Saigon Street Eats

We are always interested in maximizing our food experiences on our trips through Asia.   While doing some internet research to prep for our HCMC trip,  I found an interesting street food tour called Saigon Street Eats.   Their morning tour started with pho and coffee and was advertised as being suitable for families so we decided to go for it.

Vu and Barbara are the husband-wife partnership that run Saigon Street Eats.  He was born and raised in Saigon, while she is a native Australian.   Vu picked us up at our hotel and took us to a neighborhood restaurant at a non-touristy (Binh Tranh) district in HCMC.   There we met Barbara and their daughter,  Poppy for some pho and some Vietnamese coffee.   The pho was actually pretty similar to our favorite restaurants in Minneapolis - maybe more cinnamon/anise/sugar in the broth than what we are used to?

Another wonderful rich, mocha-y Vietnamese coffee!

After breakfast we hit the street to get some neighborhood charm.   

 These kinds of street food trucks were everywhere.   Co'm Ta'm is a broken rice plate - basically a plate of rice and you get to point to whatever meats and vegetables you want to accompany it.   

Here's where we got our banh mi for our picnic lunch.  Banh mi is vietnamese ingredients on a french baguette.  The meat can be pork, chicken,  or pate. 

 15000 dong for a sandwich sounds like a lot,  but it's less than an a dollar.

 Picking up some bananas for our picnic lunch.

Our next stop was a brief stop at a private estate/compound just off the main street.   It was meant to give us a look into a traditional, affluent residence within the city.   This is an open-air kitchen,  near the front gate.

The compound is like a small gated community - generally owned by a single family,  with most, if not all of the residents being members of the family.   The compound also serves as a memorial to the (decorated/rich/famous) ancestors.

 This is a small Buddhist shrine within the compound.

 This is a picture of the entrance to the compound,  on our way out.  

Next stop was the local market.   The facade looks a bit like the French train station/main post office I showed in my previous post.

Here's a video of traffic near the market.

Time to start shopping.   Vu is buying me some betel for later.    

The Vietnamese also have adopted the Chinese practice of burning decorated paper as an offering to the deceased.   The set that Barbara is showing here is a bit more utilitarian,  providing cheap paper representations of a flashlight,  cigarettes,  a lighter, sandals, and other goodies to the afterlife.

More food for the picnic - mildly flavored dumpling-type snacks made of rice flour.

Now we're in the bowels of the market.

The fresh seafood section of the market - with a drive-thru!

We're supposed to be walking through this?

Vu is loaded up for the picnic!

 Our final stop of the tour was a picnic lunch in a nearby park.   Here's a cute picture of Poppy and Esme riding a cannon.

This is only a small part of the spread.   We ate like kings.  

 This is me right after I put the betel in my mouth.   It was disgustingly bitter,  but even though I could only keep it in for about 30 seconds, it did have the desired effect - I had a mild buzz and numbing sensation on my lips. 

 I can't end the post with that picture of me,  so I'll end with one more cute picture of the kids...

A long weekend in Ho Chi Minh City

With Chandra having a day off from work,  we took the opportunity to visit Vietnam.   We chose Ho Chi Minh City because the fares were relatively cheap and we have heard many good things about Hanoi,  so we are saving that for a trip with friends.   We are big fans of Vietnamese food and our trip did not disappoint.   It turns out that a lot of the food we are familiar with (pho, vermicelli noodle salads,  banh mi,  broken rice plates,  coconut milk/rice flour pancakes) is street food in HCMC.   Most of this post (and the next one, which details our street food tour) will be dedicated to food.

We arrived in HCMC in the evening of Mid-Autumn Festival.   We ended up taking an adventurous walk through the center of town to a park,  where we knew there was a mid-Autumn celebration.   Here's a short video of the traffic situation - it's a bit different from Minneapolis!

There aren't a lot of traffic lights with crosswalks,  so often you need to cross a street that looks similar to the video.  It's not for the faint of heart...you just cross slowly and confidently and hope for the best :).    We arrived at the park in one piece.  Here is a picture from the festivities:

After the festival,  we walked to a nearby restaurant.  I'm eating noodle salad with a variety of egg rolls and coconut juice.   The first of many good meals!

The next day we started bright and early for a day of exploring. Our first order of business was a few cups of authentic Vietnamese coffee.   We'd seen it on TV many times but never had it.  It was well worth the wait!    Here is a picture of Chandra's first Vietnamese coffee,  at the popular local Vietnamese coffee chain,  Trung Nguyen:

Vietnamese coffee is served using a simple drip filter approach.  Instead of paper filters,  it is a metal strainer (with much bigger holes).   The coffee to water ratio is much larger than drip coffee,  resulting in a rich flavor but only a small amount of liquid.    The coffee can be served hot or on ice,  and traditionally is served with sweetened condensed milk.   The taste is intense and actually tastes like a really rich mocha!   I don't know if they are adding chocolate flavor to the beans,  the flavor comes from roasting or the different beans (robusta instead of arabica) or what...but it is delicious!

We wanted some food with our coffee,  but Trung Nguyen didn't serve western style pastries or breads with their coffee.  So we went a few of their breakfast offerings:  a stir-fried noodle and a noodle salad.   

After breakfast,  we made our way to the tourist center of HCMC.    We started with the Reunification Palace.   

Ho Chi Minh City was the capital of south Vietnam and was called Saigon before it fell to the north Vietnamese.   The Reunification Palace was the home and workplace of the president of south Vietnam and was called the Independence Palace while Vietnam was separated.    It turns out there is a lot of that mixed terminology in Vietnam.   Another case is the Vietnam War,  which in Vietnam is now generally called the American War.    Here is a model of a tank that was used by the north Vietnamese to seize the Independence Palace during the Fall of Saigon:

Here's a sweet 70s style rec room.   You play bridge at the table in the center of the picture, mah jongg in the bottom left corner,  and smoke cigars/drink in the rocking chairs in the lower right corner.   Unfortunately,  I don't have a good picture of the disco room.  

The roof of Reunification palace was a helipad where they evacuated south Vietnamese leaders/staff right before the Fall of Saigon.   

 As France colonized Vietnam for significant portions of the 19th and 20th centuries,  you can see a lot of French influence in the food, culture, and city planning.    There are a lot of French-style boulevards with large round abouts.   Near the center of HCMC is a mini-Notre Dame:

The Opera house is another beautiful building that looks French.

The central post office used to be a train station with a distinctly European-looking architecture.  Many of the markets have a similar type of facade. 

Dinner that night was at highly recommended restaurant (Cuc Gach Quan) in a residential neighborhood in north HCMC.   Some of the highlights were the cute fish pond and lanterns in the front yard of the restaurant,  fresh fruit juices with sugar cane straws,  and sauteed morning glory,  a SE Asian green vegetable.

We spent most of the next day on a street food/market tour.   That will be the subject of the next post. That night we went shopping at the night market for some souvenirs and we had a delicious dinner at the market.

  Here are the kids with their spoils from the  market.  That is a Gangnam style shirt for Paul Eli and a Vietnamese Coffee billboard for Esme. 

Last morning in HCMC,  with more Vietnamese coffee in a cute cafe right outside Reunification Palace. 

Next post:  The Saigon Street Food Tour!