Saigon/HCMC Trip Report

[JTS]

Saigon/HCMC Trip Report

Just got back from a week in Saigon and Mui Ne. I'm breaking the report down into two parts. The short answer is that Mui Ne is a culinary wasteland, and Saigon is the promised land of milk and honey. Sort of a heaven/hell experience, if you will. Assuming that hell is moderately overcooked seafood at fairly low prices. Full report on Saigon follows:

Ben Thanh market was good, only caveat being that when buying a box of fresh jackfruit, I forgot to check whether it was fresh or already going bad.

The best meal was probably at Quan 94, a Noodle Pie recommendation, where we had crab spring rolls, crab fried rice, deep fried soft shell crabs, and a tamarind hard-shell crab. An amazing meal, although the crab fried rice was probably unnecessary – the quality of the crab wasn't to the same standard as the other (amazing) dishes.

First runner up was likely Pho Hoa, at 260C Pasteur Street in District 3. I was recommended here by the hotel concierge, after complaining that Pho 24 wasn't any good. He felt Pho Hoa was better than Pho 2000. I never had a chance to make the comparison myself, but Pho Hoa was definitely quite nice. It's a large restaurant, 2-3 stories, multiple dining rooms. They have beef or chicken. Beef has many options – rare beef, tripe, meatballs, etc. We went with “everything,” which was pretty amazing. The table comes pre-equipped with sawtooth herb, basil, and some other herb I don't know the name of, chili peppers, limes, and you tiao – the fried dough sticks. The pho then arrives with a plate of blanched beansprouts. One interesting note was that the “hoisin” sauce on offer was much saltier and just different from the Lee Kum Kee that is pretty much standard at Vietnamese restaurants in the US. The chili sauce was pretty similar to the US-Vietnamese Sriracha. The noodles are tender, and it's just a very good bowl of pho. They also serve pate chaud – the Vietnamese pork pies – which are also good, if not as exceptional as their pho.

Another outstanding meal was Wrap & Roll, a chain restaurant with at least two locations around our hotel (the Sheraton). We had banh cuon, banh xeo, and the grilled pork with vermicelli, herbs & rice paper. Possibly some other dishes, I can't remember. It was all very good, cheap, and in an air conditioned, somewhat stylish-in-a-bare-concrete-and-bright-colors-way, if you're looking to escape mosquitoes around dusk. Wrap & Roll basically serves many types of Vietnamese food that you wrap with lettuce, along with a wide variety of Vietnamese drinks.

Noodle Pie had commented in 2006 or 2007 on Pho 24's success in turning pho into a successful chain, and theorizing that other street foods would follow. I saw some other examples of this, including a rice plate (com tam) restaurant called Moc and a Banh Xeo restaurant. Wrap & Roll appears to be a bit more upscale than Pho 24, which is almost like a McDonald's. Wrap & Roll also has a much larger menu, and is significantly more delicious than Pho 24.

After Wrap & Roll, the good meals started to get miscellaneous. The hu tieu restaurant across the alley from Blue River Hotel #2 was good (alley off Ky Con http://www.blueriverhotel.com/images/...), as was the banh mi stand down the street and to the left. A bakery called Pate a Chou or somesuch around the corner from the Sheraton (out the door, left, and first left) had the best pate chaud of the trip – large, crispy, peppery, creamy, and just a delight. The Brodard bakery also near our hotel had a good pate chaud, if somewhat smaller & more peppery. The banh mi sio mai (meatball banh mi) across the street from said bakery is good, but is an early morning option – she was out of pickles by 9:30 or so. The pho at the Sheraton's breakfast buffet was pretty good from a broth standpoint, although somewhat lacking in condiments and types of beef provided (just sirloin).

Two disappointing meals were the Pho 24 near the hotel and Ngu Vien restaurant. At Pho24, the pho broth was very salty and lacking in depth – like they tried to compensate for a lack of beef with extra salt. The rice plates we ordered were also uninspiring, with the pork, shredded skin, and pork pie all not up to the level you'd find in the US, and the “sunny side” up eggs coming in more well-done. The accompanying fish sauce/chili/garlic dipping sauce was also not very flavorful. Overall, a very disappointing meal.

The second disappointment was Ngu Vien, the Hue restaurant recommended on Noodle Pie. It may just be that Hue food is naturally bland. I don't know. We had the hue-style shrimp rolls that come with a dipping sauce made from water that has been used to steam shrimp (I have no access to Noodle Pie, so can't get the name), which were nice – there was a nice texture to the steamed noodle wrapper. The filling didn't taste like much – overall, sort of like a milder version of a shrimp rice roll from Cantonese dim sum. We then added the rare beef in coconut (bo tai nuoc dua?), the jackfruit salad and the fig salad, which are listed as goi mit and goi va on the site, but have much longer names on the menu. The beef had a very subtle flavor – it was tender beef, if not particularly rare, more like “well done beef in coconut.” But despite pulling it straight from an open coconut, it didn't actually taste much of the coconut. It was sort of like eating tender, thinly sliced beef, with the occasional spring onion. The salads were much the same – tender, warm beef, finely diced and mixed with sesame seeds, and something added that had about the same texture. It was actually very difficult to tell the two salads apart – I couldn't do it at all based on taste, and had to look at them closely to decide which contained fig vs. jackfruit. The salads were cooked nicely, in that the beef was tender and finely diced, but I guess I prefer larb/lop, which is basically the same dish with toasted rice substituting for the sesame seeds, and then lime juice, fresh mint, and chilis added. Beef and sesame seeds just didn't seem like a very exciting flavor combination. I was expecting something more. We also had some spring rolls, which were fried nicely – they came out hot, not overly greasy, with a nice dipping sauce, although the filling seemed pretty basic – just pork and a whole shrimp, no rice vermicelli, cabbage, wood ear mushroom, carrot, or any of the other things I associate with spring rolls. The one good dish was the com sen – fried rice cooked in lotus leaf, which had some nice flavors to it. Overall, the dishes seemed technically sound, nothing overcooked (except possibly the coconut beef), greasy or gloppy, but fundamentally lacking in flavor. The food was also remarkably slow – the first dish took about 40 minutes to arrive, and we had to carry the com sen straight from the kitchen back to the hotel due to time pressure.

[debbieann]

We're in Hue now, just finished with Hanoi and were in Saigon before that - and I agree with you! We were disappointed with Ngu Vien. We liked Pho Hoa and we liked the Bahn Mi from Nhu lan.

Now in Hue and just ate Com Hen - which was spicy in a good way - at Quan Ba Hoa.