“So what makes Emme House different?” the head bartender Dũng asked during our earlier conversation with Trực, the bar’s owner. “Emme House is not a bar,” he explained. I further inquired then about the layers of storytelling embedded into every detail, to which he replied with a smile, “I’ll tell you the whole story.”
I’m merely the messenger now retelling what I saw and felt, and the first thing to note is that the best part of writing about a bar is the on-the-ground research. Thus, I ventured into the unknown and traveled up the dimly lit flight of stairs underneath the discreet red and yellow street sign that reads: 70 Hàm Nghi.
Some time after 10pm:
I had arranged to arrive late at night and was greeted at the door with a warm handshake within seconds by Đức, the head chef of the adjacent a.dau Kitchen. We stroll past its chipped tables and cracked plates conceptually representing the love of yesterday and are transported to the love of tomorrow with earthly green and brown hues within Emme House.
Đức recommends my first drink, a personal and fan favorite: Love Is a Game. The glowing glass featuring Tito’s vodka, mango, chili syrup, kombucha vinegar, and a heart-shaped lime leaf is placed in front of me a few moments later. The ingredients of the current concoction, as well as the rest of the menu, originate from less than 20 kilometers away at Chợ Đầu Mối Bình Điền. I take my first few sips; good thing I like spicy.
A glass of Love Is a Game to start.
Roughly 11pm:
“We only said goodbye with words. I died a hundred times,” Amy Winehouse’s words come via the musical cover duo and dance off the walls while light chatter fills the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a blue flame set ablaze a cloudy ball of steel wool. There, lingering at the margins to my right in front of the flame is Tín, along with another repeat customer, Thư. They’re sharing a pair of cocktails and a shrinking stack of forest-green So Much Closer drinking cards. Tín is the resident poet at Emme and the founder of the branding studio ChoChoi Creative. He writes anywhere from one to four or more poems a week, which he DM’s biweekly to his brother, Trực, the owner of Emme House, d.dau Kitchen, and the interior design firm Red 5 Studio.
Poetry is scattered in small corners of the bar.
By the time his friend found this location four years ago, Trực already had a habit of hosting friends and family in his own home, which meant he didn’t need to market Emme when it opened — he just had to tell his friends about it. That said, launching Emme and utilizing his design firm to fill the interior with original, handmade pieces were a lot of work. But, as Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “Work is love made visible.” Point in case, the bar equipment is hidden beneath the counter so customers focus on staff who doubles as in-house raconteurs. This subconsciously highlights Emme’s story of love and its love of story. After all, how many places discuss a topic as deep as love during the interview process?
Love is a common theme in both the founding and running of Emme.
Furthermore, on any given night, roughly 10 of Tín’s poems are featured on the covers of menus throughout each table of Emme. Thư says that in two and half years of consistent attendance, she has yet to see the same poem twice. Again, just like his brother, that’s love made visible. Tín shares more about his journey as a poet and studio founder as well as Emme’s details, like the chairs’ backrests designed specifically for men and women, plus the spades, hearts, cloves, and diamonds on the window that reference card games. Meanwhile, the bartender whips around the kitchen counter presenting my second drink of the night: Something’s Burning. After he holsters his blow torch and the embers of the steel wool cool, the aroma of grilled pineapple arrives, and some additional questioning helps peel back a few more layers of the story.
Something's Burning, literally.
Half past 11pm or so:
The fundamental ethos of Emme is inspired by 50% of Trực’s life and 50% by his friend’s with whom he studied in primary school years ago. At its core is a love story about an architect and a freelancer who live together but because of their opposite schedules, they wake and work at different times, constantly missing each other. As a result, each leaves short handwritten notes at the kitchen counter for their partner to read while they are away. Hence, the poems scattered everywhere.
Emme has ample cozy corners to fit any patron's preferences.
However, the storytelling goes deeper than that. The first drink I had, Love Is a Game, comes from the “Legendary Menu.” Now featured on the menu’s right side, it contains the drinks from when they first opened. It calls to mind a mature, adult-like, action-oriented love. My second drink, however, comes from the new half of the menu which took roughly an entire year to create.
The tall, broad capital E at the top left corner of Emme’s notebook paper menu represents the onset of a high school love story starting with Something’s Burning. It symbolizes the unforgettable moment, for better or for worse, when two high school lovers locked eyes, peering through the flickering flames for the first time at an end of the year bonfire often held on the outskirts of Đà Lạt’s rolling hills. The rest of the drink trio belonging to the E stanza of the menu includes the jasmine gin-based I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You and Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now with whiskey, Malibu rum, banana, coconut, and Milo.
It’s time for a snack so I follow Tin’s recommendation for a plate of Squid Game. Hint: it’s not squid, but you can find out for yourself what it is, and just a note: available snacks change every four months. The second letter on the menu is a large capital M, which is italicized, leaning to the right, as if one is now leaning into the relationship and the characters in the story are growing closer. Drinks include Make You Feel My Love with cognac, Thai tea, dark choco, and menthe; plus It’s Now or Never with Flor De Cana Rum, salted pineapple sparkling, and strawberry shrub — it's like strawberry lipstick, or an ode to the taste stored in one’s memory of a first kiss.
Nearing midnight in Saigon:
I’m closing in on the final stretch, the music has finished, but I’m now warm from the spiciness of Love Is a Game and the mezcal of Something’s Burning. We now move to the next part of the story represented on the menu by a flower separating the Em and the Me, or You and Me. The flower is a lưu ly flower meaning “forget me not.” This part of the story is where the two are now dating but don’t have money for expensive activities, so they express their love by buying each other what they can afford at that age: cheap drinks and snacks. For example, Up Where We Belong has some Red Bull, the go-to drink sold in front of schools. Love Me Tender features some elevated mango fermented with salt, a reference to bánh tráng trộn. And finally Isn’t She Lovely, a personal favorite of Trực’s, contains sassafras wood tinctures, which is similar to the cola-like flavor of sarsaparilla, or otherwise more commonly known as sarsi.
I motion to the bartender who flies towards me and finds my index finger pointing to my third drink: Isn’t She Lovely. Yes, plus she’s sweet, sour, fizzy, and refreshing — a winning combination. Atop the glass is a green grape coated in white chocolate. I’m instructed and happily comply as follows: eat and sip and eat and sip…
The rest of the menu contains the latter half of Emme. First, a chipped M, resembling the likes of arguments with self-explanatory drink names like Raining on a Sunday, All Out of Love, and the poignant If. Finally, a lowercase ‘e’ at the bottom personifies the “thương” type of love and the accompanying innocence the two lovers share as they disregard the all-too-real possibility of their paths no longer intertwining. They choose to bask in the naivete of the joyous here and now while they snack on rice with watermelon together. There’s only one drink title that can encapsulate the sentiment felt at such a juncture: Just The Two of Us — a medley of Vietnamese sake, some watermelon and raspberry, and a dash of mắc khén tincture.
The witching hour has commenced:
A few guests linger, the crew is beginning to clean up, and it’s time for last call. I return to where we started on the “Legendary” right side of the menu and take Dũng’s recommendation for my final final: Cheers Darlin’ — a drink, a torched cord of cinnamon, and a rich treat. Already plenty buzzed thanks to the fusion of vodka, mezcal, chardonnay, and now cinnamon tequila, I practice a small act of restraint and refuse the temptation of exploring the whole menu by abstaining from a fourth or fifth drink.
Cheers Darlin'.
I mentioned earlier Gibran’s wisdom that work is love made visible. He also wrote that your home is your larger body, an extension of self that acts not as an anchor holding you down, but as a mast guiding you forward, and that your body is the harp of your soul, an instrument of giving. Emme House embodies the late Lebanese poet down to the studs. This place is more than a bar. It’s a body. It’s an instrument. It’s an extension of its owner and staff — it’s a home.
Anytime you’re invited to someone’s home, the best way to be invited back is to leave with grace and not overstay your welcome. As I see the staff wiping down the back table, stacking clean glasses, and taking last last calls, it’s time I am on my way. However, knowing I would be back for another round or two and knowing there will be new poems on the tables and walls, new drinks and snacks on the menu, and plenty of new and repeat guests seated and suited, I realized: this is merely cheers for now Emme, cheers for now…
Emme
70 Hàm Nghi, Bến Nghé Ward, D1, HCMC
