Travel Adventures
Near the intersection with Hoàng Diệu Street is Quán BBQ Lúa( 33 Vĩnh Khánh Street). The speciality here is grill-it-yourself barbecued meat. A small coal-fired stove is placed on your table onto which you lay chunks of marinated beef, pork, goat and fish. The sườn heo ngũ vị( pork ribs in five spice marinade) is delicious.
4. PHAN VAN HAN STREET: Bình Thạnh District
A long, narrow street connecting two of Saigon’ s biggest arteries, Phan Văn Hân Street is lined with cheap food stalls frequented by locals and students from nearby universities. Just across the Thị Nghè Channel from the glitz and glamour of Saigon’ s central District 1, Phan Văn Hân Street has a very local, unpretentious atmosphere. The street is densely packed with food vendors, shops, homes, businesses and motorbikes, creating an intimate environment where space( which is in short supply) is often shared. Snail and shellfish eateries – lit by naked fluorescent light bulbs – set up on the pavement next to the peeling plaster of old homes; bánh xèo stalls occupy local people’ s doorsteps; soup vendors serve customers at tiny tables on a slither of sidewalk not more than a few feet wide. The scented smoke from all these food vendors drifts into the street, where their aromas mingle with the exhaust fumes from passing traffic.
Street food, shellfish, SaigonA snail and shellfish vendor on Phan Van Han Street
This is a very lively little neighbourhood where all the classic Vietnamese street food dishes are well-represented. Come between 6.00-8.30pm to experience it at its busiest. Bột chiên( fried rice flour cubes that I like to call‘ Vietnamese French fries’) is a street food staple: find it at the corner of Phan Văn Hân and Xô Viết Nghẹ Tĩnh streets. The vendor here has been serving bột chiện for 20 years and has gotten pretty darn good at it. One of the most famous noodle joints in the area Lương Ký Mì Gia( 1 Huỳnh Mẫn Đạt Street) is right at the eastern extreme of Phan Văn Hân Street. They sell all sorts of noodles but the dish that made them famous is mì vịt tiềm( fresh yellow noodles with marintated aromatic duck) – get here early because they run out of this dish fast.
5. CO GIANG STREET:
District 1
Cô Giang is a long, straight street that unofficially marks the southern perimeter of Saigon’ s burgeoning backpacker area in District 1. However, Cô Giang Street is a lot quieter than Phạm Ngũ Lão, Bùi Viện and Đề Thám streets whose bars, western restaurants and mini-marts make up the centre of the backpacker district. In general, travellers who choose to stay or spend time on Cô Giang Street are looking to get something more‘ authentic’, more‘ Vietnamese’ from their time in Saigon. While Cô Giang is not as densely packed with food stalls as other streets in this guide, it still offers plenty of local street-life and bustling open-air eateries, especially around the intersection of Cô Giang and Đề Thám streets. In the evenings bright fluorescent light bulbs illuminate streetside barbeques, whooshing woks, and bubbling cauldrons. Scented cooking smoke fills the air and hangs, like a Dickensian fog, over the diners sitting at tables on the sidewalk.
Shellfish street food, SaigonYoung locals hunker down for a night of shellfish on Co Giang Street Right on the corner of Cô Giang and Đề Thám streets there’ s a cluster of hugely popular outdoor restaurants, specializing in thick Chinese-style fried noodles called hủ tiếu xào. Quán 79 is particularly good for this dish and there are plenty of other items on the menu here – most of which have been translated into inadvertently hilarious English, thanks, I suspect, to Google Translate:‘ vegetable of transcendent garlic’ was one of my favourites. Don’ t miss the stalls selling bò lá lốt( grilled beef rolled in aromtic betel leaf); they’ re easy to find because of the smoking barbecues out front and the enticing smell. The bò lá lốt at Hoàng Yến( 121 Cô Giang Street) is superb and very cheap too( 20,000VNĐ per portion).
54 The MAG Vung Tau