Trung Nguyên Legend Cafe: Titanic Vietnamese Cafe Opens in Portland

The most successful cafe in Vietnam is about to open its first location in Oregon. Trung Nguyên Legend Cafe opens for business on Saturday, August 2. This opening was first teased earlier this year. The new outpost on 8435 SE Powell Boulevard will be open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day of the week. The business’s big new space — the 1,800-square-foot former restaurant and billiard hall Pho Le II — sits in the western chunk of the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood.

Owner Brad Tran confirms he has secured a second lease for Beaverton. That space is set to open in November. He says opening a business in Portland is wildly difficult, with a laugh, and that this weekend is more of a test run to get staff at the SE Powell Boulevard location up to snuff. After that, there’ll be a big party. He plans to extend hours to 9 p.m. when they start cooking a full menu.

The drinks are what’s made Trung Nguyên Legend Cafe line-inducing. There are the Ottoman and Roman ice milk coffee sets, each a pretty display in singular serving vessels. The Thien Coffee is the most popular signature drink for the business, served in a small black pot. Though the cafe is beloved for its rendition of kopi luwak — a regional specialty coffee that traditionally uses beans digested by civet cats — Tran says everything the company sells is made in a factory now rather than with the animal. On the food side of things, it’s all counter items available as grab and go for now. Think croissants and a few cakes. That full menu down the road will feature fusion Asian food, as Tran puts it. Such dishes include banh mi, pho, and rice platters.

This type of cafe within the company’s matrix is called the Legend “Coffee World.” For Trung Nguyên Legend fans, that distinguishes this outpost as one of the nicer versions, like a Starbucks Reserve rather than one of the typical cafes. (Those more common cafes are called E-Coffee, which uses a lower grade of coffee bean.) This Portland location has indoor seating for about 60 customers with room outdoors for about 10 people. In the United States, there’s just two other outposts, a majorly popular Los Angeles location that opened in 2023 and a brand new shop in Texas that opened in early June 2025. According to a press release from the company, the cafes are pushing further into the United States and China going forward.

Trung Nguyên’s wide array of flavors that are worth trying, and the ornate presentations, is unusual for most American coffee fans, Tran says. It’s new to the Western market, he adds, and nothing like the Starbucks most are familiar with. “Vietnamese coffee’s been getting a lot of traffic in Western culture,” he says. “Especially this brand. The bean is number one rated in Vietnam.”

Trung Nguyên Legend Cafe (8435 SE Powell Boulevard) opens Saturday, August 2, and will operate 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day of the week.