HCMC Restaurant List Updates: November 2024

A small revelation, a consideration of gatekeeping, and finding my way back to champon

Welcome back to an intended monthly and 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. Food is my passion, and I’m happy to write and share these memories, however unwieldy they end up being.

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

I hope adding colour to the list each month makes 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 a small nod to the effort I might put into reading about and finding places and a fun thank you to paid subscribers given the more emotional nature of my other paid content.

At the end of every month, I post photos on Instagram of what you can read about below. If you don’t follow me there, here are the monthly visuals:

onehollowleg

A post shared by @onehollowleg

This month’s A tale of two…had me trying two very different versions of xôi gà that you can find in the city. Both were enjoyable in their own way, and I’ve added both to my list. Names and links are below in List Newbies.

57: A tale of two xôi gà

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On my Instagram stories one day, I saw that a contact had snapped bowl of phở, which had Chinese egg noodles instead of the expected namesake rice noodles. I asked them about it, as I had never seen another noodle option on a phở menu before. They said that many spots have alternative noodle choices, with the most common being instant noodles, called mì gói. I couldn’t believe it. Is it true that I could enjoy a broth I like with noodles I prefer? I had to confirm with some Vietnamese colleagues. Yup, just ask is what they said. If the restaurant has them, you can have them. No questions asked. They said that restaurants know that some people like other noodles more and so will stock them. Excellent secret menu hack.

We further discussed Vietnamese menus and how I often have trouble knowing what might be in a noodle soup bowl of đặc biệt versus đầy đủ because the exact toppings aren’t ever listed. My colleagues said that this is because local customers know what toppings they want and tell the server accordingly. No ordering a đặc biệt or a đầy đủ. They have no need to look at the menus (at places that have a tight list of items).

I circled back to my friend Brendan to share the mì gói revelation and while doing so, also mentioned the lack of menu ordering. He astutely suggested that must be why servers in local restaurants often come right up to you and ask what you want almost before you’ve been able to sit down. As someone not accustomed to this, it can be uncomfortable and jarring. He wrote about this in one of his posts.

*All the lightbulbs.*

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I recently read an article about gatekeeping, something I often think about when it comes to these posts and which I mention at the top of every one of them. The piece is about the should/shouldn’t of widely sharing the name of a restaurant. A “should” would be to help a business, a “should not” be would be fear of causing it to receive too much business — the author references a small business owner asking them not to share because they can’t handle more customers. Interviewed for the should side was a prominent NYC TikTok influencer whose videos can wield a noticeable impact on a restaurant if shared. The other obvious example is TikTok phenom Keith Lee.

My not sharing publicly falls somewhere else on the spectrum, especially because I have no influence to wield. Firstly, I have increasingly felt weird about publicly sharing place names because it can position you as someone who gets associated with influencers and who use an account purely for sharing where they eat. My heart has changed to being someone who wants the what and the why I’m eating something to be more important. Thus having my food Instagram account to be only the what and these monthly updates to be the why. The where is simply to mark a moment in time for the most part.

In addition to being a thank you to paid subscribers, the where behind the paywall is because I want people who really want to know the why — which takes time to write — to be folks who enjoy my writing enough to invest in it. I’ve also made clear many a time that I’m not in Vietnam to do a deep dive on its cuisine and/or to be someone who is trying to create some sort of best or essential list of eats. I think my experience in dining out and my curiosity for food and cuisines does position me as someone who tries to seek out the good and interesting and can opine on it with a smidge of credibility. Only my paid subscribers can tell me if I’m right. Or those who have read my Saigoneer pieces. (If not here for a shameless plug, then where?)

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Picking an MVP meal of the month was difficult enough that I almost thought of just forgetting it. All my meals were wonderfully steady and strong and nothing new or familiar stuck out as extraordinary. Not every month should be expected to have a wow moment. But upon further reflection, I do consider my November to have an MVP.