As Eating Saigon! regular readers well know, Hai and I love going on eating adventures here in Saigon … and sharing our adventures with the world.
BUT, something we love even more, is when fellow eating adventurers seeking a great place to eat in Saigon, trust our advice and decide to pursue one of our recommendations on their own – a particularly “off-the-beaten-path” Saigon eatery.
Thurman, Michelle and Jackson recently shared in a blog their very own exciting eating experience after reading our post about Quán Bảy Đực.
A guest post by Thurman, Michelle, and Jackson
With their permission, we thought it would be fun to share their adventure blog here:
I was browsing around and found a food blog for Saigon who raved about some BBQ Chicken at this restaurant. On the map, it didn’t seem too far, and as we’re here to experience food, Michelle and Jackson were up for the adventure. Little did they know that in just two hours, we’d be stranded out in the middle of nowhere, with no cell service and no one who spoke English.
I love food blogs. They can really highlight the restaurants off the beaten path and you can find some really great gems. On the first night in Saigon, we’d found a really excellent place only a few blocks from our hotel. We had a sumptuous meal with a lot of variety including some Bun, octopus, squid, BBQ skewers and some beers to wash it all down.
Tonight, I’d been tempted by BBQ Chicken and a puff pastry that is the size of a bowling ball. You can read the blog here.
What is this?
As he has quite the following, and map that he maintains of all the places he’s went, I felt pretty safe going there.
Vu, the saigon street eats guide had also given us a restaurant, very close by, for some Bun Bo Hue, but I thought of that as a backup. After all, we’d be back in HCM in 4 weeks.
We acquired cab and were on our way! It was about a 20 minute drive and after about 15 minutes, we left the major thoroughfare and began driving down a very narrow road which was pretty rural – and then about 5 minutes later turned off that onto a very dark dirt road. Our driver had spoken on the phone, so I figured he knew where he was going and when he turned into a side driveway with light visible at the end, I grew hopeful. We got out of the cab and walked over to the restaurant – it was quite large, with various platforms suspended over the water, all covered by corrugated metal as a roof. The place was quite busy, with many people eating and enjoying a good time. When the maitre’d (lol) came up, it was quite evident he didn’t speak English, so he pointed us to a nearby table – metal legs with a stainless top, and handed us a laminated menu with only a few things on it. Pictures of eels, chicken, frogs and fished adorned the menu with only a few words, all of which I didn’t really understand.
But I had written down the things the blog writer had recommended and matched these up with the words on the menu. Beer must be a universal language, as we did get a few of those, although Jack had to settle for a coke instead of his normal sprite.
The beer came warm, and they gave us glasses filled with large tubes of ice – just a bit smaller than the diameter of the glass. We briefly discussed the odds of the ice being safe (it looked clear as another guide had advised) so we proceeded to pour our warm beer into the glass. It was quite refreshing.
We noted that the wait staff cleared the tables, putting all the plates into large plastic garbage cans – a form of storage undoubtedly to be used until the evening’s service was complete, when they could commence the cleaning. Michelle and Jackson remained good company and we idly chatted.
The food came pretty quickly (although not as quickly as lunch – wow that’s another story) and it was dramatic. The pastry was huge, smooth and round. The waiter took out a pair of scissors and plunged them into the pastry, quickly deflating it.
Collapsing and dissecting the xôi chiên phồng
In a quick flourish, he snipped it into bite size pieces, placing the pieces on a plate, and pointed at an onion mixture they had placed on table, and motioned to empty bowl each of us had received and pointed to his mouth.
Then he placed what can only be described as heaping pile of barbequed chicken on the table, barely contained on a large plate.
Gà nướng lu!
With the pastry fresh, we tried that quickly, scooping out the onion mixture and dipping the pastry into it.
Yummy dipping sauce
Oh my god. What a wonderful explosion of flavor. This was amazing. Taste buds came to life and I knew I had made the right choice for the evening. After another piece and a mouthful of beer, I dug into the chicken. It was a combination of caramelization and juice, but with no familiar pieces. It was like they took a cooked chicken and proceeded to send it through a guillotine, a few centimeters at a time. Long strips, about an inch thick and just dripping with juice. With only chopsticks and a bowl, it was a delicate balancing act of grabbing some meat, placing it into the bowl and tearing some pieces off with my hand, and then choosing whether to dip it with the onion mixture or the chili/salt/lime mixture.
It was very good chicken, but not sure I could say it was the best. The strangest thing about the chicken was that it was ALL the chicken. The head, the feet, the neck, everything. I didn’t realize this until I was trying to bite into a piece and found it was the head 😉
So, our pants are bursting, eating no more. We sit around for 10-15 minutes finishing our beer & commenting on the evening so far. I think it’s going to take a bit to get a taxi out here, so I wave the waiter over and say “taxi” and kind of make a driving motion of my hands and give the waiter a business card of our hotel. He nods and says something interpreted as “ok, ok”.
15 minutes go by, and I’m thinking the cab needs to be here soon but we haven’t paid the bill yet. I again wave the waiter over & demonstrate the global sign language for give me the bill, and he comes back in a few minutes, we pay $380,000 VND or about $17USD – not bad for an evening out. Still no cab. I pull out my phone. No service. Lousy AT&T. Jack can get the internet with his kindle fire – but me, my phone is as dumb as a brick.
We are looking for translating “call me a taxi” and the guy is starting to look worried. We’re beginning to think of wandering the crowd, see if we can find someone who speaks English.
A lady comes up, along with two scooters that pull up RIGHT NEXT TO OUR TABLE and says “taxi” and points to the scooters. Our waiter for the evening is the driver of one – which doesn’t have a functioning headlight, and another guy. I’m thinking ‘are they going to take us all the way back to our hotel?’ and she says “go! go!” and “taxi taxi”. So, without helmets, I climb on one, Michelle & Jackson climb on the other, and we proceed to head out, back the way we had come in previously a few hours earlier.
After about 10 minutes, we’re nearing civilization and a taxi is approaching from the other direction and my driver starts to motion with his hand (what I would typically do if trying to get someone to slow down) and yells “taxi taxi” and pulls over, but the taxi continues on. We pass a few more taxis as we get closer to the main thoroughfare, and finally a taxi pulls a u-turn and our drivers motion for us to get in.
I shake the hands of our drivers – the waiters was noticeably clammy – I think he was far more worried than me. Before you know it, we were inside the cab and on our way back to the hotel. We laughed about the experience – and thought of phrases we need to write down for future excursions!
Thank you Thurman, Michelle and Jackson for writing and sharing your eating adventures. We hope you come back soon and continue your eating adventures here in Saigon! JOE & HAI, Eating Saigon! 🙂
UPDATE – February, 2023: In just the past two weeks, we enjoyed another wonderful meal here. A “must try” for sure!