The Vietnamese sure do have a sweet tooth! Breakfast provided by the hotel consisted of a cheese roll with what tasted like very sweet cheese cake inside and Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk – another really sweet experience. I had lunch at a really great place – basically a tiny café where they only served rice paper rolls. They were delicious and lunch came to 55k which is less then £2.
I had read about a restaurant in Saigon called Vietnam House and thought it looked good so made a reservation on a Saturday night way in advance. The restaurant is owned by an Australian/Vietnamese chef called Luke Nguyen. When I go there it was a very upmarket corporate style restaurant and it was half empty. The menu looked interesting but the waitress refused to let me order what I wanted saying it would be too much food for me. I have never ever experienced that in a restaurant before. She recommended a starter (squid) and let me choose the main course (twice cooked duck) although she tried to get me to order something different. I ordered rice with the main course and also a gin-based cocktail called Taste of life. The cocktail and the starter were delicious. The squid was grilled and there was pomelo with salt and chilli dipping on the side. The combination was interesting in a good way. The duck arrived and turned out to be whole duck breast with mashed potato – no need for the rice. Although the duck was well cooked it was very bland even by western standards. There was no Vietnamese influence at all in this dish. The portions were also very large and possibly meant for the American tourist? When the waitress asked me for feedback I did say that I thought the duck was very bland and that I had thought that was the restaurant was called Vietnam House all the dishes would be Vietnamese. She insisted on offering me a free dessert even though I didn’t want one after all that food. That said it was a very tasty coffee mousse with fruit which was just the right side of not too sweet.
I think I need lessons in where to go to eat while in Vietnam…street food and cheap and cheerful seem to be the way to go
Anna's Travels 