Vấn Cocktail Bar

The Room

Vấn is on the third floor at 17 Tran Bach Dang, behind a door you would walk straight past. Almost every hidden bar in this city is hidden the same way, so that is not what makes it worth the climb. This is. Most bars that go to the trouble of hiding themselves then make serious drinks: spirit forward, strong, built for people who take cocktails seriously. Vấn does the opposite on purpose. The drinks are made from things you already eat here, and they are deliberately lighter and sweeter, with less weight of spirit than a cocktail bar usually gives you. That is a strange decision until you look at the room, and then it is obvious. The back bar is strung end to end with polaroids of people. Drinks arrive on river stones with dried flowers beside them and take their time. On one table there is a cake and a date. So the drinks are light because the evening is meant to be long. You are not supposed to have two and leave. Seven in the evening until two in the morning, every day, and around 200 to 300 thousand a head.