Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam [new pics added]

We only spent one full day in Ho Chi Minh City, but that was long enough to have a meal at Quan An Ngon which was recommended by several posters. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of our trip and we were still getting adjusted to the heat and time change so we didn't order as much as we normally would have. But we had an excellent meal there. Ngon is an open air restaurant which consists of many different 'stands' making different Vietnamese specialties. The owner recruited about 20 cooks from street stands to cook their specialty at different stations. The menu is vast (and there is an English version) and the restaurant is pretty polished and comfortable (as well as westerner-friendly--very clean, they use mineral water for the ice, etc.). This place is a really nice, comfortable introduction to various Vietnamese street food. If we had more time in HCMC, I probably would have eaten there again. Hanoi apparently has a branch as well. I never tracked it down as I was pursuing my bun cha obsession.

We really enjoyed a 'salt and pepper spicy crab' dish as well as sweet potato and shrimp pancakes and an excellent version of bun thit heo nuong, cha gio (rice noodles with egg roll, grilled pork). Our waiter recommended a spicy beef dish, which ended up being served with french fries, which I could take or leave. I think he thought he was offering something 'safe' for tourists (he was an excellent waiter overall though and wrote down several things for us in Vietnamese).

Here are some pictures of several different stations (as well as the dishes we ordered):












I'll post on the Ho Chi Minh market later.

Well, it's a lazy, snowy Sunday and I have nothing pressing to do so I thought I'd get caught up on my LTH posts I've been meaning to add/update.
Here are some pictures from the market in Ho Chi Minh City:

When I took a cooking class in Hanoi, the instructor talked a lot about the markets and how important freshness is to local consumers. The meat is mostly slaughtered in the market or just before the market opens. Much of the seafood (including the shrimp!) is live. All fruit and vegetables unsold by the end of the day is either unloaded for bargain prices or thrown away.

Seafood (including a round bin of live shrimp):


Fruits and Vegetables:




We really enjoyed the fruits in Vietnam. Here is a plate showing the insides of dragonfruit, longan, rambutan, pomegranates, passion fruit, pomelo.


Dragon fruit wasn't my favorite to eat, but it does look cool


We loved the passion fruit juice sold on the street (though being ultra-hygeine concerned tourists, we had to use sign language to convince the vendors to use our bottled water)

Awesome post and great pictures. Looks thoroughly enjoyable and the shining sun alone inspires jealousy. Any chance of detailing what's what on the fruit plate? I can guess the pomegranates, passion fruit, and maybe pomelo but what about the dragonfruit, longan, and rambutan? Which is which?

Any chance of detailing what's what on the fruit plate?

The white fruit with tiny black seeds is dragon fruit (which I found to be kind of bland). Going clockwise, then next fruit is passion fruit, there's a longan out of it's shell half hidden behind it. I can't remember what the green one was (either a small guava or some crab-apple variant, I believe), pomelo, pomegranate seeds (lighter than what I've seen here), and a rambutan. Below is a picture of rambutan with half of the shell removed (LOVED these). I also stuck in a picture of a custard apple (not so much a fan).

Rambutan (and pomelo)


Custard apple

Man, I love ethnic markets or marketplaces in general - thanks for posting (esp. the seafood stall).

Man, I love ethnic markets or marketplaces in general

Me, too!
I forgot to add--in Vietnam, rambutan is called chom chom--this is also used to described people with spiky hair, for obvious reasons. Thought that was cute. Now my Vietnamese lexicon includes 'hello', 'please', 'thank you', 'no ice', 'spiky hair' (plus a handful of my favorite dishes).

I will agree with ThaiObsessed that Dragon fruit is pretty, but very bland. In November my wife and I were in Vietnam for about two weeks, along with a couple of days in Bangkok. However the other fruits in Vietnam and Bangkok were very good, the best Mangos I have ever had. I really miss Jackfruit though, picking up a pound of jackfruit from a vendor and then just walking around eating it was the best.

Here is a picture of some watermelon and dragon fruit from a lunch in Hanoi.



There are more food pictures from my trip here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandon_w/ ... 851612933/

Wanted to add some recent notes on HCMC from our trip there last month. This is pretty long, with a mix of camera phone and higher quality digital pictures. I tried to hit the highlights and note any particularly memorable places/things we ate. If anyone is particularly interested in any of the places below, I'm happy to provide more info if I can...

We enjoyed the Intercontinental Asiana Saigon, a very modern hotel in District 1 (Saigon). It was just under 24 hours transit from Chicago (via Hong Kong), and for once in our lives we were happy our flight was a bit delayed (due to quirks of the United/Continental merger, or flights got switched a number of times, and our visas didn't start until Monday while our plane was scheduled to land at about 11:45 PM on Sunday night). After some much needed time on a horizontal surface, we hit the streets. Monday lunchtime found us walking the frenetic streets toward "lunch lady land"...here's the street corner (just off Hoang Sa) where her cadre, popularized by the Gastronomy blog and made famous by Tony Bourdain, set up shop every day:


There's little in the way of service for non-Vietnamese speakers. You sit, average but fresh spring rolls (made by a relative, I think) and awesome soup (made by the lady herself) arrive shortly thereafter. There is a cart selling bottled drinks parked nearby as well. Here's the Vietnamese-Thai mashup she was making that day, Bun Thai:

The broth and shrimp were pitch-perfect tom yum goong, but everything else was pure Vietnamese. Bun noodles, fish balls, tender slices of beef and most definitely the herbs used as a garnish. The more time I spend in Vietnam, the more I'm convinced that it is the herbs that are the hallmark of the cuisine. Two bowls of the day's soup, the goi cuon and a couple bottles of water set us back about VND 100,000 (~$5)...not cheap by HCMC standards, but certainly a steal by any accounting I can wrap my mind around. The updated daily menu and a profile written just a few days after our visit is available over at Gastronomy. The gist is that, despite a threefold increase in price, it's still a bargain, and has lost none of the flavors or special character that made it a destination worth traveling for.

Adjusting to the heat and humidity took time, and we frequently decamped to the deck by the pool at the IC, but eventually went wandering in search of something a bit more nostalgic. We ended up at the rooftop bar at the Rex Hotel, a famous hangout for military officials and war correspondents. Several stories up, the breeze was welcome, but the place was a touch gaudy, and then the 'Cocktail'-style bartender Olympics began. These guys flipped bottles and mixed purple and pink shooters to thumping techno. We weren't long for the Rex.

Saigon, Saigon at the Caravelle was the superior roof top bar, in our experience. Little changed from the late 1950s, it's home to a more relaxed vibe than the Rex, along with better views and more cooling breezes.

We planned to have dinner at Quan An Ngon, which was recommended above as a 'market style' restaurant with street food prepared at courtyard stalls which would allow us to sample a variety of specialties. There was much confusion, however, as apparently the restaurant has moved and/or changed names. In its former location was a restaurant with a similar name and concept, but we were wary and tracked down the supposed new location of the original, which was now called Nha Hang Ngon (no relation, afaik). Sadly, the meal wasn't worth the effort. The food was all fine, but it was simply a massive menu offering nearly every conceivable Vietnamese dish that a tourist might want, and none of it was executed to even above average results in our sampling. The courtyard food stalls appeared to be mostly for show. This was "street food" for those who are afraid to eat in the street.

We had much better luck at Quan 94 (which is actually at 84 Dinh Tien Hoang Street, near Dien Bien Phu...there's a similar restaurant a few yards down at 94 Dinh Tien Hoang, but it's a copycat). The specialty of the house is crab, which we had in several forms. Soft shell crabs in a tamarind sauce skewed somewhat sweet, but they were excellent specimens. We also had:

Crab meat cellophane noodles:

These noodles were a taste of the sea, with huge chunks of fresh meat. There was sweetness here, too, but a more natural, subdued one. A bit of green onion helped cut through the richness of an abundance of roe.

And, fried spring rolls with crab (cha gio cua):

Not just one of the best things we ate on this trip, but one of the most perfect things I've ever eaten. As fresh as can be, the rolls had an ideal crunch and burst with the flavor of the crab/herb mixture. Wrapped in more fresh herbs and dipped in nuoc cham, this was a flavor worth traveling 24 hours to find. It didn't hurt that dinner cost all of about $10.

Breakfasts were somewhat hit or miss. One morning brought me to a fantastic find, Hoa Ma Quan at 53 Cao Thang (near Nguyen Dinh Chieu in District 3). This was probably the best breakfast I had on the trip. I ordered "Op La" (fried eggs), and when the proprietor made gestures seeming to indicate various accompaniments, I nodded vigorously and received eggs fried with bacon, ham, pieces of gluten & onions along with a demi baguette, paté, mayo, pickled veg & chiles.

I'm not normally a bacon & eggs person, but this hit the spot. Just check out the color of those yolks and the thickness of that mayo. The crispy, airy bread was perfect for sopping up both. By the end of the meal I was really wishing I knew the Vietnamese phrase for "another round". The entire spread cost about $1.

A less successful breakfast was at Pho Hoa (260 Pasteur), where the pho tai was rather watery, with noodles that definitely appeared to be machine made. It was different to arrive to a table absolutely covered with every conceivable garnish and accompaniment, including some delicious crueller-like pastries, but the hotel breakfast buffet served a better bowl of pho.


Here's one last treat from the streets of HCMC, which I called 'Waterfall Fried Chicken'. It comes from the one-of-a-kind fryer at Su Su (59 Tu Xuong in District 3). The chicken was good, but I'm not sure it was improved by the wacky cooking method. It was also somewhat expensive for the area at ~$2.50 for a 1/4 dark. The chicken was served with a side of tomato-flavored broken rice, which was a bit undercooked.


While in the area, we took a day-trip down to the Mekong Delta, which involved a lot of boating as well as tasting local honey, exotic fruits, coconut moonshine, snake wine, and an unfortunate lunch in the jungle of "local specialties" (that had been prepared and held for a couple hours and wasn't really reheated much at all), like an "elephant ear" fish, which I'm sure is extremely tasty when it's prepared to order.

Seeing the countryside and river life was certainly a worthwhile experience, but no matter how far our guide implied he was taking us off the beaten path, I never felt like we got off the basic tourist script.

Upcoming posts on Hoi An & Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam as well as brief stops in Bangkok & Hong Kong...as time allows.

kl1191 wrote:...no matter how far our guide implied he was taking us off the beaten path, I never felt like we got off the basic tourist script.

Upcoming posts on Hoi An.

Look forward to the Hoi An post. That village, and Hue, far surpassed Saigon's hustle & bustle for me, especially in terms of food. As far as the tourist script... starting off the trip on a Bourdain tip and the results are unavoidable? Plus, it's just difficult 1) looking paler than the natives 2) standing about a foot taller than the natives 3) only speaking English (?).

1 of my best "meals" in Vietnam involved a drunken stupor created by a flirty jailbait, mugs of US$0.25 bia hoi, $1 dried filefishs, and a US$0.50 random bus ride to somewhere BFE outside of the capitol. Doubt any blog, legitimized by Bourdain or otherwise, could've led me there, especially because that blogger can't hold her liquor, nor would she cavort with nubile fellow country women.

But Hoi An... what a sticky, tasty, wet mess...

TonyC wrote:

kl1191 wrote:...no matter how far our guide implied he was taking us off the beaten path, I never felt like we got off the basic tourist script.

Upcoming posts on Hoi An.

Look forward to the Hoi An post. That village, and Hue, far surpassed Saigon's hustle & bustle for me, especially in terms of food. As far as the tourist script... starting off the trip on a Bourdain tip and the results are unavoidable? Plus, it's just difficult 1) looking paler than the natives 2) standing about a foot taller than the natives 3) only speaking English (?).

1 of my best "meals" in Vietnam involved a drunken stupor created by a flirty jailbait, mugs of US$0.25 bia hoi, $1 dried filefishs, and a US$0.50 random bus ride to somewhere BFE outside of the capitol. Doubt any blog, legitimized by Bourdain or otherwise, could've led me there, especially because that blogger can't hold her liquor, nor would she cavort with nubile fellow country women.

But Hoi An... what a sticky, tasty, wet mess...

Thanks, we were able to get off the tourist path quite a bit in Saigon, but it was a bit harder down on the Mekong while at the mercy of our guide. The post on our time in Hoi An may disappoint, sadly. It rained the entire time we were there, and besides epic banh mi (another Bourdain tip <hangs head>) there will be little in the way of food pr0n. I did come home with some killer suits, but this probably isn't the best forum for that discussion.

It rained the whole time I was in Hoi An too. I just remember eating a lot of banh mi in that city, but not the one Bourdain went to, that episode had not aired yet. Great city for getting up early and walking the empty streets.