Each morning, on a bustling sidewalk in Ho Chi Minh City, the glow of a small fire flickers under a mobile coffee cart.

Behind it sits a well-dressed elderly man, methodically splitting pinewood and tending to a handmade stove. His name is Le Huu Chi, and his family’s coffee has been brewing on fire for over 50 years.

At 71, Mr. Chi continues to preserve a unique heritage - vot coffee roasted with firewood and brewed using a cloth strainer, a technique passed down from his mother who learned it in the 1950s.

“I inherited this from my parents,” he says. “They started selling coffee after learning the technique from a Hainanese Chinese neighbor in Long Xuyen in 1955.”

In 1972, his mother officially opened a fire-roasted coffee stall at their home in District 10. When the family later moved to Hoa Binh Market in District 5, she renamed the business Xom Cho Coffee - a name that still stands today.

Over the decades, this humble sidewalk stall became a quiet legend. Chi’s mobile coffee carts now operate across Ho Chi Minh City and even Hanoi, run by his children and grandchildren.

The process remains entirely manual. Coffee beans are hand-selected only when they are fully ripe, then sun-dried and aged for five to seven months in natural conditions.

Roasting is done with pinewood - chosen for its gentle scent and consistent burn. “It’s crucial the wood is dry enough,” Chi explains. “Too much smoke ruins the flavor.”

The family’s signature method involves no pre-flavoring. After roasting, the beans are sometimes cooled and blended with a touch of butter, quality rice wine, and sea salt.

Even the water used for brewing is heated with pinewood, allowing it to absorb the subtle aroma of the fire. “That smoky scent is the soul of our coffee,” Chi says.

Using a cloth strainer - a traditional vot - Chi brews coffee with the same tools and gestures his parents once used. The result is a cup of coffee with a silky texture, bold aroma, and no bitter aftertaste.

For overseas Vietnamese like Truong Thanh Tai, 33, who lives in the UK and once ran a café in Vietnam, Chi’s coffee is unmatched.

“I’ve been drinking it for two years,” Tai says. “The texture is incredibly smooth, and the aroma is unlike anything else. Every time I’m back in Vietnam, I make sure to stop by.”

Tai, like many others, is drawn not just to the flavor but to the atmosphere - the quiet warmth of real fire, the hum of morning streets, and the scent of coffee rising from a well-worn pot.

Chi’s daily routine of chopping wood and brewing coffee is a form of cultural storytelling. It preserves not just a flavor, but a feeling.

In an age where café chains and capsule machines dominate, Chi’s fire-brewed vot coffee offers something rare: a taste of history, a sip of home, and the legacy of one family, still burning on the sidewalks of Saigon.

Ha Nguyen