Quán Bảy Đực – Saigon’s Best BBQ Chicken

Quán Bảy Đực – Saigon’s Best BBQ Chicken

After 6 years living in Vietnam and after almost a full year of writing about Saigon’s unique street food here at Eating Saigon!, I love that I can still be surprised by an unexpected eating adventure.

Last night, when Hai suggested that I should meet him at his restaurant after work and we’d go have some barbequed chicken for dinner, I casually agreed.

Sure, I always enjoy chicken for dinner.  Little did I know that I’d be uncovering some new, special and memorable Saigon Street Food (actually, make that Saigon River-side Food)!

Where are you taking me?

Hai’s place is already a bit outside the center of Saigon … and from there, we continued on our motorbike heading north and yet further away from downtown.

Interestingly, I began to notice large pools of water on the narrow roadway – and it hadn’t rained in days??  And then I noticed the street storm drains NOT DRAINING, but instead spewing fountains of water onto the roadway.

Continuing to travel north, just a block from the Saigon River, we began to notice the roadside eateries and houses were now surrounded by several inches of standing water.  Hmmmnn … what’s going on here??

AH!  That’s right!

I had just read on the internet that the sun, moon, and earth had aligned in just the right positions to create “king tides” that this morning were flooding the low-lying streets of Southern California coastal towns.  And now, here we were in a northern district of Saigon, 6000 miles away, sharing the same “king tide”.  Seems the world really is round – and connected! But, I digress.

We turned off the small “main” roadway onto a smaller-yet street enveloped with banana and palm trees.  Luckily, we remained above waterline by several inches.  Still in Saigon’s city limits, but surrounded in the darkness only by dense vegetation and water, I was sure we had drifted deep into the Mekong Delta.

Again, Where are you taking me?

Then, I saw a faded old sign – Quán Bảy Đực.  We had arrived at our dinner location.

Dimly lighted, appearing a tad rundown, and with a Mekong backwater jungle ambiance, Quán Bảy Đực offered a sprawling maze of decks and patios randomly assembled on the densely vegetated backwaters of the Saigon River.  No tourists, nothing “trendy” in sight!

I selected a table for 6 (lots of room to spread out) on a private patio surrounded on 3 sides by dark murky water.  It had a hammock beside the table, which Hai immediately occupied.  As we seated ourselves, a large fish breached the water 2 feet from our table, apparently dining himself – on a water spider?  Very Mekong!

Hai had been here many times before with family and friends – apparently a popular place with locals.  So, I let him decide what we would be eating tonight.  As always, he over-ordered – three big dishes.  But, somehow by the end of the evening, we would manage to get through it all.

The menu was exhaustive.  Fish, prawns, frogs, snakes.  But Hai was clear, it would be the chicken that would make this journey worthwhile.  And, he turned out to be right.

I recently raved about the high quality of chicken served in District 1 at Phở Hà, rating it as the best chicken in Saigon.  Well, now I must modify that to second-best in Saigon.

The gà nướng lu at Quán Bảy Đực, prepared here for over 15 years, now takes the #1 Saigon chicken honors.  Really really really delicious!

Slow, spit-roasted over hot charcoal, the chicken meat was moist and succulent on the inside and crispy and perfectly spiced on its surface.  It was served with a delicious sauce that I had not yet encountered in Vietnam, made with roasted onion, garlic, chili, sugar and a unique spice blend – amazing!

Hai ordered an entire chicken – half to be prepared as gà nướng lu.  And the other half to be served in a lotus root chicken salad.  Easily enough food for four! (But, again, the two of us managed okay).

The lotus salad was very good, but it was the gà nướng lu that stole the show. Well, with one exception:

The opening act of the meal was another one-of-a-kind, first-time-for-me eating experience.  The waiter first arrived with what appeared to be a large soccer ball on the plate he was carrying!

In fact, it was xôi chiên phồng – a Vietnamese pastry item made from a blended paste of sticky rice, sesame seed, and other “secret” ingredients.  Then, the dough ball was dropped into a large pot of bubbling hot oil where it immediately balloned into a large hollow-centered edible sphere.

There was a bit of theater involved in the presention of the globe at the table and the ceremonial collapsing and dissecting of the sphere. Chewy, crunchy, a tad sweet – very very tastey with a superb texture.  Again, an amazingly delicious one-of-a-kind food item!

EATING TIP: – Dip the xôi chiên phồng is that yummy onion sauce served with the gà nướng lu. Oh my god!

Finally, the waiter offered us a large bowl of complimentary cháo gà.  Chicken porridge, heavily flavored with bacon drippings.  Very nice, but again the gà nướng lu and xôi chiên phồng stole the show.

Our total bill for all four dishes (would easily have satisfied a party of four) and two beers totaled 358,000 vnd ($17 usd).  A bit high by Vietnamese standards, but worth every đồng.

Open from noon until all the customers leave at night (about 10:30 pm).

Operating in this Mekong setting here in Saigon for over 15 years, Quán Bảy Đực, rates a YUM YUM YUM on Eating Saigon!’s Yum Meter.

It’s a bit of a journey to find this place.  So, bring your sense of adventure with you and perhaps postpone your visit if it’s a rainy, stormy night. But for sure, a Saigon eating adventure worth the effort to get here.

UPDATE – February, 2023: RE-CONFIRMED as a fun and delicious eating adventure!

Quán Bảy Đực
Bình Quới
P. 28
Binh Thạnh District
HCMC
38987158
0908357762

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