HCMC Restaurant List Updates: April 2024

Welcome back to an intended monthly and often unintentionally lengthy* overview of my dining adventures here in Saigon. These regular updates are for paid subscribers and include places I’ve newly added to my HCMC Restaurant List, mentions of ones I’ve returned to recently, and anything notable from places I visit regularly enough to consider my Steady Dates. They all reflect my tastes, interests, and preferences and shouldn’t be thought of as an essential guide to city eats.

*These overviews are often longer than will appear in your email, so if you’re a paid subscriber, please do click out of the email to read the full post and view all the photos.

I hope adding colour to the list each month will make it both more useful and more interesting. I’m happy that I’ve moved the bulk of the who/what/where/why of my eating adventures from Instagram to the newsletter. Having these posts be paid is not about gatekeeping. It is more of a nod to the amount of effort I might put into finding places and as a fun thank you to paid subscribers given the more emotional nature of my other paid content.

April was special because I spent some time in Seoul, South Korea, purely for the ability to see heart-and-soul friends from Edmonton, Canada, and Sydney, Australia. Before leaving, I focused on how I could eat nothing and still have a very special trip. The priorities were catch-up and connection, so if we ate well while doing so, all the better, but if we didn’t, oh well. I was going to be with my framily. Full stop.

The stars must have been reading this mindset because they put it to the test almost immediately. Less than 12 hours after landing in Seoul, I was asked to consider if I could have a nice vacation if I didn’t get to eat any of the things I wanted to.