From
WIRE REPORTS
A
well-loved, historic bakery and café located in the heart of downtown Sai Gon,
at the corner of Dong Khoi and Le Loi streets, reopened last week after a
two-year hiatus.
A
permanent fixture of the city’s landscape since 1950, the Givral Café
officially reopened on the above-ground level L1 of the brand-new Vincom Center
A, a complex of shopping malls, luxurious hotels and underground parking lots
located in the Eden Quadrangle.
Givral
has a new style with brown and yellow colors dominant in its interiors. The
wooden furniture aims to give the time-honored French-style coffee shop a sense
of nostalgia, enhanced by paintings of old Saigon that adorn its walls.
The
original Givral Café had to close as the Vingroup demolished the old Eden
building, including the Givral coffee shop, in April 2010, in order to build
the Vincom Center A project.
The
Saigon Givral Joint Stock Company says it has spared no effort to have the café
retain its original location and feel.
Givral
Café was introduced to Viet Nam by Alain Poitier, a Frenchman who spent eight
months turning a drugstore into the first French-style bakery in Saigon.
The
café, restaurant and patisserie that serves baguettes, pastries, well-prepared
dishes and great-smelling coffee, became very popular very soon among both
locals and tourists.
During
the war years, Givral was the meeting place of international journalists and
famous people. For Saigon oldtimers, the bakery is a symbol of the old Saigon,
along with the Xuan Thu bookstore, Passage Eden and a slew of other historic
buildings.
