Chi Minh City, Vietnam (or Saigon, as many still refer to it), offers an amazing array of food for visitors. As your read through this Ho Chi Minh City Food Guide, you’ll discover that there is a lot more to Vietnamese and the complexity of flavours that can come from the use of fresh, simple ingredients.
In Saigon, there are also plenty of restaurants and food stalls serving up regional specialties from the centre and the north. It is an impressive collection of other Asian foods on offer with Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai especially well represented.
Everywhere you look, no matter what the time of day, there are people eating and preparing food. Walking through the streets of HCMC, you’ll smell all sorts of wondrous things. Through this article, you’ll be inspired to seek out those great smells and experience some of the real HCMC’s food scene.
- Ben Thanh Market food stalls
If you want an overview of Vietnamese cuisine – especially soups – Ben Thanh Market’s food stalls are a great place to go. It’s all there – “pho, bun bo, hu tieu”. Flavours are authentic and the prices are incredible. Pop by Mdm Be’s dessert stall for a Vietnamese “che” dessert while you’re there. This is not fine dining but it is load of fun and embarrassingly cheap. The night market kicks off in the evenings with good well priced local cuisine just outside the main market complex.
- Pho Hoa Pasteur, Saigon- Some of the best “pho” in Saigon
Pho Hoa Pasteur is one of the city’s oldest and most popular pho noodles establishments. Pho Pasteur has spawned copies all over the world so it’s worth making the journey down Pasteur St – one of a handful of colonial era street names that survived the post-communist cleansing – for a bowl of pho from where it all started.
Pho is a noodle soup consisting of broth, flat rice noodles, herbs and meat (usually beef or chicken). The quality and style of pho varies quite a bit between vendors.
- 3T Restaurant, Saigon
29-31 Ton That Thiep, 2nd floor Dist.1 Ho Chi Minh City
Meat and seafood – it’s all here to be cooked by you at your table. It’s busy, noisy, fun and a perfect spot for a tasty laid back evening of good local food. Service is not the strong point here – it’s usually brisk and abrupt
- Refinery, Saigon
74 Hai Ba Trung, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City
One of the nicest spaces in town in an old French era opium refinery, The Refinery is tucked away in a small square that is becoming one of Saigon’s best food and entertainment quarters. French bistro style food is good and reasonably priced – though not as consistent as we’d like. The thoughtfully decorated space compensates for a lot. A great place for an evening glass of wine as well.
- 48 Bistro, Saigon
48 Le Thi Rieng St. Dist. 1, Ho Chi Minh City
This is a local Vietnamese take on the French bistro. It’s very good and embarrassingly cheap. A short cab ride from downtown Saigon, 48 Bistro has a solid local following and a fantastic buzz. Don’t expect Wagyu beef here. Don’t expect anything fancy at all. It’s cheap and tasty and a fun Saigon night out.
- “Banh Xeo” 46A, Saigon – A great sit-down snack
46A Dinh Cong Trang St, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City
Perhaps Saigon’s best known eatery for getting a Vietnamese pancake – known as banh xeo.
Banh xeo kind of looks like a big, thin, crispy skinned omelette. Instead of an egg, however, the body of the dish is made with a fried, rice flour crepe. The inside of the banh xeo is a savoury mixture of meat, usually pork and/or shrimp, and usually diced onion, mung beans and a healthy dose of bean sprouts.
Banh xeo is a really popular dish in Saigon and it’s easy to find on the menus of most Vietnamese restaurants here. So if you spot banh xeo while strolling the streets, give one a try!
- “Banh Mi”
“Banh mi” is one of the foods that people commonly associate with Vietnam and is a delicious snack that shows how fusion food, when done right, can be brilliant. “Banh mi” is actually the Vietnamese word for all kinds of bread, which was introduced to the country by the French. The food that most people in the West refer to as “banh mi” is actually “banh mi”, followed by other words denoting the type of sandwich. In the case of the stall below the offering was banh mi (bread) with pate and meat.
Stalls selling banh mi can be found throughout HCMC. Have a look at the ingredients and if it looks good, go for it. For the freshest bread, eat banh mi in the morning or early evening.
- Rice Paper Rolls
Rice paper rolls are another dish that many people outside of Vietnam associate with the country. They are very common throughout HCMC, you can stop at 91 Cach Mang Thang 8 Street, District 1.
The rolls are prepared fresh out the front, with a seafood and pork option. Dipping sauces include a peanut sauce containing hoisin sauce, and mixed fish sauce.
- “Che My”
It is at 119 Nguyen Thai Học, District 1.
Che My 2 is a hole in the wall that sells a variety of desserts and snacks. “Che” is the Vietnamese word for “sweet soups”. Options consist of a mixture of ingredients such as shaved ice, ice cream, jelly, tapioca pearls, fruit, coconut, condensed milk, sweet beans and the like in a bowl or cup. The menu is not in English, so pointing at what looks interesting on the menu is what you’ll be doing here. It’s worth it, as the desserts are delicious.
There is nowhere better to immerse yourself in the exquisite flavours of Vietnamese cuisine than right here in Saigon. So you will have a great trip in Saigon with it’s a various choice of food.
Places to eat in Saigon
