23/05/2026
This week’s adventures in faith and dairy . . .
Like many members of the diaspora raised in the West, I am not a particularly observant Jew. Chances are, if God himself was sitting in the pastry case at Hummingbird, I’d notice the ham and cheese croissant first — although, in fairness, it’s a lot easier to believe in the existence of a benevolent God after you’ve had a ham and cheese croissant at Hummingbird. And so, as I woke on Thursday contemplating my coffee and pastry options before moving from one AirBnB to the next, I had no idea Shavuot was almost upon me. All I knew was that I had a craving for the basque cheesecake at Hoff, roughly around the corner from the AirBnb where I’d been staying, and for a pizza at 4P’s, roughly around the corner from the AirBnB I’d be moving to. And, yes, I really do choose my AirBnBs based on their proximity to good cafes and yummy things.
But, I thought, I should probably stop in at Hummingbird first, roughly across the street from Hoff, and have a ham and cheese croissant and this experimental catimor they’d recommended a couple days earlier, that had been fermented, or maybe infused, with strawberries. And there was this one croissant custard tart (or possibly God himself, in pastry form) right next to those ham and cheese croissants, looking for all the world like an egg tart but somehow containing even more wonder. And the baristas made an extra pourover for me, and then shared some espresso, and a phin — always, always, always sit at the counter by the baristas at a great cafe if you can — and, well, after a couple hours I was just too drunk on coffee and croissants to make my way to that cheesecake at Hoff.
So, I made my way to my new AirBnB, and then set out to go get a pizza at the 4P’s a few blocks away . . . but got distracted by these awesome noodles with pork and crab spring rolls (have I mentioned I’m not a particularly observant Jew?) that I’d remembered enjoying last year.
And then, late that night, as my excesses of coffee came back to haunt me, I turned to browsing my social media feed, and a beautifully written piece by Ben Rohr reminded me that now is Shavuot, which, among other things, is a time to drink lots of coffee and eat cheesecake.
“That is the thing about Shavuos.
It does not announce itself with the drama of Pesach, with its broken matzah and midnight urgency, or with the grandeur of Sukkos, with its cedar branches, wet leaves, stars, and temporary walls. Shavuos arrives almost softly. A table. Flowers. Cheesecake. A night of learning. A scroll of Ruth. Men with coffee and red eyes. Women carrying whole worlds into Yom Tov with food, memory, grace, children, fatigue, and the invisible architecture of love. Children half-awake and half-wild, absorbing, before they know how to name it, that being Jewish means entering time differently.”
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wound up reading the rest of Rohr’s writing (which is amazing) and staying up reading the Book of Ruth, too, which resonates very differently for me now that I live the migratory way I do. I think of all the strangers in so many countries, of so many faiths, taking me in and showing me kindness. I think of all the cafes and restaurants and hotels in Thailand taking in students from Myanmar as staff, and the owner of a restaurant in Chiang Mai blinking back tears as he tells me his staff say they call their parents and tell them how happy they are to be working somewhere where they feel safe and respected. Perhaps we are all of us a Naomi or a potential Ruth when we travel to a foreign land. Perhaps we have all of us the potential to be Boaz when we see a stranger, or someone in need.
But, seriously, God wants me to drink coffee and eat cheesecake? That’s a commandment I was pretty much made to obey.
Now, it turns out, Hoff has a second location just around the corner from my new AirBnB, a cozy cafe tucked on the second floor of what might have been an apartment building at some point, and now houses art and a poke bowl place, and, oh yes my loves, coffee. It’s the kind of building I remember falling in love with when I first went to Hanoi, and wondering who children might grow up to be if they knew that every building they walked past might have hidden treasures upstairs, a cafe here, a noodle soup there. That’s true of every building everywhere, I suppose. Who knows how many poets you’ve walked past, or great musicians, or brilliant scientists, or loving dads? Finding food or coffee up a hidden flight of stairs just makes it easier to remember, viscerally, that we’re constantly surrounded by these tapestries.
But, it turns out, Hoff doesn’t have their cheesecake in this location (although the coffee, and the barista, and the vibes, and even the playlist are all still great). But, maybe a dozen minutes’ walk away, in Saigon’s Little Tokyo, Uncle Tetsu’s beckons. I think Uncle Tetsu’s used to have a location in New York that’s since closed, with impossibly fluffy cheesecakes that jiggle about as seductively as a cheesecake can. So, I make my way there, past quite a few “massage” places offering seductions of their own — Little Japan is something of a red light district. Sorry ladies, my only sin today is gluttony. And Uncle Tetsu’s has not only their regular cheesecake, but also a honey one, which seems especially appropriate for Shavuot. They can only sell this one as a whole cake right now, says the kid at the counter, not by the slice. That’s fine, I tell him. Faith manages, I think.
It’s a day before I’m ready for more dairy, the five cheese pizza at 4P’s, with drizzled honey on the side, another perfect fit for the holiday. Soon, 4P’s — itself started by Japanese chefs in Vietnam — will be opening a location in Brooklyn, and I wonder if that pizza will start to become a Shavuot favorite that children will grow up loving, even as their parents shake their heads and talk about their own parents getting blintzes.
So, here I am, in Saigon, not Sinai, eating Japanese cheesecake and pizza, not blintzes, yet in a land of milk and honey nonetheless.
