Eat, Drink, Savor: A culinary journey through Ho Chi Minh City

Lea este artículo en español aquí.

My friends, Harry and Helen Nguyen, who own five Phở Hà Nội locations in San Jose, surprised me at dinner one night by announcing that they wanted me to “try real Vietnamese food.” I assumed they meant some off-the-menu offerings at one of their restaurants and told them I was ready whenever they were available. 

Harry said, “No. We want to take you to Vietnam.”  

After a couple of weeks of frantic preparation, on March 19, I flew out of SFO as a guest of Vietnam Airlines. At 5 a.m. the next day, Harry greeted me outside the Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, and I was whisked off to the couple’s suite on the 20th floor of the J. W. Marriott for a ten-day visit that included four days in Hanoi.

What follows are some highlights of my time in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. A second article will cover my time in Hanoi. Both places were marvelous—once you adjusted to the near 100-degree heat and 70% humidity. The food was uniformly excellent, the sense of modern and ancient history was ever-present, and the Vietnamese people could not have been kinder or more friendly.

Beyond the food, I saw amazing things, like the 1,200-year-old Temple of Literature, the Turtle Tower on Hoan Kiem Lake, the Hanoi Hilton, formerly home to John McCain, the Cu Chi Tunnels, the Mekong Delta, every museum I could find, and more pagodas and orchids than I thought imaginable.  

Flying Through 14 Time Zones

My dining experience began on the 16-hour flight, which departed at 10 p.m. With little to do but eat, drink, and sleep, Vietnam Airlines made the trip an absolute pleasure with indulgent service and a great menu, serving items like an excellent battered cod with Vietnamese chili sauce, fresh fruit, a variety of bread, and a glass of Château Lalande de Gravet 2020 Saint-Émilion.  

Though my flight attendant offered a full suite of custom cocktails on the menu, he made me a drink that had been rotated out a few weeks before: a delightful mix of limoncello, diced ginger and prosecco. Just before landing, we were served beef over noodles with a nicely done black bean sauce, more bread and fresh fruit, and Marquis de Sade Brut Champagne. It was a great start to the trip.

Cơm Niêu Sài Gòn 

After a short nap at the hotel, we were off to Cơm Niêu Sài Gòn. This restaurant, which the World Culinary Awards designated Asia’s Best Culinary Destination, became a favorite: I ate there five times for lunch or dinner. 

The lunch that first day was a stunning introduction to the country’s food: pork rolls wrapped in wild betel leaves (Chả Lá Lốt), egg-battered pumpkin flowers stuffed with minced pork (Bông Bí Dồn Thịt Chiên), swai fish in a clay pot (Cá Bông Lau kho tộ), and wok-fried whole crab with vermicelli in a clay pot (Miến Cua Tay Cẩm).

There is also a degree of showmanship at the restaurant, which is famous for its charcoal-grilled rice in a clay pot (Cơm Đập). It was served by a waiter who stood a table or two away from us. He placed the clay pot on the floor, broke it open, took the rice disk out of the fragments, and tossed it to a waiter at our table. 

I also had feather fish for the first time there. The meat is filled with small bones, so the whole is always crushed into a paste and then cooked. We had it in the form of Chả Cá Cơm Cháy, balls of feather fish deep-fried with a rice paste coating. It was a close-to-perfect appetizer, served with a squeeze of lime and Vietnamese hot chili sauce and downed with Bia Saigon beer. Feather fish popped up on several restaurant menus and was always a treat.

The Third Annual Bánh Mì Festival 

Bánh Mì, a French-influenced bread made with a small amount of rice flower that gives the thin crust a distinctive crispness, was the star attraction at a three-day festival in Ho Chi Mihn City’s Le Van Tam Park. With over 150 vendors, the event attracted more than 200,000 people.

A Vietnamese staple as a sandwich bread, the five—or six-inch-long loaves are split and filled with pretty much anything you can imagine. I stayed with a couple of takes on the most traditional version, which includes cucumber, daikon, carrots, pate and sliced pork loaf. 

Besides the sandwich booths, there was a wide selection of items, including desserts, beverages including fruit juices, beer and tea, and souvenir booths including one stand where sculptor Lê Xuân Tùng rendered me in clay.  Sadly, little bánh me did not survive the return trip.

The Saigon Dining Room

The second evening, the Nguyens hosted a dinner at the Saigon Dining Room, a beautiful second-story restaurant overlooking a park and a row of elegant French Colonial townhouses. While the guests engaged in some spirited karaoke with local musicians, the chefs were busy preparing appetizers and sauces, including garlic, pineapple, red wine, and bleu cheese, to go with the grilled Waygu tomahawk steak dinner.

However, the star of the dinner for me was the duck breast, dry-aged for 14 days and served with a basil, coriander, cilantro, and passion fruit sauce. I don’t think I have ever had a sauce as bright, flavorful, and complex. It was just brilliant.

Street Food

The Michelin Guide said, “There is no way of knowing how many tens of thousands of street stalls and shophouse restaurants there are in this chaotic megacity of 24 districts and 10 million inhabitants.” If anything, as you drive down the main streets in Ho Chi Minh City, it seems like “tens of thousands” is an underestimation. 

Neo, who proved to be a very knowledgeable guide, introduced me to the Hồ Thị Kỷ Night Market, a long avenue filled with flower vendors selling cut flowers, bouquets, arrangements and displays. It was as fragrant as it was beautiful.

In an adjacent alley, over 100 stalls and carts serve every kind of food imaginable, except pizza. And pizza might have been there, too—I just didn’t see it among the congestion of sellers, delivery vans and scooters.

During the days, I was mainly on the move, trying to see as much of the city as I could. Lunches tended to be simple, which meant hitting some tiny places for a fast meal. And, besides being uniformly delicious, those meals were incredibly cheap.

At Ho Chi Minh City’s Bún Bò Xưa, a favorite of Neo’s, a bowl of soup with noodles and beef (Tố Thập Cẩm) costs 38,000 dong (Vietnamese dollars)—$1.48. Adding pork sausage or a glass of fresh passionfruit juice is another 75 cents each—a filling lunch for under $3.  

On Phoenix Island on the Mekong Delta, at the southern tip of Vietnam, a huge bowl of Phở with sliced beef, assorted veggies, rice noodles, beef broth and toppings costs 75,000 dong, or $2.91. A can of 333 Beer, a standard in Vietnam, added 45,000 dong or $1.75. 

(I could have had snake wine instead, poured from a bottle that contains a small cobra, but my guide warned against it because it would allow evil spirits to enter my body.)

Phổ Đình Yakiniku

The most extravagant dinner I attended was at Phổ Đình, a yakiniku house where strips of eight different cuts of waygu beef, ranging from beef tongue to New York steak, were grilled by a chef at the table on an inset charcoal grill. As she took them off the grill, she cut them into pieces with scissors and served them on a communal plate. The meal was accompanied by shots of 25-year-old Chivas Regal. 

It was a nice way to end a splendid stay in Ho Chi Minh City. The food I had there was uniformly marvelous, the streets and parks were immaculately kept up, and the whole city was bursting with life at all hours of the day and night. But the best part of my stay was the people I met there, who were incredibly friendly and helpful. Everyone seemed intent on making my stay perfect.

The next morning, I was on my way to Hanoi…

Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.

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