Trung Nguyen Legend Coffee World Portland — Restaurant in Portland

Caution up front: parking is tricky. The shop has its own small gated lot with about 15 spaces (including one handicapped spot). Turning around or exiting takes patience, and backing in is your safest bet during peak hours. Otherwise, plan to find free street parking nearby and walk over. Accessing from Powell can also be difficult since there’s no center turning lane directly in front.

Inside, the café is spacious with plenty of tables for hanging out. Outdoors, there’s a table for four and two sectional benches under a clear plastic/glass cover that protects from rain but provides no shade.

The menu could use some serious clarification, especially the Trung Nguyen Legend Coffee Heritage section. Even after staff explained, I still felt confused about the drinks and forgot to ask how many shots of espresso were in mine. For a shop built around showcasing their brand’s coffee, simplifying or clearly describing these options would really help first-time customers.

I ordered the Creative 1, Milk, Ice, To-Go, 16 oz ($5.75) after being told by staff it was the strongest cà phê sữa đá on the menu. It was smooth and dark roasted, but only about a 2/5 on the strength scale at most, definitely weak for what was supposed to be their strongest option.

Service was very quick for my to-go order, though I can’t comment on dine-in wait times. They also offer a small selection of pastries and coffee merchandise for sale.

Clean restrooms with toilet...

All Hype

You know when you come upon a very beautiful person, but in getting to know them, you are disappointed to realize they are just an empty bucket of a human. Well, that was our experience at this cafe.

Legend is a beautiful space, very spacious, clean, and devoid of drink/food flavor satisfaction at a very high price.

Strike 1; after asking many questions about the drinks at the counter, we found that the barista knew very little about the menu (it seemed she had not been tried many of the drinks) and was quite useless in helping us.

Strike 2; I ordered a $7.75 (!) oat milk matcha which turned out to be a tall, thin glass with 50% ice cubes, 35% oat milk, and some matcha foam that would not mix much with the rest of the drink and barely tasted of matcha. My wife’s coffee drink ended up being about 1/4 cup of coffee that was room temp with milk.

Strike 3; We got a huge “pistachio croissant” that was flavorless, and had no taste of pistachio whatsoever despite having a cream in the middle.

We left and went straight to another cafe because we both felt we had not had our afternoon coffee yet and finally got the real thing, at half the price, at Stumptown. Legend is a beautiful, empty...

We arrived on day 2 of opening, a little before 12 on a Sunday and the place is packed. Line was out the door. There is extra staff to direct parking and to make sure service is running smooth. Took about half an hour to order and get our stuff but the wait is worth it!

We ordered the legend coffee, egg coffee, and the Pandan lotus seed tea.

The drop coffee was excellent! Drinking it straight it was acidic, sweet, and not bitter at all! Very interesting. It’s just as good with or without condensed milk and ice. A must order

For those who haven’t tried the egg coffee it has no egg flavor. The raw egg has creaminess without any off tastes and adds a pillowy mouthfeel to the coffee. Also a must order!

The Pandan lotus seed tea is very fragrant. The tea.. you can’t really taste it. It serves as a base but is not the focus of the drink among the cream and sugar. Consider it more like a boba drink. Will...