HCMC Restaurant List Updates: December 2023 to February 2024

Welcome back to an intended monthly and often unintentionally lengthy* overview of my dining adventures here in Saigon. These 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. They all reflect my tastes, interests, and preferences and shouldn’t be thought of as some sort of essential guide.

*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.

All of this content is for paid subscribers, and I hope adding colour to the list each month will make it both more useful and more interesting for them. I’m happy that I’ve moved the bulk of the who/what/where/why of my eating adventures from Instagram to the newsletter. Writing these posts for paid subscribers is not about gatekeeping. It is more 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.

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I hope never to write one of these multi-month posts again. Because if you didn’t hear, I was diagnosed with pneumonia at the beginning of December. I spent around six weeks laying low, ordering lots of sometimes uninteresting but nourishing delivery, and just trying to get my body and breathing back. As of this update, I am feeling basically all better. It’s been a very long slog, and I’m ready to start putting it behind me. The restaurant mentions below cover meals I found noteworthy right before I got sick and as I slowly started to feel strong enough to eat out again. I conclude with favourites from my sickness cocoon days.

33: The highs and lows of my sickness cocoon

Despite not feeling 100%, I went forward with an already booked trip to Đà Lạt at the end of January. It was kind of perfect. Because there wasn’t much I wanted to do, I could just chill out but still relish having a change of scenery to make me feel less like an invalid. I enjoyed my dining in the Central Highlands city, including trying out a few local specialties.