tableware and furnishing accessories — flower pots, tea sets, table lamps, and fine textured porcelain — giving it a broader catalogue than the whimsical single-item pieces most visitors photograph. The shop has changed addresses within the Old Quarter more than once, moving in recent years from a Ấu Triệu Street location to its current storefront on Hàng Trống, one of the neighborhood's older, name-preserving streets clustered around Hoàn Kiếm Lake — the kind of relocation common to small independent Hanoi retailers navigating short leases in a historic, high-turnover shopping district.
Spanish artists Diego Cortizas and Laura Fontan founded Chula in Hanoi in 2004, blending Spanish and Vietnamese design; garments are cut, sewn, painted and embroidered in-house, and about 75% of the artisan team has a physical disability.
Best for Colorful, artist-led garments made with local Hanoi teams
Chula Fashion was founded in Hanoi in 2004 by Diego Cortizas and Laura Fontan, who had arrived in Vietnam some years earlier and were drawn into fashion design by the country's fabrics and craft traditions. The brand takes its name from a Spanish word connoting something distinctive, and its design language merges Spanish and Vietnamese influences. Production is kept in-house at every stage - designing, cutting, sewing, painting, stamping and embroidering - carried out by a team of skilled artisans, roughly three-quarters of whom have a physical disability, a detail the brand frames as core to its social mission. Cortizas, previously a photographer, painter and musician engaged with Hanoi's art scene, has also used the boutique as a venue for exhibitions and musical performances.
Hanoi's custom ao dai atelier — Vietnamese tunic dresses combining traditional silhouettes with contemporary tailoring and ethnic textile techniques.
Best for Custom ao dai and dresses made to order
Chula Fashion operates a workshop and showroom at 43 Nhật Chiêu in Tây Hồ, Hanoi, specializing in custom ao dai production and contemporary interpretations of Vietnam's traditional dress. Founded by Diego Cortizas, a Spanish architect-turned-designer who has lived in Vietnam since 2004, Chula draws from more than thirteen years of ao dai design experience. The atelier emphasizes preservation of artisanal techniques by incorporating textiles and weaving traditions from Vietnamese ethnic minority groups (Mông, Thái, Cơ Tu peoples). Rather than generic modernization, Cortizas approaches ao dai as a historical garment evolving through contemporary design—using materials rarely seen in traditional contexts to create patterns while maintaining structural integrity. The workshop produces custom orders alongside ready-to-wear pieces, with construction emphasizing clean lines and languid draping that prioritizes ease of movement. The studio represents a philosophical shift toward handmade, slow-fashion approaches in Vietnamese design. The practice directly engages with ethnic minority communities to keep traditional weaving techniques economically viable while adapting them to fashion contexts.
Collective Memory is a Hanoi shop curating work by Vietnamese brands and makers near Saint Joseph's Cathedral. Its selection ranges from art prints and home objects to coffee and smaller gifts. The founders, a travel writer and a photographer, draw on journeys around Vietnam when choosing what to stock.
Best for Vietnamese design, art prints and gifts in Hanoi
Collective Memory at 12 Nha Chung is built around the idea that a gift can carry something of Vietnamese culture. Its founders, a travel writer and a photographer, draw on journeys around the country to select work by brands and makers. The resulting shop mixes art prints with usable objects rather than concentrating on a single category of souvenir.
The range includes home objects and smaller gifts alongside coffee and other packaged products. The founders describe the selection as something that changes, much like the contents of a magazine. That is a useful way to approach a visit: look for an individual maker or object that interests you, rather than expecting a fixed checklist of products to be available.
The address is near Saint Joseph's Cathedral in central Hanoi. Prints and postcards offer portable options. Ceramics and larger objects call for more thought about carrying them home. Ask about the maker and material of the piece you choose. A Vietnamese brand or cultural reference is not, on its own, proof of where every component was produced.
Gác Xép Bookstore sells secondhand and imported English-language fiction from its Hanoi shop. The store also buys used books and ships nationwide with free delivery over 500,000 VND.
Best for Hanoi bookshop specializing in secondhand and imported English-language fiction
A lacquerware boutique producing modern home accessories and jewelry through traditional Vietnamese lacquer techniques. Vietnam Tourism says even small pieces require at least 100 days to make.
Best for Modern lacquer home accessories and jewelry, each piece taking at least 100 days to make.
Vietnamese ceramics studio founded in 2004 in Bac Ninh province, drawing on 11th-century Ly and Tran dynasty pottery. Pieces are glazed using ash from rice hulls and wood.
Best for Vietnamese ceramics studio founded in 2004 in Bac Ninh province
Hiên Vân Ceramics traces its shapes back to a single kiln, built in 2004 in Hiên Vân commune, in Bac Ninh province's Tien Du ward. The studio's founders spent years studying ceramics from Vietnam's Ly, Tran, Le, and Mac dynasties before developing their own forms, drawing especially on 11th-century pottery techniques.
Rather than industrial glazes, Hiên Vân relies on ash from rice hulls and wood, a formula the studio credits with giving its pieces the character associated with historic Vietnamese ceramic ware. Clay is sourced from multiple regions and blended to a proprietary formula the workshop says gives finished pieces their structural solidity.
The range spans functional tableware and ceremonial pieces to architectural ceramics, including large relief carvings, garden statues, and decorative bricks and tiles — work the studio positions as bridging traditional craft with contemporary use. Patterns are drawn from temple carvings, antiques, and historic artworks rather than reproduced from a catalogue.
The result is a small-batch operation focused on continuing a specific regional ceramic tradition, a stance the studio traces directly to its founding research into Ly and Tran dynasty ceramic craft.
A two-storey concept store at No.47, Alley 52 To Ngoc Van Street in Hanoi's Tay Ho area, selling fashion, beauty and home goods including ceramics, candles and lacquerware. It also stocks kids' items, stationery and gifts, and offers free nationwide delivery over 1,000,000 VND.
Hanoi jewelry house established 1990, main shop at 62 Hang Ngang in the Old Quarter plus a second address on Hue Street. Works in cultured pearls, sterling silver, gold and custom-order silverware.
Best for Vietnamese fine jewellery and rings
Huong's Jewellery has operated in Hanoi since 1990, working across cultured pearls, sterling silver, gold and silverware, with custom-order pieces made at its Hang Ngang shop in the Old Quarter. Its main store is at 62 Hang Ngang Street, with a second location at 338 Hue Street. The business is documented in Hanoi visitor guides and traveler forums as one of the city's known silver-jewelry specialists, and runs its own loyalty-discount scheme for repeat customers.
Opened in December 2000 facing Hanoi's Temple of Literature, Indigo Store is a fair-trade shop employing around 120 producers, including disabled artisans and members of seven ethnic minority groups. It sells handmade indigo textiles and offers free custom tailoring plus indigo-dyeing classes.
Best for Fair-trade ethnic-minority textiles and custom tailoring near Hanoi's Temple of Literature
Indigo Store opened in December 2000 directly opposite Hanoi's Temple of Literature, positioning itself from the outset as an organic and fair-trade outlet rather than a standard tourist souvenir shop. The store employs roughly 120 producers, deliberately including disabled workers and artisans from more than seven different ethnic minority communities across Vietnam.
Its stated purpose is preserving and promoting the traditional costume culture and handicraft techniques of those communities, translated into clothing — shirts, skirts, pants and jackets — plus scarves, bags, jewelry and home textiles like bedspreads, made from natural materials including linen, cotton and hemp. Custom tailoring is offered at no extra charge and is frequently completed quickly, a detail repeatedly noted by visitors.
The shop also runs an indigo-dyeing class on-site, giving visitors a hands-on introduction to the traditional Vietnamese indigo-dyeing process rather than only a retail experience.
A Hanoi slow-fashion studio using natural dyes and traditional textile processes. Established 2012.
Best for Vietnamese natural dyes, handwoven cloth and studio-made clothing
Kilomet109 is a Hanoi slow-fashion studio founded in 2012 by designer, artist, and eco-entrepreneur Thao Vu, recognized as one of the figures who helped establish Hanoi's contemporary fashion scene. The label's garments are produced by hand in Vu's Tây Hồ studio using naturally sourced, eco-friendly dyes — including traditional indigo dyeing — alongside hand-spinning, hand-weaving, and hand-stitching carried out in direct collaboration with local artisans rather than industrial manufacturing. Design details such as flexible panels, detachable elements, and convertible hoods allow single pieces to be styled multiple ways, an approach Vu has framed as central to the brand's philosophy: 'the value of our pieces is about more than their design,' she has said, describing garments as carriers of 'the culture of the people who make them and the environmental issues that are so vital to our future.' The label has been featured in Harper's Bazaar and profiled by Channel News Asia's CNA Luxury as part of a story on artisan collaboration and environmental commitment in Vietnamese fashion, shown a runway collection titled Phiêu with ELLE Vietnam, exhibited at the London Design Biennale after debuting the work in Hanoi, and been the subject of a THE KINDCRAFT interview alongside an art installation titled SUI. The brand's flagship operates from 64 Quảng An in Hanoi's Tây Hồ (West Lake) district.
Librairie Française de Hanoi stocks over 16,800 French-language books and Clairefontaine stationery from its shop on Ngo Nui Truc in Ba Dinh district. It also carries Larousse and Le Robert dictionaries.
Best for French-language books and Clairefontaine stationery, with 16,847 titles in stock
Oriberry grew out of 1998 charity work supporting Vietnam's ethnic-minority farmers, becoming a coffee and tea company in 2010. It sources single-origin beans from Quang Tri, Lam Dong, and Daklak, and sells hand-painted Bat Trang ceramics alongside them.
Best for It sources single-origin beans from Quang Tri, Lam Dong, and Daklak
Oriberry didn't begin as a coffee company. Its roots trace to 1998, when its founders started charity work supporting indigenous and ethnic-minority communities in remote parts of Vietnam; the coffee business, formalized in 2010, grew out of that work as a way to keep the income direct rather than routed through aid. The company sources single-origin coffee from named Vietnamese regions — Quang Tri, Lam Dong, Dien Bien, and Daklak — and green and red tea from Thai Nguyen, buying direct from smallholder farmers rather than operating estate farms of its own. Oriberry describes a specific quality process behind that sourcing: soil testing on the farms, a required Brix sugar level in the cherries before they're accepted, and screening of the green beans for pesticide residue, rather than a general ethically-sourced claim with no mechanism behind it. Alongside the coffee and tea, the company sells brewing equipment and hand-painted Bat Trang ceramics — cups, bowls, and drip filters made in Vietnam's Bat Trang pottery village — pairing a food product with a craft one from the same country. Oriberry runs a café near Hanoi's West Lake as its physical retail point, but the core of the business is still the direct relationships with smallholder farmers that the 1998 charity work started, sixteen years before the company itself existed.
Four generations of mother-to-daughter hand embroidery on Hanoi's silk street since 1969 — begun with wartime handkerchiefs stitched with love words for soldiers, now a 1,000 m² design house at 61 Hang Gai whose double-sided silk needlework is gifted to visiting royalty.
Best for Double-sided Vietnamese silk embroidery from the source.
The Bookshelf Hanoi sells English-language books from a French-era house at 8 Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa in Hoàn Kiếm. Founder Hana opened it in January 2018 as a single wooden shelf inside a decor shop on Đặng Văn Ngữ. The shop moved twice before settling on this street in 2021. Shelves run from fiction and poetry to science and cooking, with a pre-loved section for secondhand copies.
Best for English-language books with a pre-loved shelf and children's titles
The Bookshelf Hanoi began in January 2018 as one wooden shelf at 157 Đặng Văn Ngữ. The shelf stood in a corner of Riri Home, a decor shop of twenty square metres. Founder Hana had studied finance. As a student she bought foreign-language books from a shop near Hoàn Kiếm lake whose owner often discounted them for her. She began selling books to pay for more of her own reading. In autumn 2019 the shop moved to 12 ngõ Trần Xuân Soạn. In 2021 it settled at 8 Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa, a street laid out in 1928 near the centre of the city. The same year two sister shops opened as The Mag Shelf and The Goods Shelf. In December 2022 a further room opened at HipHub Cafe near the cathedral. Staff call the shop Seo, a Vietnamese rendering of Shelf. The stock is English-language and covers fiction, memoir, philosophy, science, business, art. A children's shelf and a pre-loved section for secondhand copies sit alongside. Each order goes out with a bookmark and a thank-you card that changes with the season. A 2026 profile in Báo Quốc tế describes the shop as a meeting point where Vietnamese readers and foreign visitors talk across the shelves. Roughly three in ten customers arrive from abroad. The registered company behind the shop is Kệ Sách Thế Giới, owned by Quách Mỹ Hoa, and its filing gives the same address on Nguyễn Chế Nghĩa.
Hanoi's first English-language bookshop, opened in 2001 by Australian author Pam Scott as an expat book exchange; Vietnamese owner Hoang Van Truong took over in 2006.
Best for English-language books at this Hanoi shop since 2001
The Bookworm opened in Hanoi in August 2001, founded by Australian author Pam Scott as the city's first and only English-language bookshop, built initially as a book exchange for the expatriate community. In 2006, the store passed to Hoang Van Truong, a Vietnamese reader whose Australian foster parents had run it, and who took over full-time. The shop holds roughly 15,000 titles, about 40 percent of them new stock imported from the United States and United Kingdom, with the rest secondhand copies bought or exchanged with customers. Its customer base splits roughly three ways: about 40 percent foreign residents, 30 percent Vietnamese readers, and 30 percent travelers passing through. The store operates a buyback program for used English-language books and offers same-day delivery within Hanoi. Located in the Ba Đình district, it remains one of the few dedicated English-language bookshops in Vietnam, serving both the long-term expat community and visitors looking for reading material during their stay.
A locally owned bookshop in the heart of Hanoi's Old Quarter selling new, used and remaindered books, including Vietnamese authors translated into English and French. Its inventory also covers travel, philosophy, cookbooks and children's literature.
Hanoi design brand founded in 2016, printing work by young Vietnamese artists — including the 'Thirty-Six' collection inspired by Hanoi's 36 Old Streets — onto clothing, prints and stationery.
Best for Hanoi prints of young Vietnamese artists' work on clothing and objects
TiredCity is a Hanoi-based design brand founded in 2016 with a mission to support young Vietnamese artists by putting their original artwork onto clothing, prints, postcards, stickers and other merchandise. Rather than an in-house design team, the company works directly with individual Vietnamese illustrators, licensing their work across product lines - for example, the 'Thirty-Six' collection reimagines Hanoi's historic 36 Old Streets through work by artist Giang Gió, while the 'Traditional Melodies' line reinterprets Vietnamese folk imagery through the art of Chung Pham. The brand has operated multiple retail locations across Hanoi's Old Quarter, drawing tourist and local foot traffic as a stop for wearable, artist-made souvenirs rather than generic tourist merchandise.
Trà Đồng Lương traces to the early twentieth century, founded by Phạm Trác Đồng — born 1898, died 1971, a native of Nam Định province — at 44 Rue Richaud in colonial-era Hanoi.
Best for Jasmine and lotus green teas from a three-generation Hanoi tea house
Trà Đồng Lương traces to the early twentieth century, founded by Phạm Trác Đồng — born 1898, died 1971, a native of Nam Định province — at 44 Rue Richaud in colonial-era Hanoi. The name fuses the founder's own name with his home province, a naming convention that ties the brand permanently to the person who built it rather than to a slogan or place invented for marketing.
The house's specialty has stayed narrow and specific across its history: scented green teas, blended with real flowers rather than synthetic flavoring, sold under names like Ngọc Hương, Kim Khánh, Thanh Long, Bạch Hương, and Cẩm Hương. That floral-scenting tradition — jasmine, lotus, and other blossoms folded into green tea leaves — is a defining technique of northern Vietnamese tea culture, and Trà Đồng Lương has built its entire catalog around variations of it rather than diversifying into unrelated tea styles.
Now run by Phạm Kỳ Dương, the third generation of Phạm Trác Đồng's direct descendants, the company still frames its mission around the same commitment to carefully selected, sustainably sourced tea that it was built on. A century-old Hanoi tea name still in family hands, three generations on, is not a common survival story in a city that changed as much as Hanoi did across that century.
The shop specialises in hand-painted reproductions of Vietnamese propaganda posters, printed and painted in Hanoi on rice paper across war, peace and Ho Chi Minh themes. Expert copyists recreate the bold two-colour graphics of the wartime originals rather than selling fragile antiques.
Best for Hand-painted propaganda poster reproductions
Vui Studio presents contemporary Vietnamese objects, printed matter and small design-led goods in a studio-shop setting. Its social feed is the clearest current source for releases, workshops and visiting information.
Best for Objects and print showcasing contemporary Vietnamese creativity
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