HCMC Restaurant List Updates: August 2023

Welcome back to an intended monthly and often unintentionally lengthy* overview of my dining adventures here in Saigon. The regular updates 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 call my steady dates.
*These overviews are 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.

My HCMC Restaurant List and these updates are for paid subscribers, and 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 my who/what/where/why of my eating adventures from Instagram to the newsletter.

Although I spent some weekend nights at home furiously marking student work, I think I might have actually ate out a bit more than usual. It was an interesting eating month, and I’m happy that nearly every place I tried would be somewhere I’d return to. The places that didn’t make the cut weren’t bad, per se, but I have no reason to go back or order from them again.

I also attended two pop-ups in August, and the meals at both were outstanding. My life experience with pop-ups has not been the best, but the ones I’ve had so far in Saigon totally buck my trend.

Soupless noodle adventures did continue. But the pizza ones are the more significant—perhaps because I tried some pizza that I have no interest in eating again and some that I want to eat again and again. I was surprised, disappointed, and relieved. The closure in June of Pizza Logic was sad for me, as I thought their dough was the best I’d had in Saigon. I love the experience of eating at Pizza 4P’s, but without Logic as an alternate for a superior crust, I have needed to get better at trying other places.