Everything I Ate in Saigon, Vietnam - Part 2

Maxim just got here and the first thing we're gonna eat is bánh mì, specifically bánh mì bò lá lốt. Let's go. We're a bit up the road, but you can see where it is. Look at the smoke. They're grilling the bò lá lốt over there. So let's go get some. As with many bánh mì carts in Vietnam, there isn't an address, but apparently they're almost always around the same place. They have been selling bánh mì bò lá lốt here for around 20 years. They're grilling the beef both in meatball form and as bò lá lốt, which is when the beef is wrapped in a type of leaf called lốt or lốp. It has a very distinct peppery taste. Check out our recipe if you want to make some at home. I wish we could transmit the smell because it smells so good. As you can see, it's filled with about half and half meatballs and bò lá lốt, along with rau răm, cucumber, a sweet and savory sauce, and a chili sauce. The bread is so crispy. Oh my god, oh yeah. It's a bit sweet, a bit savory. Wow. And the bread, perfect. A little bit of cucumber. There's some pickles in here as well. Helps with the freshness to balance out the beef. Oh my god, I could smash so many of these. What do you think? Worth the wait? Oh, yeah. Oh, the lemongrass. Very tasty. So good. I cannot find the same bread outside of Vietnam. You can hear the crunch from here. What are even sidewalks, you know? First cafes in there in Vietnam. Use some after-drinks clothing. We're on our way to get the second bánh mì of today. Let's go. Cho một bánh mì ít cay. We're getting a bánh mì xương cải chua. So it's ribs and pickled, um... Can't remember what it is in English. Mustard greens. They just started a new batch of ribs, so we have to wait a bit for them to cook. Lots of people waiting to buy either a bánh mì or just the ribs to take home. Bánh mì xương cải chua. It's the size of my forearm. That's a fat bánh mì. This bánh mì is filled with the grilled ribs, picked with mustard greens, green onions, and cilantro. Okay, we got to the meat. Ribs are nice and smoky, fatty. I think the pickled mustard is a little spicy. You get a little bit of a sourness from it. It's really nice. Still don't have any cartilage, which I'm a little sad about, but meat is good. Very different. I've never had this one either. It's good. I like it. Taste reminds me a little bit of, um, lead flavors with that mustard greens. Overall, a good bánh mì, but would have been much better if we got some crunchy cartilage bits. For dinner, we're trying a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant that my parents regularly go to. We started with this gỏi giống suốt, Vietnamese-style crunchy seaweed salad. For the rest, we had đậu xúc xào tỏi, sauteed chayote greens. Nấm xúc bánh đa, a vegan version of a famous Hue dish with mushrooms instead of clams, served with rice crackers. Nấm đùi gà rô tì, rotisserie king oyster mushrooms, phủ trúc bắc kinh, peking tofu skin, mít kho, braised jackfruit, and finally, cà tím tây cầm, braised eggplant. Eggplant, there's some mushrooms in there, too. Sweet and savory. For dessert, we're at this nearby place for bingsu, which is Korean milk-based shaved ice. We got one tiramisu and one croffle, i.e. croissant waffle, flavored. It's another day in Saigon, and for breakfast, we're having bánh mì. Let's go. It's my first full day in Vietnam. You can't go wrong with this place. Bò nế is another dish that likely has its roots in the French colonial period, since the use of beef was not common beforehand. Bò nế is a choose-your-own-adventure. The beef is a must since it's the star of the show, but you can choose the other toppings. Oil is added to a casserole pan, the thinly sliced marinated beef is then quickly cooked in the sizzling hot oil, flipped once, then other toppings are added based on your order. Mine is always bò trứng pâté. Beef, egg, and pâté. You can get it with more than one eggs. You can get it with sardines. You can customize it, but this is my order. I'm actually gonna add a little bit of onion. Let it cook. This thing is so hot. A little bit of pâté. I'm gonna put the pâté down so it's touching the pan. I like when it's a little warmer. Oh, yeah. The beef is really tender. It's nicely seasoned. You have soy sauce for your eggs. Oh, yeah, it's a bit of a sweet soy sauce. Such a hearty breakfast. You'll be full till noon. For dinner, we're starting with one of my childhood favorites, bột chiên. This is bột chiên, which means fried dough. These are little bits of dough and there's also an egg that's been cracked on top. This is one of my favorite childhood snacks. That's papaya that you just put on top, shredded papaya. My family would take me to swimming lessons as a kid and right outside the swimming place, the swimming pool, there would be a little stall for bột chiên and they would always buy me a plate after swimming lessons. This is the sauce. Pour that on top. I like drowning it in the sauce. Yeah, that tastes like my childhood. The dough is crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. And the papaya helps add a little bit of freshness to balance out all the fried stuff here. Let's go down this totally not sketchy alley. Wish me luck. Four years and as hard as she gets, rid of me. Next, we're heading to a place specializing in fertilized duck and quail eggs. The fertilized duck eggs are commonly known in English by their Filipino name, quail. We have quail embryos sautéed in a tamarind sauce. We have bò nước lá lọc, which is beef with lotus leaves, and we have some duck embryos boiled. It's really good. It has all the flavors of trứng vịt lọc, but less of the duck embryo texture. So it's a good intro into duck embryo if you're someone who's not used to eating this stuff because the bird is a lot smaller. And the tamarind flavor is super nice. It's a bit sour, a tiny tiny bit sour, mostly sweet. Then you have the crunchiness from the peanuts and the fried shallot. There are also bits of tòp ma'o, which are pieces of fried fat that add a lot of flavor. Squeezing some calamansi into the salt, pepper, and chili mixture. Starting with the egg yolk part, dipping it into the salt mixture, and then of course you have to eat it with dâu xăm, Vietnamese coriander. Here's the duck. This egg is a little young, so there's still a lot of egg whites. I actually prefer them to be a little older. The table next to us was very impressed that Maxime ate these. Now we're going to get ice cream. Ice cream, ice cream. What's all in there? Coconut ice cream, some peanuts. I think those are boba. And dried coconuts. A bite of everything. This is avocado smoothie and there's some coconut ice cream on top with some peanuts and dried coconut flakes. Always love avocado smoothie, so. It's another morning in Saigon and we're having bánh canh cua for breakfast. Let's go. Of course it wouldn't be Vietnamese street food if you're not sitting on the tiniest little plastic stools. Here they're prepping some to-go orders. Rather than Uber Eat, grab food is the big thing here in Vietnam. They probably have a main kitchen nearby where they prepare all the ingredients and cook the broth. Here's the broth being delivered. At this stall, it's just the assembly. Here we have bánh canh cua. Bánh canh is a type of Vietnamese noodles, usually made from tapioca and rice flour. Bánh canh cua is obviously bánh canh noodles with crab. There's also some patties in here, a quail egg, some pork blood. And the special thing about this broth is that it's very thick thanks to the addition of cornstarch. So you can see, super thick. Fish sausage. This is just a piece of skin. Let's have a taste. That's really good. The noodles taste really fresh and the broth is nice and thick and flavorful. A little bit of crab over here. Not too much crab. It's street food. Shrimp. It's very similar to the consistency of súp măng cua with that jiggle. This is the Nguyễn Huệ walking street. It is a lot busier at night and a lot more fun. This used to be an old apartment building but it has been converted into a shared space for all of these different restaurants and cafes. Each of those signs that you see is a separate cafe or restaurant. We are making a stop at Maison Maru which I believe is the first place that makes single origin chocolate bars fully from beans grown in Vietnam. Their chocolates are some of my favorite things to bring back from Vietnam as gifts because the chocolate is great and the packaging is beautiful. Here you can also watch their desserts being made. Look at this selection. Even though we just had breakfast, we had to try some things. Creamy. The egg cream has a hint of savoriness. This is a pastry that they call Paris Saigon. Looks like the Paris Brest if you know. So let's try. The chocolate version of the Paris Brest. It's really good. Bánh mì heo quay. Roasted pork bánh mì. Look at that crispy skin. Let's give it a try. Flavors are good. Didn't get any crispy skin yet. Maybe the next bite. There's roasted pork which is usually seasoned with five spice. There's a sauce made with soy, maybe some oyster, onions, cucumber, and some chilies. Did you get a bit of skin? Overall, a good bánh mì. The bread wasn't as crispy as it could be but the roasted pork made up for it. Our third meal slash second bánh mì for today is bánh mì bì xíu mại. Pork skin and meatballs. Meatballs. It's warm. They just opened. So there's the pork skin, there's some bits of fatty pork, there's some bits of the xíu mại which are meatballs, some cilantro, scallion oil, a little bit of chili, and she added some nước mắm as well. The bread seems super crispy. I've never had that before. Very different. The bread is so fresh that it's literally falling apart right here. It's cracking as I press on it. That's really good. The bì, the skin, has like a chewy texture. Not too much flavor but there's seasoning on the meat and the nước mắm really adds the flavor. And the bread is so fresh. I wish I could eat bánh mì every day. So good. I love bread. We're buying some dried mango to bring back for ourselves and as gifts. We used to buy them at Bến Thành market but now we get these. They're pretty and they're easier to gift. Here we have a Vietnamese mango. It's suai carma lòp. It's this type of mango that's super super sweet. It's the most famous type of mango in Vietnam. This one's a little bit overripe so it doesn't look very pretty but it's gonna be so so sweet. Oh my god. There's no fiber in a good Vietnamese mango. It's like eating custard. Let's try this popped rice chocolate bar from Maison Maru. See the popped rice? It's very good. The crunch is very good and thin. For breakfast, we checked out this cơm tấm place instead of my regular cơm tấm bà ghiền. This place came highly recommended by a local acquaintance. He did tell us it was pricey but we didn't realize it was one of the most expensive cơm tấm places in Saigon. We both got cơm tấm sườn bì chả which is ribs, skin and meatloaf. The meat was huge and super well seasoned. My piece was perfect because it had fatty bits but Maxime's was a bit too lean. The rice was perfectly cooked, probably better than most other places I have been to. Fluffy, tender and not dry. I wasn't a fan of their chả though which to me had way too much lean meat and was definitely too dry. Overall, pretty good but not enough for the price tag. While walking around, we got a cup of nước mìa, sugar cane juice. I'm not gonna say this is the safest choice sanitary wise but it's super delicious. For lunch, we got bánh xèo. This place came highly recommended online. We had to walk through a pretty dirty wet market to get here. The bánh xèo are pretty big and crispy. We got two bánh xèo tôm tịt which are filled with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts. Unfortunately, they weren't that great. Neither the batter nor the filling were very well seasoned so they ended up tasting a bit flavorless and oily. Definitely my least favorite thing that we ate this entire trip. For our final night in Saigon, my parents treated us to dinner at this restaurant specializing in wagyu beef. We got the premium omakase set which included six different cuts of wagyu along with a few other small dishes in between. They cook the beef to perfection for you. It's really also a performance which adds to the experience. Every piece was sliced differently in a way that works best for that cut of meat. This thin piece which was grilled then dipped into a mixture of egg and grated Japanese mountain yam was my favorite. We finished with some delicious cold soba followed by matcha and hojicha ice cream. Truly an incredible meal. And that's it for our time in Saigon. Stay tuned for our adventures in Hanoi and Phu Quoc.