Hai Phong coconut dessert drink: A refreshing summer delight

Hai Phong's summer, adorned with red phoenix flowers, is renowned for its coconut dessert drink, a refreshing beverage that helps beat the heat.

With its creamy coconut milk and delightful sweetness, this drink captures the taste buds from the very first sip.

A cup of coconut dessert drink includes coconut milk, grated coconut flesh, coconut jelly, milk, condensed milk, and homemade tapioca pearls. The milk, made from young coconut flesh, is sweet, aromatic, and has a smoother texture than that of ripened coconuts.

To prepare the coconut milk, the cook grinds the young coconut flesh, filters and cooks it for four hours while stirring continuously. Some of the grated coconut meat is shredded into pieces. Coconut jelly, made from coconut water, is sliced into small pieces. The tapioca pearls in the coconut dessert drink are ivory white, slightly yellowish, and bigger than the tip of a pencil.

When you savor a cup of coconut dessert drink, a simple scoop is all it takes to enjoy a spoonful of toppings. The toppings include crunchy pieces of coconut meat, soft pearls, as well as smooth and translucent coconut jelly.

These toppings are accompanied by a thick layer of rich, creamy coconut milk that is both fragrant and oily, resulting in a delightful sweetness. A cup of grated coconut costs VND20,000 (84 US cents).