It started with tamarind, and ended with crab.

Gazing up from central Saigon sidewalks, one will notice thick canopies consisting of small pinnated leaves: an arrangement that calls to mind the spikes splayed on stegosaurus tails. Tamarind trees are native to Africa but have been part of the city’s urban makeup since the French brought centrally planned streets arranged in a neat grid pattern to Indochina. Being pallid vampires, they required constant shade. Tamarind trees were selected as the ideal trees to provide it, because their roots wouldn’t destroy the concrete and they blocked significant sunshine. 

Some people collect the fallen tamarind fruits and occasional street vendors sell them for eating fresh or in simple cooking, unlike peanuts and carrots which have made their way into a variety of dishes despite not being native. Still, tamarind hasn’t been widely embraced outside of đá me and the occasional dipping sauce. Why not? This question led us to list as many tamarind-centric dishes as we could, which in turn brought us to Thúy 94 Cũ.

Far from unknown, Thúy 94 Cũ has been popular for years, and was recently featured in the Vietnam version of the Michelin Guide. Saigoneer even reviewed it back in 2016 for our long-running Hẻm Gems series. Still, most people know it as a great place for miến xào cua thanks to the ample servings of plump, fresh crab meat. That dish is terrific, of course, but we suggest you go to honor the splendors of tamarind via Thúy 94 Cũ's cua rang me.

Thúy explained the secret behind the dish whose recipe she devised herself over years of simple trial and error. Unlike rival shops that add starch or other thickening agents to the sauce, she boils down large tamarinds sourced from different suppliers without their seeds. Taken on its own, the sauce is a distilled slap of sugary-sweet tamarind. But when lavished over soft crustacean flesh, it exists as a sultry undertone. 

Cua rang me and its shrimp-focused alternative tôm rang me made with the same sauce is a great dish to understand why this restaurant is so popular, so much so that it has invited an imitator at its original namesake address next door. This saucy, tamarind-rich dish is a rare opportunity for me enthusiasts to indulge their preferences, and a prime example of the strange historical happenstances that underpine some of our favorite dishes.