Eat & Drink - Saigoneer

Ngõ Nooks: On Hàng Bài, Golden Bún Cá Thái Bình in a Hole in the Wall

2026-08-28T10:00:00+07:00

When a friend of mine returned home after living abroad last year, he longed for a bowl of bún cá. I suggested the classic Hanoi dish, with satisfyingly oily deep-fried fish, but he had other ideas — a fresh feast originally from Thai Binh, located almost 100 kilometers from the capital.

We ventured to a narrow, lively alleyway close to Tràng Tiền Plaza. The restaurant is in a dimly lit room in a crumbling old colonial house. I noticed bowls of pickled bamboo shoots on the tables which, it turns out, are prepared specifically to go with the bún cá they serve. That point alone marks a clear departure from the dish’s Hanoian cousin.

When my bowl arrived, I saw how the broth barely covered the bún in my bowl. The noodles were also thicker — more akin to those served with bún bò giò heo — and the soup had a distinctive taste formed from fish stock and a hint of sour tomato. But what really topped it off was the meaty chunks of richly hued snakehead fish.

The fish held firm between my chopsticks yet, as soon as it entered my mouth, its tender flakes fell apart gorgeously. Later, I was told that these plump and juicy pieces were carefully picked from prime cuts and, to achieve their burnt orange color, they were braised in a rich mix of turmeric and cashew powder.

Feasting merely on fish and noodles can be a tad heavy; thankfully they are served with steamed seasonal vegetables such as morning glory, celery or water mimosa (rau rút) to add freshness. And if that wasn't enough, the aforementioned tangy bamboo shoots easily balance out the heartiness of the bowl.

If I had come by a little later in the day, closer to noon, they would have been serving pork rinds with each meal. These crunchy, fatty, deep-fried snacks are a favorite among office workers who regularly swing by.

The restaurant’s owner was born in Thái Bình City but moved to Hanoi years ago. She tried and failed to sell general household goods before eventually offering customers her hometown’s celebrated noodle soup. Initially, only those familiar with the dish came by, but word gradually spread, and these days her restaurant is always brimming at meal times.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7am–8pm
Parking: If you come by motorbike and are unsure of where to park in the tiny lane, keep heading straight past the shop and you’ll see a big yard used by the community there. Parking is free.
Contact: 0989310749
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

Hà Tạ absolutely loves food and dreams of selling noodles.

Bún Cá Thái Bình

21D Hàng Bài Street, Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi

From Fine Dining to Comfort Food: Why Chef Thierry Mounon Followed up La Villa with La Fontaine

2026-08-27T11:28:00+07:00

“Beyond awards or recognition, a restaurant is about welcoming people, creating memories and bringing joy around a table,” explains Chef Thierry Mounon of his decision to expand from French fine dining into comfort food.

Chef Thierry Mounon and the La Fontaine team.

Thierry and his wife, Tina Trang Phạm, spent over 15 years building La Villa into one of Saigon's best-known French fine-dining restaurants. The Micheline-selected restaurant has earned a reputation as a destination to experience classic French cuisine, where exquisite ingredients are meticulously prepared and presented, accompanied by carefully choreographed service. One expects tasting menus with goose foie gras terrine, blue lobster tail, and Dombes barbecued duck, accompanied by an extensive wine list and choreographed service. With such success, one could expect Thierry to open another fine dining concept that builds off his experience. Yet, with La Fontaine, he chose to “return to the roots of hospitality … The heart of French gastronomy is much simpler.”

Locating the heart of French gastronomy

Just down the road from La Villa, La Fontaine takes inspiration from the neighborhood bistrots in the South of France, where Thierry grew up. Compared to fine dining, bistrots are more casual and part of to everyday life as opposed to special occasions. “A bistrot is spontaneous, lively, and accessible,” he says. “It’s where families, friends, neighbours and regular guests gather around honest food.”

Roast chicken, steak frites, and onion soup, all of which are exemplary items on La Fontaine’s menu, appear simple, but they do not require any less skill in the kitchen to prepare, according to Thierry. “I often tell my Chef Thanh that bistrot cooking leaves nowhere to hide,” he says, going on to explain that while fewer techniques are used in homestyle cooking compared to fine dining, there is no less love needed for the preparation or ingredients.

Given that the standards for skill and care in the kitchen are shared by both restaurants, the atmospheres that surround the meals are the biggest differentiators between La Villa and La Fontaine, in addition to price. By offering experiences that people can enjoy casually, without cause, pomp, or circumstance, La Fontaine becomes a member of the neighborhood. Families can rest there after busy days, couples can opt to connect over a bottle, and foodies can taste stellar food without the need to dress up or put on airs.

A reflection of Saigon’s evolving dining sophistications

With Michelin restaurants, celebrity chefs, and a headfirst dive into global trends, Saigon’s culinary world has changed significantly in the decade and a half since La Villa first opened its doors. Amidst the chase for attention, accolades, and recognition, there has emerged a counterbalancing desire for authenticity. Thierry sees the new bistrot as attending to people uninterested in highfalutin egos and distractions.

Attuned to classic French and a wide range of global cuisines, alongside Vietnam’s many regional delicacies, diners are skeptical of gimmicks and novelty. “What they appreciate is honesty,” Thierry says. This is achieved by serving staple French comfort foods like Lyonnaise salad, duck leg confit, seared scallops, and beef vegetable soup in a relaxed dining room where comfortable chairs stretch beneath the types of photos, posters, and images one might find in a French countryside home.

La Fontaine has a similarly grounded approach to the role of promotion. “People don’t return because of marketing; they return because a place becomes part of their lives,” Thierry notes. This means frequent guests are greeted by name and brought to their favorite tables, where they can order the same dish as always, prepared precisely as they expect. Meanwhile, seasonal dishes and flavors help keep every visit fresh.

One can consider La Fontaine a logical step for an esteemed chef with a passion for honoring the nation’s culinary legacy without judging success by accolades and prestige. One can also think of La Fontaine as reflecting Saigon’s ever-maturing dining landscape, which has space for high-quality international food within everyday routines. Or one can simply think of La Fontaine as an ideal place to linger over delicious food with loved ones, ensuring the day contains something exemplary.

La Fontaine's website

La Fontaine's Email

Phone (+84) 283 535 5487

La Fontaine, River Garden, 170 Nguyễn Văn Hưởng, Hồ Chí Minh 700000, Vietnam

What Cooking Bún Chả for My Birthday Abroad Taught Me About Vietnameseness

2026-08-18T14:00:00+07:00

“Hot summer night, mid-July, when you and I were forever wild,” Lana Del Rey croons every July 15 to celebrate my birthday. Those melodramatic words consistently evoke three specific elements in my mind: Heineken or Tiger beer cans on the floor; the sweet smoky smell of bún chả and nem enlaced with the rainy air of a darkening Saigon sky; and my friends and family under the LED-lit roof of an iCool karaoke room. Such pillars uphold what I consider the quintessential Vietnamese birthday experience.

Versions of this birthday routine punctuated my summers until July 2024, when I left Vietnam for Canada. In three years of studying abroad, only my second year was unmarked by a visit home. Curious to see if I could confidently call Montreal my home, I decided to turn 20 under the Canadian sun. Being the furthest I had ever been from home, I was more determined than ever to turn 20 the right, Vietnamese way.

The idea of my friends tasting my favorite Hanoian dishes for the first time, whose recipes followed my family south to Saigon, was exciting, but it was the prospect of cooking these meals with them that I dreamt of. In Saigon, grilling bún chả and rolling nem was a family tradition that eventually grew to include my closest friends. It was a rite of passage for those with whom I envisioned a lasting friendship: only the truest bonds survived an entire day of cooking with my family.

In Montreal, I trusted that the same labor-intensive endeavor would enlarge my “family” as it did back home. I tasked friends who did not qualify for the kitchen crew with bringing either Tiger or Heineken beers — cans only. Neither Heineken nor Tiger is a Vietnamese brand, yet these names automatically recall quintessentially Vietnamese moments. Crushed tin cylinders, green and silver or blue and orange, overlay the floors of nhậu joints; the floor of my uncle’s backyard in Hanoi on the night of my grandmother’s funeral. I also knew that I would sing my way into my 21^st year on Earth, as I did every year prior. A private karaoke booth for my loved ones and I to sing songs that only we care for— that was probably what I missed most about Saigon whilst living abroad.

The beer cans that could have been

I had designed the perfect trident: Hanoian barbecue, beer cans, and karaoke would guarantee a perfectly Vietnamese birthday. But each prong of the Vietnamese fork quickly bent to the Montreal winds — the material conditions of my new city threatened, and ultimately transformed, each of my traditions. My bartenders scavenged the city for my beer cans only to return with bottles. I heard the sound of defeat — the unbearable clinking of glass — before I could see it. Such a minor substitution should not cause despair, but my heart sank anyway: bringing Saigon to Montreal might be more difficult than I thought. The absence of cans alone would not make my celebration less Vietnamese.

Bringing karaoke into the wild

But it was more than cans. Orchestrating a karaoke experience that matched my Saigoneer memory was surprisingly challenging. Whereas karaoke rooms populate every crevice of Saigon, in my area in Montreal, karaoke exists only in one bar on the main boulevard. Here, strangers gathered around a small wooden stage facing a small screen hung from above. Under the disco ball, you didn’t have to know others to sing with and to them. One did not choose their songs directly from YouTube, but from a song book. The limited set list, whose latest hits came out circa 2018, was printed in tiny font sizes that drunken customers squinted to read.

Clearly, I was a long way from iCool. In that faraway kingdom, I ruled as karaoke queen as my loved ones smoked and drank on leather couches, under the cooling AC ambience, screaming lyrics projected on a huge flatscreen. This luxury, which I took for granted in Saigon, was far beyond my reach in Montreal. The only similar options were Korean karaoke salons: a private room with mostly Korean or Japanese hits, mixed with the occasional banger from the Black Eyed Peas, would cost me more than any Vietnamese person should be willing to spend on karaoke.

Luckily, my pièce de résistance — a compact karaoke machine — was available on Facebook Marketplace for CA$60. Its vendor lived at the very end of the blue line, which I rarely took. Early the next morning, my roommate and I rode down to a corner of Montreal we seldom saw. After nearly an hour on the metro and another half spent battling Google Maps under the sun, we reached our destination. The vendor unboxed the brand-new device, and the three of us spent nearly another hour trying to set it up. Once that was done, my roommate and I sang Rihanna in this sweet stranger’s living room. The night of my birthday, the cool summer breeze, the dim light of the moon and candles overflowing from wine bottles, and the picnic benches of Parc La Fontaine built a world more intimate than an iCool room.

Bún chả blues began with the meat cut

Our journey to this happy evening was messy, and food was our most grueling obstacle. With the joint audacity of three 20-year-olds, we believed ourselves capable of making nem from scratch for 15 people in an evening. I underestimated the time it would take to transfer cooking skills, which took years to become instinct, to friends who had never tasted, let alone made nem. The meticulous dicing of vegetables, the delicate rolling techniques, even the hunt for jicama, exhausted us. As the sun rose, we labored around my kitchen table, inhaling every final drop of caffeine, rolling our last nem to the rhythm of French rap.

This logistical nightmare became a wholesome, albeit long, night I was lucky to share with friends who cared enough to recreate something they have never known. The traces of our collective effort — rice paper stuck to the table, puddles of spilled water, ground chicken splattered on the walls and counters — would be a pain to clean up in the morning. But that night, I contemplated that mess, which transformed my apartment into my family’s kitchen, with endearment.

With no barbecue equipment, I eventually had to replace bún chả with bún thịt nướng. This was a happy substitution: bún chả’s Saigoneer sibling was more practical but just as delicious. Shopping for the right cut of meat, however, was the most devastating hurdle. To accommodate my friends who avoid pork, I decided on beef thịt xiên. My mom theorized that thăn would be the only one cut of beef that can remain tender after being thinly sliced, skewered, and broiled. I did not recognize it, nor could I find its English equivalent. I Google-translated the word she uttered; I studied beef cuts diagrams online, naming and showing every cut to my mom. Having never cooked nor shopped in English, she couldn’t confirm my intel; having never cooked or shopped in Vietnamese, I couldn’t understand hers. Hoping live visuals would help, I called her again at the supermarket. I showed her every tray of ruby meat; I scanned every tag and read the Vietnamese translations out loud as my mom shook her head on my screen. Eventually, the 11-hour time difference between Saigon and Montreal released my mom from my panic-stricken calls, leaving me helpless in the meat aisle.

My homesickness and perfectionism willed me to prove that I could recreate Vietnam accurately anywhere. So I continued searching for a cut of beef I could not name, across five hours and three grocery stores. My last destination was the Asian supermarket by my old apartment, a 40-minute walk away. To my surprise, the butcher was Vietnamese. I ran to him, hopeful, asking for the cut in Vietnamese. In a mix of French and Vietnamese, he told me he wasn’t sure what that was: having lived in Montreal for 60 years, he had lost much of our mother tongue. Desperate, I begged for an adequate substitute — if language barriers separate us, surely we still share the same food memory? To my dismay, the butcher selected the one cut my mom instructed me against, and I began sobbing between the meat refrigerators. It was now 5pm, meaning 4am in Saigon. I could not reach my sleeping mother now, and even if I could, what would I tell her with my limited Vietnamese?

Resignation washed over me as a dual realization settled: I have failed at grocery shopping and must now surrender to a random tray of meat; and I am living in an Ocean Vuong scene from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. In a passage that I had painstakingly analyzed for my thesis, the narrator’s illiterate Vietnamese mother struggles to buy oxtail to make bún bò Huế in the US. Devoid of the right English words, she jumps from Vietnamese to broken French to body language, ultimately leaving the store empty-handed. Why academically hypothesize about the gut-wrenching relationship between home and language, when I can experience it myself?

Crushing failure reigned temporarily in the wake of my attempts at the perfect Vietnamese experience. My disgraceful shopping led me to question my knowledge of my culture, and thus my belonging to it. Out of options and out of time, my friends and I cooked our misadventures away. We made thịt xiên by cooking the wrong cut of beef the right way — adapting and tenderizing it however we could, just as my mom would have told us to. We drank the right beer from the wrong bottles, washing down our oversized nem; we bastardized the concept of iCool with our version of karaoke in the park.

Circumstances forced us to deviate from my recipes for a quintessentially Vietnamese celebration; the whole thing was a mess. But the mess was laughter, labor, music, homemade food and love. I turned 20 in that mess, and at 22 now, I realized that there are no perfect standards of Vietnameseness except the ones we imagine. Now, two summers later, I look back on this wonderful night only to see my favorite birthday party yet, one that was a loudly Vietnamese celebration in Montreal.

Hẻm Gems: Where Fish Sauce and Soy Sauce Are Not Condiments, but Gelato Flavors

2026-08-13T14:00:00+07:00

Living in central Saigon as a diehard fan of ice cream and all frozen sweets, I fondly remember the late 2010s–early 2020s as the age of abundance. Back in the day, across downtown, there was always a little something for ice cream fans of all preferences.

Stalwart supporters of the OGs might stick to the long-enduring French-styled Fanny, which settled down in a charming old villa on Tôn Thất Thiệp. Østerberg dished out Nordic clean flavors in a nook on Lê Lai, while Ralf’s Artisan Gelato on Đặng Thị Nhu performed an impressive balancing act between traditional Italian classics and inventive local flavors. My hangouts in District 1 would more often than not end in the same way during this time: at one of these old haunts for a few scoops of sweetness.

Flash forward to 2026, and the downtown gelato map has suffered some major losses: after a few shifts in location, Fanny shuttered for good, while Østerberg relocated to Thảo Điền permanently. Ralf’s also moved to District 2 a few years ago, but is currently on hiatus. With quite a number of new players in the scene, Thảo Điền is now shaping up to be a mecca for ice cream, a development I’m immensely sad about, living so far from where all the action takes place.

Sugar Daddy Eatery has moved a few doors down the hẻm since 2025.

During the years of Saigon’s constantly shifting gelato landscape, my family found comfort in the stability of one trusty hẻm gem — Sugar Daddy Gelato, which has held fast to their quaint location on Trần Hưng Đạo, just a short drive from Bến Thành Market, for half a decade until now. The gelateria is a family business, founded by husband-and-wife pair Danh and Vy, but you’ll also likely come across Danh’s mom helping guests pick their favorite flavors as well.

When I discovered its existence a few years ago, the tiny shop was serving up scoops from a narrow storefront that can fit only a handful of seats, but since 2025, Sugar Daddy Gelato has relocated a few doors down to the renovated family home and expanded to a neat dining area with more seats and ample decoration. The interior is predominantly white and brightly lit, with green and stone accents to break up the monotony.

The bright interior of the place.

Danh is the creative mind behind the eatery’s culinary aspect. And yes, he’s well aware of the name’s scandalous connotation, but he told me that it was only selected after the couple welcomed their firstborn and he became an actual “daddy” to an adorable baby boy. Working with a lot of sugar is an indispensable part of running a gelato business, so the “sugar daddy” in question here follows the term’s most literal meaning. The tongue-in-cheek meaning is a happy coincidence that adds a sprinkle of eyebrow-raising curiosity for new guests.

Danh Phan founded the eatery with his wife, Vy.

Sugar Daddy Gelato came into existence in 2020 during the pandemic, but the pair had their start in the F&B world even earlier. Danh studied hospitality management in Las Vegas, and, upon returning to Saigon, opened his first eatery at Bến Thành Food Market, a canteen-like collective featuring many food carts catering to tourists. The first stall was Got Bun, whose menu featured Taiwanese-style bánh bao with novelty fillings; business went well, so they were able to launch the second stall, Bánh Xèo Em Ơi, and the third, Stir Fry. COVID-19 and the subsequent international flight bans put an end to all that, so they went back to the drawing board again.

Mè the bird with Danh's mom. Mè is usually chilling in the cage, but she took advantage of Saigoneer's visit to supervise the operation.

In May 2020, Danh signed up for a gelato-making course, and three months later, Sugar Daddy Gelato was born, alongside the resurrection of Got Bun, at a small location near his family home. The current iteration combines both the sweetness of Sugar Daddy frozen treats and the savory creations of Got Bun into one menu to satisfy both old regulars from the Food Market days and gelato fans — I firmly belong to the latter.

There are 12 flavors at any moment during opening hours.

At any given moment at Sugar Daddy, there are 12 flavors in the gelato display, and finished ones are replaced by different flavors. When the Saigoneer team visited, we were greeted with avocado, tamarind, pumpkin and coconut, Thai milk tea, Earl Grey milk tea, Heal Your Soul (matcha and butterfly pea), strawberry, tàu hũ gừng, passion fruit and mango, vanilla and Oreo, phở, and bún bò. The latter two, in addition to fish sauce and soy sauce, are the most experimental flavors in Danh’s wheelhouse. They’re not unprecedented, if you’ve spent some time sampling enough ice cream in Vietnam, but I love watching people’s facial expressions when I take them here and introduce these unconventional flavors.

According to Danh, the essence of the noodle dishes is infused into the gelato by cooking the herbs and spices in milk — no meat involved. He went through a wide range of spice mixes available on the market to arrive at the current flavor profile. The phở gelato is gently fragrant, with notes of cinnamon, star anise, and black cardamom; while the bún bò gelato reminds me a lot of the lemongrassy oil atop bún bò broth, and the orange-yellow hue certainly evokes its sparkling shimmer as well.

The Saigoneer team is divided on which is better. I have to side with bún bò.

While not in the display yet, Danh was kind enough to let us try the two condiment-inspired buckets as well. The fish sauce flavor is made of kid’s fish sauce for the reduced sodium and tempered fishiness; with added caramel, the flavor tastes like a silky salted caramel gelato with a touch of umami funk towards the end. And finally, the soy sauce gelato — my personal favorite — is a rich, layered combination of Lee Kum Kee soy sauce and just a touch of miso nuttiness. I’ll have to add that there’s also a miso and burnt butter gelato in the rotation that I’ve only managed to catch once, but it was so good I had to buy a takeaway portion. My mom, who doesn’t consume alcohol, is quite into the orange and beer flavor, for some reasons; it is refreshing, but in a zesty way.

Soufflé pancakes is a new addition to the menu.

While the layperson often uses the terms “ice cream” and “gelato” interchangeably and “gelato” is actually just Italian for “ice cream,” there are some differences in technicality. As Danh shares, gelato has lower air percentages and is made from milk instead of cream; both result in a denser, more viscous mouthfeel compared to the fluffiness of ice cream. Gelato is also often kept at a slightly higher temperature, so it’s best enjoyed quickly.

Whether a certain fruit or local treat shows up in the gelato display mostly depends on the season. In the summer, longan, lychee, and durian are bound to make an appearance. Pink dragonfruit was paired with yogurt or pineapple, while a mangosteen flavor is being workshopped at the moment. According to Danh, trips to the local market in search of seasonal fresh fruits are the way he looks for inspiration on what to turn into gelato next.

Apart from the gelato, Sugar Daddy as an eatery also features savory dishes, some of which are remnants of the Got Bun days like five-spice pork bao — which I can personally vouch for. Other options for snacking include saucy chicken wings and crispy tacos. However, the true star of the new menu is the pillowy soufflé pancakes, which will take a while to arrive at the table, but are really worth the wait. Airy pancake bites are paired with caramelized bananas and cream on top.

Fruit tea and honey kumquat tea

Bò kho tacos

Crème brûlée

The ice cream and gelato scene in Saigon has really flourished in 2025–2026. It seems like every few months I would come across an ad on social media for a brand-new ice cream boutique. While I’ll be gallivanting around town to have my share of exciting new flavors, this Hẻm Gems feature seems like a fitting way to pay tribute to a Saigon staple that has been with me through thick and thin, breakups and first dates, in hopes that it will remain on the map to share the love of gelato to many others.

To sum up:

Opening time: 2pm–10pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 077 864 9404
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood

Sugar Daddy Eatery

345/29 Trần Hưng Đạo, Cầu Ông Lãnh Ward, HCMC

Hẻm Gems: At Phở Chay Như, a Banquet of Vegetarian Versions of Iconic Viet Dishes

2026-07-30T13:00:00+07:00

A bowl full of noodles is one of the things that make me feel lucky to be alive, and alive in Saigon in particular.

There are a plethora of noodle soups to fall in love with in Vietnam, and Phở Chay Như offers a wide variety, meat excluded.

After discussing featuring Phở Chay Như as a Hẻm Gem, I went back to the restaurant on a quiet afternoon after leaving the Saigoneer office. This was my fourth time going, but somehow I still managed to drive past it. I don't know if this says more about my derpish sensibility or the obscurity of its entrance. Likely a melange of the two.

Phở Chay Như is easy to miss if you drive too fast.

The restaurant is located along Trương Quyền Street, sandwiched between Điện Biên Phủ on one side and Võ Thị Sáu on the other; a quick walk from Lê Văn Tám Park. I entered and took a seat to the left of the owner. He sat, leaned back with arms crossed, watching what sounded like an action movie on a laptop set on one of the establishment's aluminum fold-up tables.

After receiving my bowl of the signature phở, I squeezed in as many limes as I could get my hands on, added a few pieces of red chili, and a healthy portion of basil from the plate of herbs and greens provided. Then, my favorite addition to the soup, a fried wonton, a plate of which is provided for customers to add as they please for a small fee. Because I am exceedingly horny for condiments, I added quite a bit of vegan nước mắm and the lemongrass-heavy sa tế sauce.

There are many vegetarian noodles here, all inspired by normal Vietnamese dishes.

My bowl was now ready to go. The circle of noodles was surrounded by floating mushrooms and rolled bean curd skin, which added a nice touch of umami to the clear broth. The freshness of the basil, the tartness of the lime, the kick of chili and the salty sweetness of the nước mắm were all nice compliments to the earthy flavors. Adding the oily wonton added a delightful touch of gluttony to the otherwise simple offering.

A bowl of phở chay

My one quibble with the dish is that the temperature of the broth wasn't as hot as I would like it to be. If a food is supposed to be served hot, I want it to basically burn my mouth. But, like I said, a quibble.

I returned a couple of days later with some of the Saigoneer crew to try some more dishes. We ordered the cơm tấm, bò kho, mì Quảng, and another bowl of phở. The cơm tấm was quite satisfying. The chewy and oily mock meats sat on a bed of rice and made the perfect bite when covered in the chili-infused nước mắm. The bò kho is a real standout dish. The vegan version of the beef stew is fragrant with a variety of sweet spices, lemongrass and chili.

Mỳ Quảng chay

Bò kho chay

Cơm tấm chay

Along with eating more food, I was able to satisfy a few curiosities on this return with co-workers. I learned that the restaurant has been open for over 40 years and that the staff begins their day at 5am, preparing the food and starting to serve customers at 6am. I was also curious about the presence of beer, as most chay places do not serve alcohol. The question as to why Phở Chay Như's refrigerator is stocked with Tigers and Heineken was answered mainly with laughter. In addition to the beer, the fact that the restaurant stays open until 9pm makes it a good option for those looking for both a good late-night meal and a few beers.

The kitchen has a common vegetable stock, and whenever a bò kho or mì Quảng is ordered, the cook will mix in the appropriate sauce to add flavor to the common broth.

Phở Chay Như has what made me so obsessed with Vietnam to begin with: delicious vegetarian food delivered in a laid-back atmosphere that manages to delight with little details that stick in my consciousness more subtly than the flavors that linger on my palate.

This article was originally published in 2020.

To sum up:

Opening time: 6am–8pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: N/A
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood, GrabFood

Govi is enthusiastic about the golden hour, clouds, bodies of water, trees, breezes, faces, cappuccinos and thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking.

Phở Chay Như

54 Trương Quyền, Xuân Hòa Ward, HCMC

The Unifying Presence of Cái Mâm, Vietnam’s Ubiquitous, Familial Food Tray

2026-07-22T10:00:00+07:00

An authentic Vietnamese meal cannot be complete without cái mâm. Mâm, a humble, circular food tray, has conducted generations of Vietnamese into a familial ritual for centuries. Once a mâm is set as the centerpiece, knees begin touching knees until the whole family sits cross-legged in a circle. One person pairs up chopsticks from the bundle and distributes them to fellow diners, while another scoops rice into bowls.

Mâm was first created using wood, usually from jackfruit trees. According to Tuổi Trẻ, former versions were painted crimson and featured intricate patterns to display wealth. At the dawn of the Bronze Age, a new, more durable version appeared, only to be replaced centuries later by its contemporary, aluminum cousin.

Some ethnic minorities utilize other eco-friendly materials for their mâm. In certain areas of northern Vietnam and along the nation’s central coast, men from Thái minorities take pride in the woven cane trays they create, which can last for up to 20 years. During special feasts, Muong minorities line their mâm with lightly scorched banana leaves and arrange regional specialties on leaves to form a colorful platter.

A 1960 silk painting by Nguyễn Phan Chánh. Photo via designs.vn.

Mâm is, therefore, a lens through which one can capture how Vietnamese people eat every day. A minimal checklist includes a serving of seasonal vegetables, a protein dish and a bowl of soup. Each mâm is a round of culinary delights orbiting around a spicy bowl of fish sauce. Indeed, what would a summer meal be without sautéed morning glory, or a winter feast without braised catfish?

The intuitive design of mâm explains its timeless utility. A round tray adorned with food becomes an instant focus for hungry eyes. Its magnetic presence attracts diners around its rim. The round tray has no prominent spot, thus it establishes seating arrangements of unrivaled equality. Diners, regardless of status or age, enter an intimate circle to share stories over plates of food. And yet it is, after all, merely a simple tray for carrying food to and from the kitchen to the dining area.

Now in his 60s, my father believes the communal aspect of mâm grew out of Vietnamese rice-farming culture. After working from cockcrow until noon, his parents and their nine children sustained themselves with only two boiled eggs, some diluted fish sauce and wild greens. He reminisced: “It was fulfilling somehow. We shared whatever was there on the plate.”

Table manners surrounding mâm weave daily interactions into a rhythm. The young show respect to elderly family members, who lightly nod in return. If someone seems too far from any dish, an observant relative will pass chopstick-held food across the mâm. If someone is late for dinner, their portion of food is reserved in a covered dish.

An illustration of a mâm plate adorned with sticky rice cakes, pickles, pork sausage, braised pork belly and stuffed bitter melon. Illustration by Phan Phương.

Like a timepiece without hands, mâm rings a bell of reunion. Its routine presence rushes workers out of offices, out of phone calls, and away from life’s daily hustle to take up their spot in the circle. It would only taste like Tết, however, if everyone makes it in time for the midnight meal.

The connective duty of mâm extends beyond quotidian family tables. Mounted with engagement gifts, mâm turns strangers into in-laws. When resting upon altars, mâm represents an outstretched hand to ancestors.

Yet while mâm is a mediator, it can also act as a form of segregation. Festive gatherings in rural areas still divide mâm trên, a higher rank, from lesser mâm dưới. Only when elders and men in the mâm trên group finish drinking and dining can the women and children in mâm dưới leave the gathering and start washing dishes.

A family of three generations having dinner. Photo by Trang Six.

In urban households, a generational rift manifests itself over mâm. My sister, a sophomore student, says home life stresses her out, and that street food meals are simply more exciting. Her obvious preference is to eat out with friends. This lifestyle choice of my sister and her generation questions the continued relevance of family gatherings.

In public spaces, some are finding ways to reconcile with this new cultural milieu. Modern Vietnamese restaurant owners serve food on mâm as it opens doors for business partners to enter a circle of trust, or for travelers to taste a sample of ‘genuine’ Vietnam in communal homestay dinners.

Across endless decades, mâm has satisfied generations of hungry souls. Bridging relationships one meal at a time, mâm whispers that we are all connected. In this circle of life, we are all a part of something greater than ourselves.

This article was originally published on Urbanist Hanoi in 2020.

Chợ Bà Hoa Transports Central Vietnam's Universe of Crispy, Funky, Sugary Treats to Saigon

2026-07-15T14:00:00+07:00

My family lives in Saigon, a long distance from our hometown in Quảng Ngãi. We only visit a few times a year, but each time is a celebration of amazing food: bánh tráng nướng with sausages, bánh gói with spicy, garlicky nước chấm, crispy fried rolls, etc. Without fail, whenever I set food in the city again, I can’t help missing it dearly.

I used to wish that Saigon would have a market dedicated to all sorts of Central Vietnamese treats, and the universe has answered my prayers in the form of Bà Hoa Market. Based in an alley on Trần Mai Ninh Street in Bảy Hiền, former Tân Bình District, the market exists as a home for the most familiar, rustic, and distinctly central fares, from obscure snacks to central Vietnamese accents.

Bà Hoa Market was established by central Vietnamese immigrants who moved to Saigon during the war.

A brief history of Bà Hoa Market and Saigon’s central Vietnamese enclave

According to historical records, the Bảy Hiền area in Saigon has been the safe home for many immigrant communities from Northern and Central Vietnam for decades. Amongst them, people from the Quảng region are the most populous.

The market is crowded from the early hours of the day until midday.

During the most tumultuous times of the war, waves of immigrants left their hometowns to seek solace in Saigon’s suburban areas. To make a living in the new land, they took up whatever jobs that were available, from driving a xích lô, mechanical work, carpentry, to selling mỳ Quảng. Most notably, central Vietnamese founded the famed Bảy Hiền Weaver Village.

At Bà Hoa Market, you can find all sorts of interesting food from central Vietnam.

Once the community grew big enough, people started longing for a common space to trade spices, produce, and regional dishes. According to some sources, around 1964–1967, a woman named Hoa decided to purchase the low-lying lot belonging to the Đắc Lộ Parish in Bảy Hiền. She filled the plot and established the market that we know and love today.

To pay respect to the founder, the market was named after her: Bà Hoa. Nowadays, this historic venue is renamed Ward 11 Market on administrative maps, but in the minds of Central Vietnam migrants, Bà Hoa Market is an irreplaceable memory anchor. Its existence reminds them of a tough period in their life and the human connection those hardships helped foster.

The market nurturing migrant souls

Each marketplace in Saigon is beautiful in its own way. Some stand out thanks to their massive structural scale. Some have transcended their basic commercial functions to become historical landmarks. Bà Hoa Market, on the other hand, is not that different from a rustic countryside hangout, a place to convert homesickness into tasty, familiar treats.

Right from the opening of the alley leading into the market, you’ll bump into rows of bicycles and carts vending iconic snacks. Xu xoa is an opaque, crunchy, refreshing white jelly made from a special type of seaweed collected along the Central Vietnam coast, enjoyed with brown sugar syrup and candied ginger. A bowl of warm beancurd is also great with smooth, velvety spoonfuls of soy and ginger flavors and a touch of southern quirks with coconut milk and white chewy pearls.

Xu xoa and beancurd.

Walk a few more steps and you’ll be greeted with kiosks specializing in all sorts of rice paper and noodles. The compendium of rice paper from the region is extensive: Bình Định-style coconut rice paper, rice sheets, sesame crepes, wrapping sheets from spring rolls, and Đại Lộc-style rice paper for rolling. Right in front of their stalls, vendors set up coal fires to grill crackers until golden and alluringly toasty.

Grilled crackers are the soul of central foods.

Grilled crackers are the soul of Central Vietnam foods, being a part of a range of dishes including bánh đập mắm nêm, don xào, turmeric-braised white bait, vịt lộn, mỳ Quảng, offal porridge, and turmeric stir-fries — the crisp sounds of breaking up a cracker is iconic.

Next, the rows of confectionery kiosks house tangible reminders of a sweet childhood, quite literally. Blooming yellow bánh thuẫn remind me of previous Tết when I helped mom mix batter until my hands were exhausted. The black bánh ít lá gai and logs of sesame-covered bánh tổ bring back memories of my time with grandma. The vast range of sugar types evoke the imagery of endless sugarcane fields and the many desserts they flavored, like cakes, chè, dried sweet potatoes.

Quảng Nam-style bánh tổ is made of glutinous rice powder, sugar, ginger, and sesame seeds, often eaten during festive times.

Bánh ít.

Different forms of raw sugar.

Đường bát (bowl sugar).

The region’s umami-rich side is on display at mắm vendors, in many fermented condiments like anchovy mắm, mắm cái, mắm nêm, fermented baby eggplants, mắm ruốc, sardine mắm, and even flying fish mắm. Mắm cái, an assortment of fermented fish, is perhaps the favorite one in the eyes of Quảng Ngãi residents in my hometown. A few spoonfuls of mắm, some sugar, garlic, chili, and lime juice make for a tantalizing bowl of dipping sauce for fresh greens.

Of course, a stroll through Bà Hoa Market is never just for stocking the pantry, because the fragrance of ready-made foods from everywhere would entice anyone to sit down for a plate of bánh đập mắm nêm. On top of a big grilled cracker lies a sheet of silky bánh ướt, smeared with chives oil and dipped in mắm.

Tasty dishes are made right in the market.

Besides, there’s always mỳ Quảng that sings of củ nén, eaten with simmered pork and shrimp, sesame crackers, roasted peanuts, fresh herbs, and chili jam. For something different, you can also seek out offal stir-fried with turmeric, lemongrass ốc ruốc, or bánh bèo served on puny plates with prawn floss and chives oil.

Wrapping bánh nậm using dong leaves.

If you have nothing going on this weekend, drop by Bà Hoa Market for a different type of hangout. You’ll not only get to feast on amazing food, but also get to know Central Vietnam’s exceptionally flavorful cuisine.

Bánh đập is a crepe-like dish combining a layer of cracker with a layer of rice sheet.

Mỳ Quảng, bánh bèo and chả Huế.

Tiny ốc lễ are stir-fried with lemongrass and chili.

Pork offal stir-fried with turmeric.

Hẻm Gems: An Alternative Cơm Tấm From Long Xuyên for Thịt Kho Trứng Fans

2026-07-13T09:00:00+07:00

When it comes to cơm tấm, most people are familiar with cơm tấm Sài Gòn, featuring grilled pork ribs as the vedette topping. But since the dish’s creation, and as it gained popularity across the Mekong delta and southern Vietnam, another cơm tấm variant emerged alongside cơm tấm Sài Gòn. This version became so cherished by the locals that it was named after its birthplace — cơm tấm Long Xuyên.

I recently tried this dish for the first time at Cơm Tấm Tị Quỳnh. I arrived with the expectation to have the usual cơm tấm Sài Gòn, but I saw the Long Xuyên-style listed on the menu, and curiosity got the best of me.

Cơm Tấm Tị Quỳnh is hidden in a nondescript hẻm in District 3.

The shop is nestled in an alley that links Kỳ Đồng Street with the road along the Nhiêu Lộc Canal. It’s a modest spot with an open house where food is prepared and ordered, while customers sit across the house in the front yard of another neighbor that serves as both a parking area and a dining space. There’s another branch in Gò Vấp District, but I chose this location because it’s closest to my house and workplace.

To place an order, one must weave through a sea of delivery staff from food-hailing apps.

Cơm Tấm Tị Quỳnh is run by a family from southwestern Vietnam. They started as a snack shop more than 10 years ago but only began serving many types of cơm tấm in 2021. Their signature dish is cơm tấm Long Xuyên, a culinary highlight of their hometown, but they also offer the more common Saigon-style cơm tấm with toppings like chicken or tender ribs.

For a cơm tấm place that’s only three years old, Tị Quỳnh is surprisingly busy during the lunch hours. But after ordering a portion of cơm tấm Long Xuyên, I was fortunate enough to find a seat. About 5–10 minutes later, my dish was ready.

The standard portion of cơm tấm Long Xuyên has rice, pickles, fish sauce, thinly sliced braised pork belly and eggs.

The most noticeable difference between Long Xuyên-style cơm tấm and the Saigon version is the topping. Instead of grilled pork, it features caramelized pork and eggs, both sliced into thin strips, with a drizzle of braised sauce to enhance the flavors. Upon tasting, the main topping offers a delightful mix of textures. The yolk of the boiled egg provides a creamy mouthfeel, the pork strips contain both tender lean cuts and crispy, chewy fatty cuts.

If one is looking for something more substantial, pork chops and ốp la are great add-ons.

Another unique feature of cơm tấm Long Xuyên that one can observe from eating the dish is the rice. Known as “cơm tấm nhuyễn,” it is a type of broken rice with smaller grains and a firmer texture compared to Saigon’s common broken rice. To get this cơm tấm nhuyễn, the shop has to source it from Long Xuyên. When served fresh and hot, the grains give off a gentle, comforting aroma. With each spoonful, I can feel the fluffiness of the grain.

Essential elements of cơm tấm.

Sweet fish sauce is the element that ties everything together and can make or break any cơm tấm dish. Long Xuyên’s style fish sauce is also quite distinctive, thanks to its thicker, more pronounced sweetness. After all, Long Xuyên is located in Miền Tây, where sweetness is a hallmark of the region's culinary identity. Pouring the fish sauce onto the toppings ensures that each serving is filled with rich, inviting flavors.

A lunch for champions.

Upon finishing the dish, what fascinates me about cơm tấm Long Xuyên is the culmination of contrasting aspects. On one hand, the thick sweet fish sauce, and the light, delicate grains of cơm tấm nhuyễn guide me into the essence of a local delicacy from a faraway region. On the other hand, the main topping is caramelized pork and eggs, a renowned dish that evokes memories of family meals. Almost every Lunar New Year, my mom prepares a big batch of caramelized pork and eggs to ensure we have enough food stocked up throughout the holidays. It gives me a homey feeling, even though I’m savoring cơm tấm Long Xuyên.

In conclusion, Tị Quỳnh offered me a savory introduction to a southwestern specialty, Long Xuyên-style cơm tấm. A dish that truly reflects the palates of its homeland. When tasting a regional dish like this, there are elements that are new and different from what I'm used to, yet there are also elements that remind me that, no matter where we come from, there are things that still bind us all together.

This article was originally published in 2024.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7am–2pm; 4pm–9pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 0962359528
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood, GrabFood

Cơm Tấm Tị Quỳnh

19E Kỳ Đồng, Ward 9, D3, HCMC

Christine Ha Writes New Food Stories From Her Parents' Culinary Heritage

2026-06-30T13:00:00+07:00

“I was in a creative writing program for grad school at the time, and I thought, as an artist, going on MasterChef would give me something to write about.”

Going on MasterChef

Little did Christine Ha know that her decision to enter the American version of MasterChef, the competitive cooking show made famous by Gordon Ramsay’s acerbic assessments, would give her more than just fodder for her literary ambitions. In a sense, she was right: winning MasterChef comes with a cookbook contract and hers, Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food, became a New York Times bestseller.

Photo via FOX

Christine’s family is originally from northern Vietnam but they immigrated to the south, along with almost a million other northerners after the Geneva Agreement of 1954. “Because my family was originally from the north, we eat our phở the northern way with the wider rice noodles and few herbs or condiments. My grandmother was also known for her giant 8”x8” [20 cm x 20 cm] bánh chưng during Tết,” she explains.

On April 29, 1975, Christine’s father, who was still courting her mother, realized they needed to leave the country very, very soon. He rushed to ask for her mother’s hand in marriage, and they ran to find a US naval ship. Bouncing from the Philippines to a refugee camp in Guam to Pennsylvania to Chicago to southern California (where Christine was born), the family eventually settled down in Houston, Texas when Christine was two years old.

Flash-forward 18 years and Christine started losing her vision due to neuromyelitis optica (NMO), a rare inflammatory autoimmune disorder, just as she was begining to experiment with cooking. While in grad school for Creative Writing, her then-boyfriend (now husband) John Suh set up a blog. They called it The Blind Cook.

“I think the casting director for MasterChef was jokingly Googling ‘blind chef’ and ended up landing on my blog.”

Photo via FOX

In 2012, they reached out to her about auditioning for Season 3 of the show and Christine thought the name Gordan Ramsay “sounded familiar.” John and her friends strongly encouraged her to apply so she could bring awareness to what visually impaired people were capable of. Christine simply saw it as a way to gain experience and inspiration for her writing.

So she set aside her thesis and answered the open casting call, which asked potential contestants to present a dish that represented their life story. “For me, I’ve been on this eternal hunt to recreate my mom’s recipes,” she says. Christine’s mom passed away when she was 14 before teaching her daughter how to cook or writing any of her recipes down, so it’s been a series of trial and error since college. “I chose thịt kho because it was the dish I grew up eating the most often. There was always some in the fridge at our house.”

“I chose thịt kho because it was the dish I grew up eating the most often. There was always some in the fridge at our house.”

For her first audition in front of the judges, Christine put together another classic Vietnamese dish: cá kho tộ. Khôi Phạm, Deputy Editor of Saigoneer, reflects in a Saigoneer Podcast episode, “I think she’s one of my favorite contestants because she sticks to her roots. Her audition dish is actually a very, very traditional dish. If you watch western cooking shows, the fish is usually filleted horizontally but for Christine’s dish, she cut it vertically. If you go to fish markets in Vietnam, all the butchers will cut it that way. She doesn’t even try to deconstruct it or add any frills, bells and whistles.” A perfect balance of savory and sweet, her caramelized and braised catfish dish impressed the judges, and thus Christine’s life was changed from that point forward.

From contestant to the other side

But Christine may be more familiar to Saigoneer readers for her turn as a judge on MasterChef Vietnam (Vua Đầu Bếp) Season 3 from 2015. The role made her the first former contestant to become a regular judge — in any country — and placed her amongst the few female judges in the whole international franchise. “It was a great feeling to go from contestant to the other side and become a mentor,” Christine reflects.

MasterChef Vietnam Season 1 Runner-Up, Trí Phan, reflects, “From her story, I realized the most important thing when it comes to cooking is taste. And since then, I started to put more emphasis on flavor combinations that make sense, [instead of] throwing many things on a plate, just to make it look impressive.”

The Five Fungi Congee served at Christine’s new restaurant Xin Chao. It’s a grown-up take on a dish all Vietnamese children remember eating. Photo by Tam Le.

To reference the ubiquitous Thai phrase known to anyone who has traveled to the Land of Smiles, filming MasterChef Vietnam was “same same, but different” from filming MasterChef US. “A lot of the challenges emulated the American ones, but there were still many differences. For example, the contestants cooked for the military, just like I did, but the military bases were so different. The ingredients in the pantry included a lot of fish and shellfish I’ve never heard of because they’re regional to Vietnam.” Additionally, the unionization of film crew labor in the United States meant that production could only take place six days a week, stretching filming over a period of three months; whereas Vietnam’s ability to work seven days a week meant a rigorous one-month film schedule. Same same, but different.

As a Việt Kiều, Christine faces the additional challenge of having only spoken conversational Vietnamese at home. “When I came to MasterChef Vietnam, it was terrible. Not only was there new slang, but there’s a different lexicon to speak formally on TV.” If Christine’s upbringing was anything like mine — which, as a Việt Kiều who also grew up in Houston and attended the same university undergrad program as Christine, I think is a fairly safe bet — she may have only heard this formal way of speaking on Paris by Night which has been playing non-stop at all Vietnamese family gatherings since the late 1980s.

Photo via Ngoisao.net

“As I grew older, I didn't really have family around to keep it up. So I feel like my Vietnamese [was] rusty when I first arrive in Vietnam. It’s an ordeal when I travel with my husband John, who is Korean American, but has sight. Whereas I know Vietnamese, but I can’t see. So he has to spell out all the signs, and I need to remind him to include the accents or I won’t be able to read it. But it’s like riding a bike — it comes back.”

When I asked Christine about the dishes in Vietnam that surprised her the most, she had the same answer I did when I first moved to Saigon: the new street snacks. “In America, the Vietnamese food we got was what our parents brought over [in the late 1970s], which has stayed stagnant. Now a newer generation has come up with new dishes like bánh tráng trộn and bánh tráng nướng. That’s the kind of stuff that really intrigued me.”

“Now a newer generation has come up with new dishes like bánh tráng trộn and bánh tráng nướng. That’s the kind of stuff that really intrigued me.”

The Blind Goat & Xin Chao

Creative street food dishes and nhậu culture inspired Christine and John to open their first restaurant venture: The Blind Goat (Christine was born in the Year of the Goat) in 2019. Currently located in Houston’s Bravery Chef Hall among other creative culinary concepts (there are plans to move it to a standalone restaurant), The Blind Goat is an open kitchen with about fifteen seats wrapped around it like a bar. It was the first place the public could enjoy Christine’s cooking and dishes made famous by MasterChef, such as Rubbish Apple Pie, a Pop-Tart-shaped pocket pie inspired by McDonald’s apple pies but with a Vietnamese touch of star anise and ginger in the filling and a fish sauce caramel drizzle on top.

Pork Belly Baos make the perfect fried, sweet, savory, fatty snack.
Photo by Tam Le.

It was there that Christine and John serendipitously met Tony Nguyen, chef and partner at Saigon House and their future business partner. Not long The Blind Goat opened, Tony introduced himself to the couple and the restaurateurs started commiserating on the labor-intensiveness of Vietnamese food. Tony offered to help prep at The Blind Goat so they wouldn’t have to take Christine’s egg rolls off the menu, and soon one conversation led to another. "We have similar backgrounds and it turns out, the same philosophy on Vietnamese food: our parent’s food is great, but we want to make it more contemporary and reflective of Houston," remarked Christine.

At Saigon House, Chef Tony Nguyen was known for his Viet-Cajun crawfish and his H-Town Bang sauce which contains 29 ingredients including garlic, butter, citrus, cayenne pepper and cilantro. It is now a weekly special at Xin Chao.
Photo by John Suh.

“Going into business together is like a marriage, and we didn’t know each other that well, but you don’t know until you try.”

Within a few months, a location with a good deal on rent opened up and by January 2020, Christine, John, and Tony signed a lease for their new brick and mortar restaurant Xin Chao. “Going into business together is like a marriage, and we didn’t know each other that well, but you don’t know until you try.” Xin Chao would be a larger, more sophisticated restaurant than The Blind Goat, with a more robust modern Vietnamese menu complete with tequila and nước mía cocktails.

Local Houston artist Caroline Truong contributed on of the murals that cover the restaurant’s colorful interior and exterior. There is ample outdoor seating on bright blue picnic tables, a lifesaver considering Xin Chao didn’t open for business until September 2020 when America still had many pandemic restrictions for indoor dining. The inside consists of sleek wood tables, echoing the contemporary dishes.

Xin Chao Interior.
Photo by John Suh.

“I feel like less is more and when flavoring foods, I’m disciplined in creating a delicate balance.”

Speaking of their menu, the duo’s differing tastes result in a range of offerings. “Tony’s palette is very into robust flavors. He loves smoking meat and working with beef and pork. I am on the other end of the spectrum. I feel like less is more and when flavoring foods, I’m disciplined in creating a delicate balance. I enjoy creating more refreshing dishes and working with chicken and seafood,” analyzes Christine. And like any good marriage, “we complement and challenge each other.”

Xin Chao’s Smoked Beef Rib Flat Rice Noodles is one of the dishes that represent both Christina’s Texan side (smoked beef rib) and her Vietnamese side (flat rice noodles).
Photos by Tam Le.

You can find updates from Christine Ha, The Blind Goat, and Xin Chao on Instagram. You can also catch Christine Ha on a bag of Uncle Jax American Gourmet popcorn. As a notorious snack lover, I, Tam Le, will emphatically tell anyone who will listen and any readers of this article that Uncle Jax (either the Wisconsin cheddar cheese flavor or the Uncle Jax mix of cheese and caramel) is the best snack brand available in Vietnam.

Designed by Phan Nhi, Phuong Phan.
Top graphic by Jessie Tran.
Illustrations by Patty Yang, Hannah Hoang.

This article was originally published in 2021.

Hẻm Gems: CCCP Anchors Fond Memories of Soviet Cuisine for Saigoneers, Young and Old

2026-06-28T09:00:00+07:00

My earliest memories of breakfast are of Omachi beef-flavored instant noodles cooked with tomatoes and ground pork. On days where noodles sounded uninspiring, my mom would offer me the same plate as my dad: rye bread, butter, and Russian caviar. Eager to follow in his footsteps, I welcomed this addition to my breakfast menu, eventually replacing my beloved noodles.

When I was young, rye bread with butter and caviar existed in my universe simply as my dad’s breakfast. It was not Soviet or Russian, because I had no concept of Eastern Europe, and it could not be Vietnamese because it was never available at local eateries. It had no nationality; it came from nowhere in particular except my fridge. Only much later did I encounter it again as a Soviet Russian item, and began indulging in it after breakfast hours at CCCP Saigon, this week's Hẻm Gems. Here, at perhaps the most well-known Soviet restaurant in Saigon, my family and I eat our way back to my dad’s cherished college years.

The cozy wallpaper and interior at CCCP

Soviet cuisine in the 1970s in the eyes of a young Vietnamese student

From 1974 to 1979, my dad studied fluid mechanics at State University Moscow, also lovingly referred to as MGU by its Vietnamese alumni. At 18 years old, his academic achievements earned him a 12-day journey by train, taking him outside of Vietnam for the very first time. Within the boundaries of the school cafeteria, my dad quickly familiarized himself with Soviet cuisine. Albeit limited by cafeteria dining standards, he remembers this culinary experience as utterly wholesome.

My first taste of the same flavors at CCCP was much more glamorous and comfortable. Wooden dining sets, made up of large tables and matching picnic benches on wheels; red-and-white checkered curtains, under which colorful lacquer tea trays and Nevalyashka dolls peek out; floral wallpapers and mismatched tablecloths: I imagine one would find the same rustic charm in the house of someone’s grandmother in a former Soviet country. But I wouldn’t know what the interior of a Soviet home looks like, and neither does my dad. As a poor Vietnamese student living abroad during an impoverished time, he focused solely on his education, and it never took him inside any Moscow restaurants or homes. CCCP allows my dad and I to envision the place that he once called home as we eat.

My dad (left) and his roommate (right) in Moscow in 1974.

My discovery of Soviet food was an intense love at first bite. Taking after my dad, I ate a lot, quickly, and grew devoted to dishes I had gone most of my life without. Like him, I did not find Soviet flavors foreign at all. I asked if it took him long to adjust to Soviet cuisine; surely, I assume, he had struggled to repress his longing for Vietnamese flavors and fell in love with Soviet food in the long and difficult process. Yet, his practical answer humbled my sentimental expectation: during his five years eating Soviet cafeteria food, my dad never missed Vietnamese food.

The nevalyashka (Russian roly-poly doll) was once a staple in Vietnamese households.

“I hardly thought about the food back home [Vietnam],” he explained. “I was happy that there was food here [Soviet Russia]. Rich, hearty, fatty food. I had never seen such richness before. Back then, there was nothing to eat at home, so there was not much to miss. In the student-designated cafeteria, which was different from and cheaper than the one reserved for faculty and staff, there was always lots of butter, soups, and bread.”

Saigon's corner for Soviet nostalgia

The counter features many Soviet souvenirs.

CCCP’s extensive menu retains that same abundance that my dad so fondly recalls. I firmly believe that every CCCP meal should start with rye bread, mustard, optional Russian butter, raw garlic, salo (cured pork fat), and dill. All should be assembled in this order into one glorious bite. I must admit to feeling adventurous when trying it for the first time, but my dad’s first encounter with salo is far more interesting. In 1974, his Russian college roommate returned to campus with a large bone-in ham that he brought from home. He left it outside of the dorm to harden in the snow; with ease, he sliced into the solidified pork fat and offered it to my dad.

“I hardly thought about the food back home [Vietnam]. I was happy that there was food here [Soviet Russia]. Rich, hearty, fatty food. I had never seen such richness before. Back then, there was nothing to eat at home, so there was not much to miss.”

Once your palette has been shocked, then wooed, by this combination, it is ready for the mixed salted fish platter. The beet-cured salmon and smoked mackerel, with an extra side of pickles, are my personal favorites. Conversely, the juicy lamb and pork shashlyk platter is worth the 45 minute wait, which the staff always warns you about.

Rye bread and salted pork fat are a great way to start a meal.

One of my dad’s favorite Soviet dishes is on the menu: kotleta, which involves breaded and fried ground pork patties served with potatoes. The MGU student cafeteria deserves credit for adding such a hearty dish to his otherwise meagre diet. He explains: “If the dishes at the cafeteria did contain meat, which was already a luxury, it was mixed with a lot of starch, which acted as a filler in otherwise measly student meals.” Back then, he enjoyed the cafeteria kotleta and shashlyk primarily for their nutritious value.

Against all expectations, my dad has no sentimental attachment to the restaurant. Unlike him, I have grown emotionally attached to CCCP, where I taste pieces of my childhood, experience bits of my dad’s youth, and inherit his Soviet eating practices. This inheritance leaves me with an imagined sense of nostalgia for something I hardly know.

Mix bread basket

Salo (salted pork fat)

Olivier salad

Such nostalgia, however faint in my dad’s case, was brought to Saigon by Nguyễn Duy Thành, the manager and co-owner of CCCP Saigon. After living, studying, and working in Russia for eight years, Thành developed a desire to introduce a new culinary culture to Vietnam, Soviet cuisine. To help Vietnamese diners understand the food of a country that no longer exists on the world map, CCCP relies on the recipes of Ukrainian Chef Svetlana Nguyen. Svetlana, Thành’s mother-in-law, created CCCP’s first dishes.

Cured fish platter

Shashlyk platter

Smetana with berry jam

Striving to preserve and share Soviet culinary traditions, Thành and his wife Suzanna brought Svetlana’s recipes to Saigon. He recalls: “In the early days, my wife and I were the ones directly in charge of the kitchen and training the staff,” most of whom “had never been to Russia, nor had they been exposed to Soviet culture or cuisine.” Despite the cultural distance between local chefs and the menu, CCCP quickly became “a space where those who studied, worked, or have memories of the Soviet Union could rediscover familiar emotions.”

CCCP’s drink menu also covers all the Soviet classics: kvass, a lightly fermented drink; kompot, which is basically non-alcoholic fruit punch; Russian imported beer; and of course, vodka. Though the eatery's titillating appetizers and hearty entrees make for a satisfying meal, their desserts truly take the cake. The medovik, napoleon, and smetana have never been excluded from our CCCP table. Some 50 years ago, my dad had his first smetana, a thick fermented cream served with hard sugar cubes to be crunched on between every spoonful. Today, I indulge in my smetana with much more ease. When pork fat on butter just doesn't feel decadent enough, topping my creamy slice of napoleon with even creamier smetana is the only remedy.

A flavor to crave, in sickness and in health

While studying and living in Montreal, I spent many winter nights bedridden with a gruesome cold. When I could not bring myself to cook, and the snow, cold and hail ruled out picking up food, I searched for borscht on UberEats in vain. Inevitably, I wondered what my dad did to combat moments of illness all alone, through the unsympathetic Moscow winters. I wondered how much colder his winters must have been compared to mine as I scroll through Uber offers. I have only ever had borscht from CCCP: more than any other dish, borscht brings me back to the restaurant in Saigon, and makes me dream of CCCP even in Montreal.

The borscht at CCCP

It is admittedly strange for a Vietnamese girl to crave borscht of all soups when sick — had I no faith that a bowl of phở or bún bò Huế would heal me? But I have my reasons. I needed something rich in fiber without sacrificing starch and protein, a soup that I could consume with no more than one utensil, directly from my bed; any Vietnamese noodle soup would force me to use both chopsticks and a spoon. I needed something red, because it reminded me of tomatoes, which my mom threw into the noodles of my childhood for additional vitamins. Most importantly, I desperately needed to be soothed by that familiar and comforting feeling that I associate with eating borscht at CCCP with my family.

A meal at CCCP is best enjoyed in a group to share and experience more dishes.

Alas, there was no borscht in Montreal, so I settled for a miserable night’s sleep until the craving, and eventually, the cold, was gone. My yearning for a piece of Soviet tastiness was a surprising sentiment in contrast to my dad's immunity to cravings and nostalgia for CCCP. He laughs at my disbelief: “Simply because there are so many restaurants now, and I could easily eat at any of them.” In his day, scarcity made any food worth craving, let alone decadent and nutritious Soviet food. Now, he has both means and options, neither of which he had before. Today, he simply enjoys — rather than craves — meals that he shares with us at CCCP Saigon. However happy I am for his expanded access to cuisine, I am happier still that we do not share the same perspective on CCCP. As we both continue to relish CCCP’s food, I know that I will simultaneously be craving it.

To sum up:

Opening time: 10:30am–9:30p,
Parking: Cars and motorbikes
Contact: 0338 068 688
Average cost per person: $$ (around VND300,000)
Payment: All forms accepted
Delivery App: Not on apps but can be ordered via Facebook messenger and Zalo

CCCP Saigon

48A Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, Tân Định Ward, HCMC

Bánh Ú Tro Wraps the Childhood Joy of Tết Đoan Ngọ Within Its Green Leaves

2026-06-19T10:00:00+07:00

Since the beginning of our festive history, Vietnam’s special occasions have always been closely associated with traditional dishes. Lunar New Year is the time to enjoy bánh chưng and bánh tét, while the arrival of Trung Thu is foretold by the appearance of moon cakes and bánh pía. In the case of Tết Đoan Ngọ, revelers eat bánh bá trạng and bánh ú tro to get a taste of festivity.

What is Tết Đoan Ngọ?

Tết Đoan Ngọ falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, marking the midway point of the lunar yearly calendar. It’s observed by not only Vietnam but many East Asian nations too, such as China, Japan, and North and South Korea. Each celebrates the occasion via different customs, but most involve warding off bad mojo and wishing for health and bountiful harvests.

In Vietnam, Tết Đoan Ngọ’s existence is rooted in ancient Vietnamese’s agrarian life. As researcher Trần Ngọc Thêm explains in the book Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam (Revisiting Vietnam’s Cultural Identity): “[Vietnam] lies across the Tropic of Cancer, so summers are sweltering and uncomfortable, negatively affecting human health. Luckily, as part of the routine of rice growers, farmers must always monitor the weather to minimize its harmful effects and make full use of natural advantages. That was how Tết Đoan Ngọ traditions formed.”

Bánh ú tro as part of an altar offering plate for Tết Đoan Ngọ.

Some Vietnamese refer to Tết Đoan Ngọ casually as Tết diệt sâu bọ (Pest Removal Festival). During the lunar May, the weather is often intensely hot, peppered by bouts of heavy rain, both conducive to the proliferation of bugs while weakening human immunity. To “remove pests,” at midday on the fifth day, families set up festive altar offerings to their ancestors to seek successful harvests, good health, and a peaceful life. Some other customs include picking medicinal herbs, bathing in water steeped with leaves, and dabbing lime water on young children to deworm, etc.

Each region in Vietnam has a slightly different offering platter, depending on local beliefs and produce. This diversity and uniqueness can be observed in the writings of authors like Phan Kế Bính, Vũ Bằng, and Nhất Thanh: “If the platter of northerners must include red watermelons, central platters from Thanh Hóa to Huế can’t leave out duck meat. Those living in the Quảng stretch often put up sticky rice, chè, and bánh ú tro. In the south, chè trôi nước and xôi gấc are a given. People from across the South-Central, South and some locations in the North eat bánh ú tro and bánh gio. It’s common to see chè kê and grilled rice paper in Huế.” Across that eclectic range of altar treats, bánh ú tro is the rare delicacy that appears all over Vietnam.

Bánh ú tro on the altar

Bánh ú tro is made from glutinous rice and wrapped in green leaves. Despite its name, the dumpling is often just the size of a child’s fist. To make it, first, the rice must be soaked in ash water for 24 hours. The soaking liquid’s slight alkalinity helps partially hydrolyze the starch in rice, so when the rice is cooked, the result is transparent like jelly, no rice grain in sight. This soaking is believed to make bánh ú tro easier to digest than other rice dumplings. Just bite into it, one can taste the faint taste of ash, but also a refreshing feeling.

Bánh ú tro (bánh gio) is eaten with molasses in Northern Vietnam.

In each locality, the dumpling manifests in a subtly different form, taste, and eating style. Northern Vietnam calls it bánh gio, bánh nẳng, or bánh âm; this version doesn’t feature a filling and is served with molasses, hence the name bánh gio mật. Via the baskets of street vendors, bánh gio mật travels across the streets of the region, bestowing its sticky, molassy, and “ashy” goodness on eaters.

Shape-wise, makers can choose to wrap it pyramidally, squarely or cylindrically like a banana. To serve, bánh gio is placed on a plate with a drizzle of molasses. Diners section off smaller pieces using a bamboo string. Sweet, refreshing, sparkling with molasses — bánh gio is something to relish slowly, so that elegant taste lingers for longer on your tongue.

Bánh ú tro can be pyramids, squares, or even cylinders.

In Central Vietnam, bánh ú tro appears as pyramids, sold in bundles of 10. Some say the pyramid shape symbolizes a mountain’s stability, but others believe that the dumpling represents elemental harmony: fire creates earth, like how the burnt ash forms the glutinous coating, shielding the rice in the middle, which was nurtured by earth. Central Vietnamese like both bánh ú with and without a filling, but children adore the chewy outer layer, especially when dipped in molasses or rock sugar grains.

Down south, bánh ú tro is best known as bánh ú lá tre. The shape is still a pyramid, but the filling is much more diverse: apart from the traditional mung bean paste, there are also durian, coconut, candied coconut, and candied winter melon. This version is already sweet on its own, so there’s no need to dip in anything. All you need to do is peel away the leaf wrapping and then go to town on them, one by one.

How to make bánh ú tro

Bánh ú tro might seem unassuming, but its preparation is a whole tedious process that often begins every year from the end of lunar April. Bánh ú bakeries often operate around the clock during this peak season to meet orders for Tết Đoan Ngọ.

Bánh ú lá tre.

Across Vietnam, many craft villages are nationally famous for their bánh ú tro, like Đình Bảng (Bắc Giang), Đắc Sở (Hoài Đức, Hanoi), Tây Đình (Vĩnh Phúc), Phú Yên (Bình Định), Hoán Mỹ (Quảng Nam), Yên Lãng (Thanh Hóa), and even Saigon has its own bánh ú neighborhood.

In the most traditional preparation, bánh ú makers must begin the process months before the midyear period. They gather firewood, leaves, and fruit peels of ideal plants. The plant matter is dried, burnt and then sieved to produce fine ash. In each locality, the plant species might vary: dền gai, xoan, pommelo peel, and banana peel in the north; Thanh Tiên Village in Huế uses the ash from brick kilns; Quảng Nam prefers the ash from mè trees, as the oil from the ash is believed to improve the texture of the dumpling’s outer layer. Some families just use the ashes from their kitchen, which come from straw and charcoal.

How to wrap a bánh ú.

The ashes are mixed with pickling lime and water, then left alone for a few days. After the sediments have settled down, the alkaline water on top is removed and used in cooking as ash water. The concentration of the ash water plays a key role in whether the texture and taste of bánh ú would be ideal. If the alkalinity is too high, the dumpling will turn out pungent and bitter. Conversely, low alkalinity will produce dumplings that are tough and grainy. Glutinous rice, when soaked, will turn different colors, like opaque grey, sienna, or even hay yellow. Once the grains get to the desired translucence, the cook will remove them and rinse them a few times to remove the ash water.

There are many choices of leaves for the wrapping, including bamboo, dong, banana, or đót. The leaves are washed then blanched in boiling water or sun-dried to make them more pliable. A few layers of leaves are folded into a funnel and then filled with rice. The filling is added in this step too. The leaves are then pinched on top into shape and tied up using grass strings. Each bundle of bánh ú has 10 dumplings. The bundles are boiled for 4–6 hours, removed and soaked in cold water to stop the cooking. Finally, the bundles are hung on bamboo canes to dry.

A sweet memory of Tết Đoan Ngọ

Although not as widely celebrated and popular as other special occasions of the year, Tết Đoan Ngọ is still a nice occasion to check in with one’s family, perhaps over a bánh ú tro or two.

“The simple joy of Tết is just seeing the block of dough appear like sparkling amber. The rice grains have completely mushed together, soft and elastic to the touch.”

I still remember vividly the weight of bánh ú in my hands as I heave in a lungful of bamboo leaf scent, carefully peeling away the wrapping to reveal the dumpling inside. The simple joy of Tết is just seeing the block of dough appear like sparkling amber. The rice grains have completely mushed together, soft and elastic to the touch. The outer layer is jiggly and chewy, tastes of ashes — perfectly accompanied by the nutty and sweet mung bean filling. If that year my mother decided to go all out with a durian bánh ú, then that would be another layer of special fragrance. Vegetarian bánh ú is also good for dipping in table sugar, rock sugar grains, or even molasses.

Every time Tết Đoan Ngọ comes, I can’t help but yearn for the flavors of bánh ú tro, not just because of its inviting taste, but also because of everything that this humble dumpling encapsulates: the aroma of the leaf wrapping, the meaningful customs of our culture, and the bond linking generations of our family together.

This article was originally published in 2025.

Hẻm Gems: Om Momo Brings Stories, Tasty Dumplings From Tibet to Saigon

2026-06-14T10:00:00+07:00

Though I’ve known about momos for quite some time, it was only recently when I first visited Om Momo — a cozy little Tibetan restaurant tucked deep inside a dark nook in Thảo Điền — that I finally tried momos. Inside, one finds a world with a life of its own: at its center stands a mysterious figure, thinly veiled by a cylindrical sheath of turquoise; hung on the walls are vibrantly colored photographs and artworks; and between them sit tables of diners who gaze and converse around salt-rock lamps that warmly illuminate the room.

For those unfamiliar with the dish, the momo is a Tibetan dumpling, distinct from other dumplings in a few key ways. Importantly, the dough is thicker and thus chewier, and its meaty filling is considerably minimalist — which Om Momo’s owner Tsering Tashi Gyalthang attributes to the lack of abundance of ingredients in the mountains of Tibet. At Om Momo, one can choose between a filling of lamb, beef, or chicken, though they also serve a delicious vegetarian spinach and cheese momo. As Tsering puts it, the taste of momos are “pure” in that they emphasize and foreground the natural flavors of its ingredients.

Tsering (left) opened Om Momo in a secluded corner of a residential compound in Thảo Điền.

From producing videos to momos

The journey that brought Tsering — a man who seemingly embodies a combination of charisma and soft gentleness — to open Om Momo is a strange and fascinating one. Ever since arriving in Vietnam as a young man in the early 2000s, Tsering has worked as a filmmaker and director, mostly on boutique commercial films and advertising, though from time to time, also on artistic and documentary films. His career as an ad director took a turn two years ago, however, when he hosted some of his Tibetan friends to work on a film in the Mekong Delta as part of State of Statelessness, an anthology film exploring the Tibetan experience of statelessness that has now screened in prestigious film festivals across the world.

Prayer flags above the al fresco area at Om Momo.

During their visit, he and his friends frequently made and shared food together, including, above all, momos — as Tsering explains, momos are a dish that is communal by nature due to the incredible amount of work that goes into each stage of making them. Such an experience was not anything new, as he was used to frequently hosting Tibetans passing by the city as Tibet’s “unofficial ambassador” to Vietnam, as he jokingly calls himself. Yet, this time, the communal experience of making and sharing momos left him craving for more. “All these years making advertisements as a director, it was never mine, no matter how beautiful I made it,” he recalled reflecting afterwards. “I was feeling at the time I wanted to do something very human. I wanted to do something by hand, something I could hold.” He decided that, whatever happens, he wanted his next project to be related to food.

Mastering how to make dumplings was the owner's personal project in 2024.

The following year in 2024, he thus embarked on a project to devote the year to learning just one thing: making the perfect dumpling. He first went back to his hometown to learn from his friends and mom, frequenting old favorite places to get inspiration. When he returned to Saigon with the new knowledge and insights he gained, he started making dumplings at home every day. With the oversupply of dumplings, he offered his cooking to his friends, who tasted all versions, beginning with what Tsering describes as “really terrible” first trials all the way to the momos that one can now find at Om Momo.

The cozy interior of the restaurant.

Though his friends frequently floated the idea of selling his dumplings, Tsering had always been resistant to it. “I was still very uncomfortable about selling,” he explained. “I've been an artist my whole life… and as artists, we always have a kind of shyness about selling our work.” Yet, by the end of his year of making momos, Tsering felt like he was not only more patient, but also braver to tackle new things than ever before.

Thus, when his neighbor who ran a cafe asked if he wanted to take over their spot, he surprisingly said yes. “If somebody had asked me this a year before, I would have said hell no. But because of a year of meditating while making momos, I thought: Why not? Let’s do it. I called up Anto, my best friend back home, to come right away to give me a hand. And that’s how we started.”

A home in Saigon for momos and other Tibetan treats

The striking grace and beauty of Om Momo’s momos are perhaps a testament to the incredible amount of time and effort that Tsering put into mastering their form and taste. Traditionally, momos are had plain, often dipped into a fermented Tibetan chili sauce. Om Momo offers three different house-made condiments at three different levels of spice, all delicious with their own unique flavor profiles, the spiciest bringing with it quite the punch and tingle.

Guess which one of these chili sauces is the spiciest.

But though Om Momo offers momos plain, they also serve momos on a bed of Indian-style curry sauce with an assortment of spices — each type of momo paired with a different type of sauce. As Tsering explains, momos have become quite popular in India, where it is often served along Indian-spiced sauces as street food. Following the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, tens of thousands of Tibetans, including the 14^th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet to seek refuge in India, a country which has since become home to the largest community of Tibetan exiles. Thus, for Tsering, served this way, the dish serves as an homage to India, where he too grew up as a Tibetan refugee in the country’s Northern outskirts.

It is perhaps hard to think of a bite more perfect than a beautifully folded dumpling: a culinary Trojan horse that brings with it a burst of flavor that floods the mouth. Smothered in sauce, the momos become doubly explosive. Much as one reaches for bread to soak up a good sauce, the momo’s chewy dough works wonderfully to accompany the rich gravy and savory filling. I find that there is something extremely satisfying about eating each momo in a single, albeit not so easy to fit, bite, so as to experience its gush of flavor in a single mouthful.

Beef momo

Spinach and cheese momo in green sauce

Chicken momo in yellow sauce

Aside from the specialty momos, the restaurant serves other Tibetan dishes as well. Shapta is a stir-fry dish served with tender beef or chicken with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes — quite spicy, though its spice works well with the tingmo served on the side, a fluffy Tibetan steamed bun. Other dishes include chicken shamdey, a chicken and potato stew served with rice that Tsering describes as Tibetan comfort food, and kewa datshi, soft potatoes in a rich chili and cheese sauce.

Tibetan bread

Chicken shamdey

Beef shapta

Om Momo’s desserts are also worth trying. Interestingly, Tsering explains that Om Momo’s desserts are inspired by and dedicated to people in this world for whom he cares deeply. The pear poached in red wine and spices atop of the pulp of house-made Tibetan rice wine — the shape of which resembles a lama sitting in meditation — is named the “Drunken Lama,” dedicated to the Bhutanese lama and filmmaker Dzongsar Khyentse Riponche. The chocolate lava cake is dedicated to Tsering’s daughter, who loves chocolate, and the Tibetan rose panna cotta was made to satiate his girlfriend’s seemingly insatiable love for panna cotta.

The ethos of Om Momo is grounded in Tsering’s belief that “food is storytelling.”

After our meal, the Saigoneer team also tried Tibetan butter tea: a kind of fermented black tea mixed with a spoonful of butter. Almost every aspect of the tea comes as a surprise. Firstly, the tea is served in what is best described as a wooden bowl, huge in contrast to what one normally expects of a “cup” of tea. But perhaps what is more surprising is that the tea is salty — and as a result, the tea tastes somewhat like melted, salty hot ice cream. The mix of tea, salt, and butter, Tsering explains, offers Tibetans the boost they need to power through the day. While the butter used at Om Momo is cow butter, traditionally, the tea is made with yak butter, the taste of which Tsering describes as “rancid,” a word which admittedly piqued my curiosity. While butter tea may not be for everyone — myself included, somewhat shamefully — it is worth trying at least once for the experience alone.

The ethos of Om Momo is grounded in Tsering’s impassioned belief that “food is storytelling.” This manifests in the way that the dishes at Om Momo are carefully crafted as embodiments and expressions of certain stories from Tsering’s own life. But more broadly, Tsering views Om Momo as a storytelling project also in that, through it, he hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might in turn set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet: its history, culture, and people, about whom many people in Saigon know nothing about. “For many people, our food is their first introduction to Tibet,” Tsering explains. “The goal is for everything — the art, the music, the food — to make people curious.”

He hopes to incite curiosity in his guests that might, in turn, set them on a journey to learn more about Tibet.

To sum up:

Opening time: 12pm–9:30 weekdays, 11:30am–10pm weekends
Parking: Cars and motorbikes
Contact: 0918 699 697
Average cost per person: $$ (around VND200,000 VND)
Payment: All forms accepted
Delivery App: N/A

Om Momo

11/2 Street No. 57, An Khánh, HCMC

Cà Rem Cây, Kem Chuối and the Frozen Tickets to Our Childhood

2026-06-01T10:00:00+07:00

Sometimes, when I hear the distant sound of a tinkling bell, fond memories of summer days from my wonder years come flooding back to me.

Like many children who grew up in the city, I greeted the summers of my childhood with a sense of dread and boredom. The relentless extension of the urban sprawl had robbed us of the joy of flying kites in a field, or splashing in a cool pond. Instead, we endured the scorching heat in our concrete cocoon, our little bodies drenched in sweat if we dared venture outside to play. When it was high noon, our alleyway fell quiet and deserted, everyone sought refuge indoors to escape the punishing sun.

Kem ốc quế (ice cream cones).

Amidst that stifling atmosphere, the only sound that could break the silence was the gentle, rhythmic ringing of a bell. My eyes, momentarily drooped due to midday drowsiness, would suddenly open wide. My ears would strain to locate the source of the sound and I would quickly slip on my flip-flops and scurry along the sizzling asphalt road to follow the fading echo. Slowing down to a complete stop at a corner of the alley, an old motorbike stood, resting on its seat was a metal freezer box.

"Ice cream...here comes ice cream!" — the driver, a man whom I would later only know as “the ice cream uncle,” belted enthusiastically, bringing out all the children in the neighborhood. In my memory, the ice cream uncle was a hot-season version of Santa Claus — he was not plump, jolly-looking, nor bearded. Rather, the uncle was a scrawny and tan-skinned figure, his complexion darkened from hustling under the sun all day long. But calling him Santa Claus wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, as every time he came, he brought with him joyful and refreshing treats to share with us.

Kem đá bào (Shaved ice with syrup).

From the icebox at the back of his carriage, the uncle scooped out small balls of ice cream, placed them on crumbly waffle cones, and sprinkled some crushed peanuts and Ông Thọ condensed milk on top. There was even a house special, where three ice cream scoops were rolled into a sweet bread roll, priced at only VND2,000–5,000. In the hot Saigon noontime, a bite into these frozen sorbets felt like being transported to a distant oasis, where gentle breezes and calm blue lakes and seas awaited us urban-bound children.

Those were the years when I was in elementary school. I would pocket every bit of loose change around the house just to experience that fleeting moment of coolness and sweetness. On days when I couldn't manage to scrape together any money, I would stand by the door, peering for a long time until the shadow of the vehicle disappeared and the tinkling sound faded away, as if summer had left me behind.

By today's standards, my childhood treat is not considered fancy or even exceptionally delicious. The texture is airy rather than creamy, and as it is mostly made of ice, it melts more quickly than one could have enjoyed. The flavors were simple — strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, and if one was really lucky, taro or coconut. Sometimes, the only difference was in appearance, as they most probably all used the same flavoring agents. Food safety was also not ideal back in the day, so unexpected bowel movements were always a likelihood, a cautionary tale that the media would often warn children about to deter consumption.

Kem ống/kem que (popsicles).

The Vietnamese word for ice cream, kem (or cà rem in the Southern dialect) originated from the French word “crème” as the dish was introduced to Vietnam during the French colonial period. Crème refers to creme fraiche or fresh cream, an essential ingredient for making a true gelato as the west would define it.

Kem ốc quế, the version that I indulged in as a child, however, only constituted powdered milk and sweetener, thus lacking the rich and creamy flavor its western counterpart possessed. It was an adaptation by Vietnamese society in a period of economic hardships after Đổi Mới. Fresh milk and pure cream were still considered luxury items, and their preservation was costly. Thanks to simple, makeshift freezer boxes, children from working or middle-class families like mine could still taste the flavors of summer.

Kem bòn bon (ice pop).

I came to realize that our subsequent summers were filled with many “ice cream-like but not actually ice cream” treats similar to this. They arrived on bicycles and motorcycles, carried by tan-skinned Santas, characterized by the tinkling sound of bells, or even accompanied by a loud pre-recorded announcement from blaring speakers.

A favorite of mine was a dessert called xi rô đá bào. The vendor, with a cloth in hand, would hold a large block of ice and scrape thin ice shavings onto a cup. Colorful syrups and condensed milk were drizzled over the ice to create a sweet and fancy flavor. To add a touch of sourness, slices of fruits like oranges or limes could be sprinkled on top. The syrup, stored in a green glass container without a label, was a good indicator that it was a reliable, authentic xi rô đá bào cart.

Frozen yogurt.

Kem ống emerged as an upgrade from kem ốc quế, featuring a wider variety of flavors like mung bean, black bean, or jackfruit. In a stainless steel container, each ice cream stick was placed in a long, pointed iron tube. The pre-mixed powdered milk was poured into the tubes, which were then shaken, rotated, and sealed. Inside the container were large trays of ice covered with salt to ensure maximum coldness. After a few minutes, the liquid had frozen, and each ice cream stick emitted a plume of smoke when placed in my hand.

Later on, as household appliances became more affordable, even the neighbors in my community could participate in the homemade ice cream industry. I no longer had to wait for the tinkling sound of bells at the end of the alley. I could simply visit the local tạp hóa whenever I craved bòn bon, ya-ua, or kem chuối.

Bòn bon was made with fruit-flavored syrup poured into plastic tubes, while ya-ua was frozen in pouches, and kem chuối was a mixture of coconut milk, condensed milk, and mashed plantains. My joy during summer days revolved around standing in front of the freezer section, feeling lightheaded from the cool air, and carefully selecting the largest ice cream bars or pouches, just like how my mother picked vegetables at the market.

Kem chuối (banana pops).

I have since grown up and ventured far from the old alley. The sound of bells rarely echoes in the city, and I don't know where to find many of the old-fashioned ice cream flavors anymore. Rapid economic development has allowed people to enjoy ice cream made from actual dairy and fruits, of various flavors and origins. On a scorching summer day, I can treat myself to an organic Italian gelato, an avocado frozen treat from Đà Lạt, or a bowl of Korean bingsu. And yet, a taste of childhood lingers in the back of my mind: that powdery, artificial sweetness that made the hot noons less oppressive, enough to make one feel instantly like a child again upon hearing the fleeting sound of bells passing by on a summer day.

This article was originally published in 2023.

Hẻm Gems: Indonesia's Ayam Penyet Is a Smashing Celebration of Spices

2026-05-25T10:00:00+07:00

The most straightforward definition by which to explain ayam penyet to the Vietnamese layperson is perhaps “cơm gà Indo.” It’s technically not wrong: the dish has rice and chicken, and originates from Indonesia. But once you've actually sunk your teeth into this special fried chicken, the translation seems unfairly reductive because ayam penyet is so much better than the sum of its parts.

Editor's note: As of March 2024, Ayam Penyet Vindo has moved to 24 Điện Biên Phủ. The interior depicted in the review features the previous location.

You can’t go 500 meters in Saigon without bumping into cơm gà. Combining the cheapest carbohydrate and the cheapest meat, permutations of chicken rice are available to people of all ages, financial situations, and walks of life. With just VND50,000 or less, Saigoneers can wolf down a portion of Hainanese-style chicken rice or crispy cơm gà xối mỡ just around the corner from their natural habitat. This poultry love is not limited to Saigon, as many other Vietnamese localities have concocted their own versions as well, such as cơm gà Hội An, Phú Yên, Nha Trang, and Phan Rang, among others.

Ayam Penyet Vindo's light box.

As a cơm gà hobbyist, I find great pleasure in its level of ubiquity, but for home cooks aspiring to break into the commercial scene with their own creations, this means there are many chickens in the market to compete against. The owner duo behind Ayam Penyet Vindo, Lizam and Ricoh, find the popularity of cơm gà in Vietnam both an opportunity and a challenge to overcome — how to convince local customers’ taste buds that ayam penyet is not just typical rice with fried chicken.

Originating from Java, ayam penyet is nothing fancy, though its accessibility means there are thousands of versions out there. “Ayam” means “chicken” and “penyet” is Javanese for “smashed.” After being fried, the chicken leg is pounded to break up the meat. Some theorize that the action is to make it easy to eat ayam penyet by hand, but Ricoh tells me that it’s to release the moisture so that once sambal is applied on top, the meat will absorb the sauce, becoming more flavorful.

According to Singaporean food blogger Tony Boey, this now-commonplace dish had its beginning in sambal tempe penyet from the East Javan city Surabaya where tempeh — fermented whole soybeans pressed into blocks — is fried and pressed into a plate of sambal. This is a favorite meal of Pak Wardoyo, the son of Puspo Wardoyo, the founder of Ayam Bakar Wong Solo restaurant chain, so he added it to their menu, and later Pak incorporated fried chicken to form a new dish called “ayam penyet” in 1992. The smashed chicken gradually grew in fame, spreading to the rest of the country, and even to nearby neighbors like Malaysia, Singapore, and now Vietnam.

From house party to restaurant

Having sampled some particularly memorable ayam penyet versions in Singapore, I often find myself daydreaming about sambal chicken and airy fried batter flakes. A spontaneous Google query during the lockdown in 2021 brought up Ayam Penyet Vindo, a casual upstart promising authentic fried chicken from their home base on Cống Quỳnh Street, which has since shuttered as the Vindo duo ventured outside the alley onto the streets of downtown District 1. As you make a turn from Điện Biên Phủ into Mạc Đĩnh Chi, it’s impossible to miss the bold red-and-yellow sign of Vindo. The restaurant’s dining area is sparse, with a small entrance furnished with a few table sets, and a cozy air-conditioned corner upstairs.

Vindo is open from 10am to 10pm.

Vindo is run by Lizam, a Malaysian, and Ricoh, an Indonesian, who had been close friends for years before they decided to dip their toes into the F&B world. Lizam, with salt-and-pepper hair and a warm demeanor, represents the cautious, measured half of the pair, while bespectacled Ricoh fills in the rest with an adventurous streak and knowledge of Indonesian cuisine.

Back in Malaysia, the two met in 2014 while working for the same rubber company: Lizam in marketing and Ricoh in a technical role, a dynamic that they said carried over into the restaurant’s genesis. The friends moved to Vietnam in 2016 and 2017, following a call for a foreign partnership from a Vietnamese rubber company. Working together in Vietnam, they once shared an apartment and sometimes would cook dishes from home; this was the setting for the first spark leading to Vindo. Being an Indonesian restaurant, Vindo’s original chicken recipe naturally came from Ricoh, though once they realized that this flavorsome chicken was something special, they worked together to perfect it into an easy-to-follow recipe for the kitchen staff.

Lizam and Ricoh, the owners, came to Vietnam in 2017 and 2016, respectively.

“One day, in the evening, I fried chicken, then he [Lizam] said he loved it so much. Then I suggested ‘how about we make ayam penyet?’” Ricoh recalls. He would make ayam penyet again for a Malaysian buddy, and slowly the tasty fried chicken gained a reputation among their Malaysian and Indonesian friends in Saigon. “They love the chicken so much, so people would call and say ‘Please come to my house and eat chicken together.’ They ask me to cook the chicken. I said ‘Oh my god, I cannot cook for you every day.’”

We pooled the money, got the place, and rented it. Do first, worry later.

Nonetheless, getting from “this is some delicious chicken, we should sell it” to opening an actual business is not a simple A-to-B journey. “We didn’t agree [on the decision to open the restaurant]. We spent a month or two playing devil’s advocate. He was ‘pro,’ I was ‘con,’” Lizam explains. “After a while, Ricoh said ‘let’s just rent a place and do it.’ So we pooled the money, got the place, and rented it. Do first, worry later.” It took them about a month to test the whole dish together to reach a final product that can appeal to most Saigoneers, meaning trying to temper the heat in the sambal so as not to blow people’s heads off with Indonesia-level spiciness.

A chicken by any other name

Clockwise: ayam panggang, ayam penyet, ayam kremes, gado-gado, and nasi goreng in the middle.

At Vindo, the menu is decidedly straightforward: the main attraction is chicken leg quarters done in various ways. The headliner, of course, is ayam penyet, a fried chicken leg gently smashed and slathered in a coat of bright, pungent sambal. Ayam panggang instead subjects the leg to open flame in a grill while rendang ayam is chicken that has been braised for hours in coconut milk and a host of aromatics. If one is tired of poultry, there’s also fried rice in the form of nasi goreng, and a sweet peanut salad in the form of gado-gado, both officially recognized as Indonesian national dishes. Each chicken plate arrives with rice, fried tofu, tempeh, and a dollop of sambal.

Nasi goreng.

Gado-gado.

Differentiating their fried chicken from the corner cơm gà in the eyes of eaters is a continuous concern for the pair, though, if the addition of sambal and native accouterments like tempeh is not enough to do that, the flavor of the chicken leg would surely suffice. Having been parboiled with spices before being fried, the chicken absorbs much of its surroundings to stand on its own, but the sambal topping really equips it with a powerful punch. Notes of galangal, turmeric, chili, and garlic seep into every bite, cutting the oily side of the frying. We enjoy the sambal so much that we have to order an extra bowl to smear on everything.

The flavorful chicken is enveloped in a layer of sambal.

A slice of tempeh.

According to Ricoh, every day he has to make three batches of fresh sambal, each with a different level of heat. If this was Indonesia, we likely would need just one — at the hottest level — but alas the sweet tooth of Saigoneers necessitates palatal coddling. I am guilty as charged, and I enjoy dipping my chicken into the Level 1 sambal a lot.

Vindo’s ayam penyet is just as delectable as my memory serves, but admittedly, it’s just No. 2 in my ranking of dishes here: the first position belongs to their rendang ayam. It’s a festive treat whose main method of imbuing flavors into the meat is by cooking it for hours and hours, as Lizam aptly puts in my favorite description of anything we sampled during our visit: “Rendang is like ‘Danggg, you don’t have rendang?’” Its existence is so natural in any self-proclaimed Indonesian eatery that people will bemoan its lack thereof. With every slight maneuver of my cutlery, the meat falls off the bone, deeply infused with a coconut-rich sauce that prompts me to demolish the entire portion of rice as quickly as it arrives.

Ayam kremes.

Ayam panggang.

There used to be a time when Vindo’s following was made up of nearly all Malaysians and Indonesians, but now, they tend to book takeaway orders rather than make time to dine in. On weekends, Indonesian households living in suburban Saigon or nearby localities visit the restaurant as a stop during a family outing, but during the weekday lunch rush, Vindo’s tables host groups of Japanese office workers, curious passersby, and even gaggles of young Vietnamese eager to sample new, exciting food.

“We are a halal restaurant. People always think halal is ‘no pork,’ but it’s actually much bigger than that, it’s about the cleanliness, method of preparation, and the animals being used. We want to portray that it’s not just for Muslims,” Lizam says. “When you put in effort, when the food is good, the people are happy. The love is there.”

To sum up:

Opening time: 10am–10pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: +84 366 891 668
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: ShopeeFood, Grab

Khôi loves chicken, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Ayam Penyet Vindo

24 Điện Biên Phủ, Tân Định, HCMC

Ngõ Nooks: At Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy, a Broth That Bridges Hanoi Taste and Huế Flair

2026-05-18T13:00:00+07:00

In only three places have I enjoyed truly sumptuous bowls of bún bò giò heo: in its hometown of Huế, in Hội An and at Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy in Hanoi.

I still remember how difficult it was to try and find bún bò giò heo in the capital after being spoiled by the meal’s true richness in central Vietnam. It always came down to one thing. In Huế, the broth derives its complexity from boiled bones, trotters and mắm ruốc (Huế-style shrimp paste), before being infused with lemongrass, chilies and cashew powder.

Hanoi’s version just seems watery and thin; in comparison, it was an apparition of flavor. Until I realized — that’s how Hanoians like it! It is common knowledge among Vietnamese that northerners prefer subtle tastes, while in the center and south it’s rich and well-seasoned nourishment that fits the palate.

Thankfully, Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy achieves a middle ground between the two by adapting their recipe to cater not only to Hanoians, but also those searching for a more authentic Huế style, like myself. Though their broth is clear and light and contains pineapple — something that would make my friends in Huế turn their noses up — the richness of the soup remains. Thùy, who owns the shop, is a Huế native and said she achieved the dish’s complexity through prolonged simmering of the bones. What’s more, all the shop’s condiments — mắm ruốc, chilli sauce, shallot vinegar — are shipped in directly from her hometown.

A complete bowl here is topped with thinly-sliced beef, tendon, a firm block of coagulated pig’s blood, a small pig trotter and a knob of chả cua (pork and crab ball). Thuy’s customers rave about the chả cua, to the extent that she fetches more from Huế a couple of times a week in order to keep them fresh. She’s also meticulous with her meat — the beef is always well-marbled and tender. And while I’ve munched on beef loin, brisket and meaty tendons elsewhere, I’ve actually never tried the cut served at Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy: scrumptious and juicy beef cheeks.

In addition to bún bò giò heo, Thùy also serves bánh bột lọc and bánh nậm — two of the most popular dishes in Huế cuisine. Wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed, the former is pudgy, transparent and chewy, with savory shrimp pork fat inside, while the latter is flat, soft, and topped with minced meat and scallions. Although they aren't available every time I order, they are always fresh, and always my favorite.

To sum up:

Opening time: 7:30am–9:30pm
Parking: Bike only
Contact: 098 697 3578
Average cost per person: $ (under VND100,000)
Payment: Cash, Transfer
Delivery App: Be

This article was originally published in 2018 on Urbanist Hanoi.

Bún Bò Huế Thu Thùy

18 Đại Cồ Việt Street, Hai Bà Trưng District, Hanoi

Flash and Flimflam Won’t Earn Your Restaurant a 10 Year Legacy

2026-05-14T10:05:00+07:00

It happened when a young chef explained where he learned discipline, and when a kitchen manager recalled his first serious mentor. It happened again and again. Over the years, reporting on Saigon’s restaurant scene, Chef Sakal Phoeung’s name kept coming up. After finally sitting down with Sakal and learning more about his time in Vietnam and his approach to building teams and restaurants, I now understand why.

When Sakal first came to Vietnam more than twenty years ago, Saigon looked very different compared to today. Street food reigned and headlined Vietnam’s culinary scene while higher-end restaurants were mostly confined to hotels. The idea of building a long culinary career here was not yet obvious.

Born in Cambodia but raised in France, Sakal was hired by Sofitel Saigon shortly after it opened because of his experience at Michelin restaurants in Paris.

He arrived simply to work, without expecting to stay long – a common refrain for foreigners who have made their long-term homes in Saigon.

“Vietnam felt open,” he told me when looking back at those early days, adding that he saw room to try things, build a team, and to grow along with the city.

What impressed him most at that time was neither the available ingredients nor the techniques. It was the attitude of young Vietnamese cooks in his kitchen. Cooking was not yet an aspirational profession; most of them simply needed a job. But they learned quickly, listened carefully, and worked hard without complaining.

Building Le Corto

After ten years of working at the Sofitel, Sakal decided to go out on his own and opened Le Corto. "Le Corto today is very close to what I first imagined. The bistronomy spirit, the comfortable pricing, the Parisian-style service, and the intimate atmosphere are all still there,” he told Saigoneer.

A decade is a long time for any restaurant to endure. While many owners get stuck in a vortex of concept tweaking and trend chasing, Sakal his success to staying the course. “We never changed our core idea,” Sakal says. “We just kept improving.”

This improvement has been defined by sourcing better ingredients, expanding the wine selection, and above all, building a team through discipline and support. This all culminates in young chefs who stay longer, and guests who are confident in a consistent level of excellence.

While he may be reserved when speaking about mentorship, many chefs who worked under Sakal openly recall him fondly while emphasizing the same characteristic: discipline. In his kitchen, it all comes down to structure, precision, and only then creativity.

“I never saw my kitchen only as a place to train cooks,” Sakal told me. “It is about shaping people.”

Over the years, Le Corto’s prep stations, stoves, and ovens have become an unofficial incubator for a generation of young chefs. Some stayed a few years before opening their own restaurants, while others joined international kitchens. A few eventually stepped onto competition stages to represent Vietnam.

Despite it technically being a lost investment, Sakal knows that as part of their growth, they will eventually depart the nest. When he feels a young chef is ready to leave, he gives them one simple piece of advice: move for growth.

Bocuse d’Or

Bocuse d’Or Vietnam 2025 team comprised of chef/coach Daniel Nguyen, Sakal Phoeung, Chairman of Bocuse d’Or Vietnam, chef Vũ Xuân Trường, and chef Nguyễn Quang Tâm (from left to right).

Outside of Le Corto’s kitchen, Sakal seeks other ways to help Vietnam’s restaurant scene expand and develop. One way he does this is through Bocuse d’Or, one of the most demanding chef competitions in the world, sometimes described as the Olympics of gastronomy.

Teams from over 24 countries spend months preparing for a few intense hours of cooking once every two years. Thanks to Sakal and others, Vietnam now has a voice there.

Beyond the symbolic value of having Vietnam compete in the prestigious event, Sakal sees it as a way to build chefs who can perform with confidence, which pushes them to raise their level to that of their global peers in more developed culinary markets. “Talent is not the problem,” he says. “The challenge is preparation.”

The young chefs he mentors bring Vietnamese ingredients and stories to the stage, but these need to be supported by structure and calm, which Sakal preaches on a daily basis in the kitchen of Le Corto.

Staying in Vietnam

After more than two decades, Vietnam is no longer a temporary chapter for Sakal. Outside of the restaurant, he has become a fixture at early morning markets where he scours ingredients for his menu.

New set menu of Le Corto in 2026

I asked him what he hopes people remember about Le Corto. “Without Michelin stars or global rankings, Le Corto’s reputation has been built by diners themselves. That kind of recognition, coming directly from the public, means more to me than any award."

He wants guests to stay longer than planned, and in a city like Saigon, where people don’t often linger at restaurants unless actively engaged in an all-engrossing nhậu session, this is an achievement on its own.

Le Corto's website

Le Corto's Facebook Page

Le Corto's Email

028 3822 0671

Le Corto, 5D Nguyễn Siêu, Sài Gòn Ward, HCMC

Hẻm Gems: Go Back in Time to Chợ Cũ's Golden Days via Cô Chánh's Hủ Tiếu Mì

2026-05-11T17:00:00+07:00

In the memory-scape of children growing up in the countryside like me, there always exists the familiar sight of old wet markets and the mornings we spent there, toddling behind our moms on the hunt for snacks, CDs, and lollipops. In the afternoons, I often tagged along with my grandma to buy meat and veggies, sneaking a toy or two inside her basket. Sometimes, if I was particularly sweet, she would allow us to have lunch there instead of at home.

After years of studying and working in Saigon, I once thought that these nostalgic scenes only live in my mind now, but on a trip to Tôn Thất Đạm’s chợ cũ, I was shocked to find a charming kiosk with the same retro display I remember from my childhood.

Hủ Tiếu Mì Cô Chánh is located at 69 Tôn Thất Đạm, manned by the titular cô Chánh, whose real name is Huỳnh Thị Dung. She told me that the kiosk was a family heirloom from her uncle, who started selling noodles 60 years ago. When he emigrated abroad, he left the operation in her hands. At first, she kept it simple with just Guangdong-style hủ tiếu, but to cater to local demand, over time, she added more options to the menu, like hủ tiếu mì, wonton, meatballs, etc.

The flavors of cô Chánh’s noodle shop have changed across the decades too. The uncle moved away when she wasn’t a noodle master yet, so every day, she learns on the job by cooking the way she knows how while listening to customer feedback to improve her craft.

Diners have two options: large strands or small strands of noodles. Both share the same chewy texture and eye-catching golden hue. Other toppings like shrimp, fried garlic, fried pork lard, liver, heart, and pork add to the dining experience. Chunks of liver are cleaned properly so there’s no unpleasant smell with every bite. Cô Chánh has been getting her ingredients from the same trustworthy supplier over the years. The vat of bubbling broth in the corner, moderately seasoned and not too sweet, is an undeniable attraction luring curious shoppers to stop by. Each guest can modify the flavors of their bowl in whatever way they see fit with the range of Teochew vinegar and sauces on offer.

Slurping up a few spoonfuls of warm broth, I feel as if I was transported to the noodle stalls I enjoyed years ago. Cô Chánh’s noodles have that “vintage” flavor profile often seen in Hoa Vietnamese kitchens. The wontons are quite hefty with a thin wrapper and a well-season filling, keeping me hungry for more. The meat filling is a touch saltier than that of other stalls, but this balances the taste well in the context of the light broth. Apart from the taste, diners will no doubt feel delighted by the way she presents the bowls. Each slice of pork, each sprinkle of fried shallot, and each shrimp is arranged neatly on top of the noodles.

Cô Chánh shared that she wakes up every day at 4am to start prepping ingredients and usually finishes by 7pm. There used to be a time when this tiny kiosk could feed over 100 patrons in a day, mostly office workers from nearby buildings having breakfast or lunch. Post-pandemic, however, the foot traffic has dwindled. “Now, I sell about 30 bowls at most a day. Some days the revenue can’t even cover the ingredient costs,” cô Chánh sadly explained.

Whenever the kiosk is empty, cô Chánh and cô Gái, a friend who helps out with stall operation, start tidying and washing, before sitting down to chat about every topic in the universe. The chatter greatly contributes to the uniquely cordial vibes of the market, so much so that guests often feel comfortable enough to join in their conversations.

When asked about her kiosk partner, she said: “A long time ago, I was selling noodles, and she was selling sweets right next door. Business was quite bad at the market, so I asked her to hop over to sell noodles with me. Since then, we sisters have stuck together.” Perhaps it was thanks to that stroke of fate that cô Chánh’s noodle shop is always filled with laughter. They work well and play well, never one to shy away from teasing each other to ward off the exhaustion of a tough work day.

Cô Chánh is not getting any younger, so her health has declined somewhat, but she reassured me that she will continue selling noodles no matter what, as the kiosk has been a part of her life for decades — a constant source of happiness during the golden days of a Saigoneer who lives alone.

To sum up:

Taste: 4/5
Price: 4/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Friendliness: 5/5
Location: 4.5/5

Hủ Tiếu Mì Cô Chánh

69 Tôn Thất Đạm, Bến Nghé Ward, D1, HCMC

The Making of a Living Cuisine: The History of Nikkei Cuisine and its Arrival in Saigon at Nikura

2026-05-06T10:07:00+07:00

Separated by a vast ocean and home to an unrelated language, culture, and history, Japan would seemingly have minimal interaction with Peru. But a close relationship between the two nations goes back centuries.

In 1821, Peru won independence, and with the subsequent abolition of slavery, it needed plantation labor. Meanwhile, in the late 1800s, economic calamity in Japan resulted in thousands of poor farmers facing starvation. Alongside other immigrants, these Japanese arrived to work and, in doing so, set in motion a process of culinary evolution that would lead to the emergence of one of the most popular cuisines in 2026.

Japanese workers on a Peruvian plantation. Photo via Densho Digital Repository.

Upon arriving in Peru, the Japanese aimed to integrate into society, but their assimilation involved the intermingling of some culinary traditions. For example, to make ceviche, Peruvians would marinate seafood in citrus juice for hours, while the Japanese suggested just a few minutes. They also provided new ways to take advantage of the coastal nation’s abundant aquatic resources, as Peru hadn’t been accustomed to eating octopus or eel before. Over time, the Japanese left Peru’s plantations, with many entering the country’s food industry, where they introduced elements of what they had been cooking at home, including soy sauce, ginger, and tofu into local dishes, as well as preparation methods, including sashimi. Waves of Japanese businessmen towards the end of the century created demand for traditional dining from their homeland, which increased the availability of Japanese ingredients and expert chefs trained in Japan, adding another layer of interaction between Japanese and Peruvian foods.

By the beginning of the 20th Century, Nikkei, the name given to the cuisine that resulted from Japanese immigration to Peru, began expanding around the world. The famed Nobu chain of restaurants, of which several have received Michelin Stars, helped bring global interest and prestige to a cuisine defined as an intuitive merging of bold Peruvian flavors with precise Japanese preparation and presentation methods, with ample room for local adaptation. The opening of Nikura in Saigon now allows diners here to understand what makes the creative cuisine so popular.

Nikura’s Nikkei Chef De Cuisine, Ivan Casusol, was born and raised in Lima, where Nikkei’s first foundations were laid. After growing up with the cuisine, he brought it abroad via Nikkei restaurants in North America, the Middle East, and Asia. At Nikura, he not only introduces diners to its strong flavors and delicate techniques, but also its propensity for adaptation. Vietnam’s seafood and flavorful produce can be incorporated with high-end imported items to provide guests with an authentic experience that is beholden to no singular definition or dogmatic principle.

The best way to understand Nikkei cuisine, of course, is to try it. The central role of Peruvian chili peppers in bright, intense sauces is apparent in Nikura’s Concha, a dish that contains succulent seared Japanese scallops with a colorful, creamy, subtly spicy lime sauce. Meanwhile, a perfectly prepared A8 Wagyu steak reveals how Nikkei knows when to show restraint and let the inherent excellence of ingredients speak through expert technique. Finally, the Nikura rice, which contains cured ham broth, shiitake mushrooms, a poached egg, and a nutty sauce, spotlights how local ingredients can accompany novel preparations for moments never encountered before.

The interplay of Peru and Japan extends from the plate to Nikura’s space and ambiance. Patterns, textures, and visual inspiration appear on uniforms, decor, and architecture, embodying Japan’s understated elegance and Peru’s vibrance. Private dining rooms, a large patio beside an extensive organic garden that provides the restaurant with fresh ingredients, and seats in front of the open kitchen allow for a great variety of expectations.

Nikura’s ability to surprise diners through flavors and sensory details is matched by the adjacent modern cocktail bar, Pisco Hana. The room exudes upscale Japanese grace with hints of South American exuberance via live DJs who set, match, and respond to the room’s energy.

Pisco Hana’s menu adopts Nikura’s ethos of organic integration thanks to an extensive cocktail menu that features Japanese fruits, flowers, and liquors, and Peruvian spices and flavors, with an emphasis on seasonal Vietnamese products and preferences. A focus on mocktails and low-alcohol drinks further allows Pisco Hana to accommodate all varieties of visits, including gatherings before meals at Nikura, or after-dinner drinks to continue conversations long into the evening.

Nikkei exists because humans travel, migrate, trade, integrate, adapt, and share. It’s a living cuisine reflective of our creativity, flexibility, and appreciation for new experiences. When you take a bite of a dish at Nikura or a sip of a cocktail at Pisco Hana, your palate serves as a bridge spanning Japan and Peru.

Nikura's website

Phone +84 2835209999

Nikura, G Floor, JW Marriott Hotel & Suites Saigon, Saigon, Sài Gòn, Hồ Chí Minh 700000

How Soy Milk Symbolizes an Imagined Vietnam of My Childhood in France

2026-04-29T15:00:00+07:00

I still remember vividly the anticipation running through my veins, when I saw a waiter bringing me a glass of sữa đậu nành, every time my family took me to one of the many Vietnamese restaurants of the 13^th arrondissement of Paris, the city’s renowned Chinatown. It was a neighborhood I was bound to get dragged to as a French kid with a Vietnamese parent, whether I wanted to or not. For me, this glass represented the quintessence of typical Vietnamese drinks during a good meal: one of the rare glimpses into the daily customs of my ancestors’ culture.

The dishes in those restaurants were good, but I was used to eating them at home, cooked by my grandmother. They were already part of my usual experiences, and as such, didn’t evoke the special feeling of Vietnamese authenticity, not like sữa đậu nành. I can recall restaurants’ over-the-top decorations, and customers shouting, one louder than another. In the midst of it, I only focused on my drink: it tasted mild, but with a slight earthy note. More than anything, the coldness shielded me from the heat of the meal, which I couldn't wait to devour.

A Vietnamese restaurant in Paris with al fresco seats. Photo via Noodlies.

Soy milk isn't the only drink offered there, and there are versions of it everywhere. From cans at the store around the corner to homemade soy milk, the quality might differ depending on the restaurant, but it’s always on the menu. This is why I was certain that soy milk was the go-to drink for any Vietnamese person when eating out: the real taste of Vietnam.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Saigon to discover that the first restaurant I went to didn’t offer sữa đậu nành. Was there a shortage at the moment? Did I stumble upon the only restaurant without soy milk? I quickly understood the reality of the matter: the ubiquity of soy milk was an imagination of my own. Baffled by this realization, I looked to see what everybody else was really drinking when the server approached me: “Is trà đá ok?” Everywhere I went, tea was the de facto drink for Vietnamese food, and soy milk was nowhere to be found. Trà đá's role here is what I thought sữa đậu nành would be.

Hot soy milk, among other flavored milks like mung bean and corn, is a beloved beverage in Đà Lạt. Photo via Vinpearl.

Since then, I’ve had opportunities to get my hands on soy milk, be it in higher-end restaurants or special soy milk stalls in Đà Lạt style, a city I have yet to visit. However, the taste is always different from the ones I drank before setting foot in Vietnam. I was eager to find the representation of a country that only existed in my mind, only to realize what I sipped tasted like… soy milk. It was good, but the distinctive taste of getting closer to Vietnam was absent.

Maybe soy milk was just a me-fantasy, not even an experience all French kids with Vietnamese background have. What I have come to accept now is that this mythical “Vietnamese taste” I longed for is not locally present: if I go to Paris now and order one of these glasses I’ve had so many of, I know it won’t feel the same anymore. It was never about milk, nor was it about Vietnam: the Vietnamese daily life I thought I could peek at via the bottom of those sữa đậu nành glasses lit an interest in a side of my heritage that had felt far away.

Hẻm Gems: At Sara Ethiopian Restaurant, a Chicken Stew for the Soul

2026-04-28T08:00:00+07:00

Before the existence of Sara Ethiopian Restaurant in Saigon, my knowledge about the African country could fit squarely in a child’s palm: its capital, Addis Ababa; the tragic Ethiopian Airlines crash in March; and its national dish, injera.

Editor's note (April 2026): Sara Ethiopian has returned after a few years of hiatus and has moved to Thủ Thiêm. Check out their updated address at the end of the article. This review features the restaurant's original location in Phạm Ngũ Lão Ward in 2019.

Look, I’m not proud of it. Living in Asia doesn’t do wonders for one's immersion in African culture and cuisine, even to someone who sees eating as a sacred hobby, like me. My past experiences with African food, however, have always been stellar. A lady living in the suburban reaches of Gò Vấp District cooks the most divine Nigerian dishes out of her own home. These include fragrant batches of jollof, a golden rice dish that packs in tomatoes, cayenne pepper, curry powder and thyme. Still, jollof is a mainstay in West Africa, at least three countries away from the Horn of Africa along the eastern coast of the continent, where Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia huddle.

I am a firm believer in character development, so after an eye-opening meal at Sara Ethiopian, I set out to wallow obsessively in Wikipedia articles. Ethiopia is currently the most populous landlocked country in the world, though what it lacks in seafood, it more than makes up for with a range of diverse stews and vegetable-based fare, a fact that’s well-represented in Sara’s menu.

Berhanu Demissie opened the restaurant with his wife, Sara Alamerew.

When I arrived for my second visit, the restaurant's general manager, Berhanu Demissie, was casually sweeping the shopfront. Sara Ethiopian is in the basement of a tube house down an alley on Đỗ Quang Đẩu Street. Its front dining area is outfitted with a verdant plastic lawn, and the walls are embellished with a mosaic of food photography, including bowls of hearty stew and platters of salad. Demissie and his wife, Sara Alamerew, officially opened the eatery in Saigon just a month ago after more than two years in Cambodia.

Sara Ethiopian’s Phnom Penh counterpart is already a household name among the expat community there, as well as visiting tourists, thanks to its close proximity to the National Museum of Cambodia. According to Alamerew, opening a restaurant in Asia wasn’t her original plan. A friend of the couple was teaching English in Cambodia a few years ago. “He told us: ‘Why don’t you open a restaurant here, you have the experience’," Alamerew said. “Then I said. ‘okay, why not?'”

They didn’t expect the Phnom Penh joint to blow up like it did, but the success was enough to entertain requests to branch out to Saigon. Even in Cambodia, their patrons included many visitors from Vietnam, who insisted that the husband and wife pair grace Vietnam with their culinary expertise. Requests were made by everyone from travel enthusiasts to the big names at the Ethiopian Embassy in Hanoi, who were stoked to learn of the opening of Sara in Saigon. “They took a lot of injera, even the dry ones, to Hanoi,” Demissie proudly claimed. “Now they’re very happy we’re in Hồ Chí Minh [City].”

Sara Alamerew once owned a successful eatery in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.

Injera is the country’s national dish, a steamed flatbread whose humble appearance might lead the uninitiated to underestimate it, but it bears a unique taste and texture that’s impossible to forget. The most traditional version of the bread is made entirely from teff powder and water. Native to the Horn of Africa, teff is an ancient grain that’s even smaller than sesame seeds but packs ample micronutrients and fiber. Ground into a powder, teff is used as the main or partial ingredient to make injera batter, which undergoes three days of fermentation to give the bread a tangy, sourdough-like flavor and a spongy texture that’s reminiscent of Vietnamese bánh bò, a dessert also made fluffy by yeast.

It is this unique airiness that enables injera to soak up the array of sauces in Ethiopian cuisine. At Sara’s, injera is made fresh by order and served in rolls neatly arranged in a basket. When needed, tear away a small portion and use it to pinch bits of the stew and sauces to put in your mouth. For Ethiopian food novices, you can’t go wrong with the meat veggie combo — including doro wot, a chicken stew; minchet abish, a spiced beef stew; marinated beef; and accompanying vegetables (see the top photo).

A portion of doro wot with a basket full of injera rolls.

Describing doro wot as a stew is unjustly simplistic, but the complexity of the concoction is hard to transcribe in words. A portion of doro wot comes with a hard-boiled egg and chicken meat, drenched in a mahogany gravy. “That one [doro wot] is a little difficult to make,” Alamerew warned me. “Red onions, a lot of red onion.” Early in the morning every day, she wakes up, chops up the onions and sweats them down on low heat. “You do it for a long time, you have to do it with fire,” she said. Once the onions are sweated down, she sautées them with a mixture of spices and Ethiopian clarified butter. It’s also crucial to remove every bit of fat from the chicken, “even from the inside” because, according to her, the stew will spoil if the fat gets into the sauce.

Shiro wot, a chickpea stew, is also the pride of Sara Ethiopian. The velvety soup coats your tongue with a nuttiness and umami flavor so inviting it practically commandeers your hands to never stop dipping. Of course, one can request steamed rice to go with the soups, but “injera is our daily life. This is what we eat all the time,” Demissie said. He emphasized its casual presence in their cuisine, in comparison with doro wot, which is a “special occasion” feast for important days like New Year or Christmas.

Tibs, a stir-fry dish with beef.

At one point during our conversation, Alamerew excused herself and came back with a pot of freshly brewed coffee. The tall black pot is called jebena, an important part of Ethiopian coffee culture. People can drink coffee in the morning, for lunch and in the evening, she said. She likes it that Vietnamese also gather to drink coffee on the street as a bonding activity. As much as the beverage is an indispensable part of Saigon’s daily rhythm, at times Saigoneers don’t take it as seriously as Ethiopians do. While the latter do drink coffee casually, the most ceremonial form of coffee consumption in Ethiopia is a ritual involving incense, flowers and snacks like puffed rice or popcorn.

The restaurant has only been open for a month, but reaching that point required years of planning. Within the span of two years, they went back and forth between Cambodia and Vietnam numerous times to look for a suitable location. Once they found the current location, they liked it so much that they paid rent for three months while the place was still empty because they didn’t want to lose it to other tenants.

Nighttime in Phạm Ngũ Lão Ward.

When asked if she ever misses home during her years abroad, Alamerew laughed and said that she was just in Ethiopia two months ago. She is a veteran when it comes to packing up one’s life to take root elsewhere. Her family resettled in Yemen when she was young, and she once again moved to New Delhi for high school and stayed until she finished her degree in economics at university. Her mother is also a sterling chef and restauranteur, whose 35-year-old Ethiopian eatery is still open in Yemen. Growing up with a food-loving mother familiarized Alamerew with the ins-and-outs of a professional kitchen.

“I used to follow her, she used to teach, she’s a professional. And now she has many stuff going on, she’s only watching people,” Alamerew says of her mother, who stayed with them for three months when they were preparing to open Sara Ethiopian in Phnom Penh, helping to fine-tune their injera. The batter depends a lot on the weather to rise, and Cambodia’s humidity and rainy tendencies necessitated special adjustments to the family recipe. It proved to be a success that not even Saigon’s fickle weather patterns could topple.

Though Demissie occasionally misses home, the husband and wife pair are content with their new endeavor in Vietnam.

“We’re happy. One thing I like about Vietnam: the Vietnamese people, they like to try foreign food,” she said. “The neighbors come to eat, they taste our food, and they appreciate [it]. I love our neighbors. And we have the same culture. You know, Vietnamese people, they like to help others, even if you don’t have money, they will give you, like ‘okay keep it, you can give me back later.’ In that way, in Ethiopia also they do that.”

A bowl of hot shiro wot, or chickpea stew.

Khôi loves tamarind, is a raging millennial and will write for food.

Sara Ethiopian Restaurant

Ground Floor, B-00.01 Sadora Building, Mai Chí Thọ, An Khánh Ward, Thủ Đức City