HCMC Restaurant List Updates: October 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.

October was a special month because I celebrated my first Saigoniversary. I know the year went by fast as lightning because of how busy teaching has kept me, but I still really can’t believe it’s been a whole year. I have no time or need to reflect beyond I’m glad there was no major drama. October was also the start of Thanksgiving (read: pumpkin) season here, and I took part in more ways than one.

Celebratory and seasonal indulgences meant that the month leaned more vegan than usual for some balance. I feel that I haven’t been eating as much vegan the past couple of months, and the meals I had in October reignited an interest. For lack of a better word, I just find eating vegan here very “fun.”

There was some progress made with soupless noodle adventures, including an order that resulted in a potential new favourite. In a city of more than nine million people, who overwhelmingly seem to be voracious diners—and thus need worthy establishments to nourish them—I suppose I’ll start accumulating a very large favourite place virtual rolodex. On the one hand, it definitely waters down the distinction, but on the other, it means I’m blessed, lucky, and privileged.

On the topic of soupless noodles, my focus has always been either on noodles that already come dry, such as bún thịt nướng, or dry versions of noodles that more often come with soup, such as phở bò. I see stir-fried noodles as a completely different category, and it’s not one that I gravitate toward often, regardless of cuisine. But a Vietnamese stir-fried noodle dish I did want to try for the sake of trying was nui xào bò (stir-fried noodles with beef). Nui in Vietnam are any manner of short noodle shapes from penne to rotini. I most often seen a penne-rigatoni hybrid. Nui comes from the French word for noodle: nouille. I wanted to try this dish because I had heard that nui are purposefully overcooked. I like my noodles al dente to the point of almost being still raw, so I knew it would be an uphill battle to like this dish. But a photo of a friend’s meal encouraged me to give it a go.

It’s not for me. The noodles are soft to the point of being like phở. They flop and fold like soft rice noodles. Because. This is a country where soft noodles are perfected and revered. So it is wrong for me to say that they are overcooked; they are cooked to the culture. I am the ill fit, not the nui.

The restaurant incorrectly sent me nui xào bò lúc lắc, which has tomatoes and cubes of beef instead of strips, but the noodles don’t change. It was a worthy experiment; I’m glad I tried. But I don’t want to eat it again, so I won’t be putting this place on my list—which for better or worse is to my taste and preferences. (I mean, they also got my order wrong.)

Picking an MVP meal of the month was difficult.