Chè Sài Gòn: Vietnamese Desserts in Prague's Sapa
Cups behind glass, a number on each one and a description on the menu in two languages, Vietnamese and Czech. The stall tucked into the back corner of Prague's Sapa market has solved the language barrier more elegantly than any dictionary: a dessert whose name you wouldn't dare pronounce is something you simply order by number.
Chè Sài Gòn specializes in chè, the Vietnamese family of sweet cups and drinks built from beans, tapioca, jelly, fruit and coconut milk - it offers around ten kinds and is one of the handful of places in Sapa devoted entirely to this sweet genre.
Everything That Fits into the Word Chè
The word chè covers a whole category: Vietnamese Wikipedia lists more than fifty named kinds under it, from sweet drinks to thick, pudding-like cups. Sugar and starch are the common denominator, the rest is down to imagination - mung beans, tapioca pearls, cubes of jelly, pieces of fruit, coconut milk. Chè is served hot as well as iced, spooned from a bowl as well as drunk from a glass; nobody has ever drawn the line between dessert and drink, and nobody misses it. It sounds roughly like "cheh", and Vietnamese throws in a linguistic trap for free: the very same word also means tea. Whether the two meanings are actually related is more than even a dictionary will say. In Vietnam chè makes its way onto altars as well: it shows up among the offerings at the ceremony honoring the star that governs a person's fate.
The Sài Gòn in the stall's name points to the southern school. Saigon, today's Ho Chi Minh City, took a particular liking to the mixed versions called chè thập cẩm, in which beans, jelly, tapioca and fruit stack up like geological layers. Others had a similar idea: Thailand has ruam mit, the Philippines halo-halo, Malaysia cendol - but these are parallel inventions that chè had no hand in. The colorful special mix behind the glass of the Prague stall is exactly that southern genre in a cup.
Where the Stall Stands and Who Its Neighbors Are
Sapa sits in Libuš on the southern edge of Prague, and you'll find Chè Sài Gòn at the back of the complex, a short walk from the Buddhist temple. Right next door is the Sành Quán bistro, so you can put together a whole lunch here: savory at the neighbors', sweet at the window. The tiny bistro Lán dê - Xôi Chè cooks chè in Sapa too, but in my ranking of Sapa stops the stall by the temple comes out high. And if you come here mainly for grilled bún chả or for the fish soup bún cá, leave some room after the soup: a cup of chè is more filling than its innocent looks suggest, and it tastes best in a group - everyone picks a different number and the spoons go around. If you can't make it out to Libuš, you'll find the cups on the delivery apps as well.
Three Cups from the Back of Sapa
We turned up at the stall as a party of three, so we ordered three numbers. Our favorite was the chè with fresh jackfruit, black and white tapioca, jelly and coconut: the fruit brought the aroma and the sweetness, the tapioca pearls a chewy resistance, and the coconut milk tied the whole thing together. The special mix was a riot of color and tasted different layer by layer - beans, jelly, tapioca and purple taro, every spoonful a little different. The coconut chè was the simplest and the creamiest of the three. All three of us agreed on the winner without a vote. Each cup cost 90 CZK (3.60 EUR).
Chè Sài Gòn
