$5 All You Can Eat VIETNAMESE BBQ Buffet in Saigon – INSANE Street Food Deal!

Hey guys, it's Mike Chen. Today, today is bittersweet. That smells really good. Pork chop grilling over there. Smells so good. Anyways, bittersweet because my last day in Vietnam and it's all gonna begin and end with pho. This place, I did not know if you walk inside, there's actually an air-conditioned room. It's kind of sad because like I mentioned in previous videos, I have pretty bad food poisoning. So I definitely missed out on my fair share of pho. I feel like today though, I'm at I'm about 90%. I think I'm almost over it. Let's go for a full food day. Fresh herbs, sprouts. I am gonna miss this so much. There's just nothing like getting a bowl of pho in Vietnam. I'm almost feeling like borderline emotional with this thing. Raw cuts of beef. I got some brisket. There's scallions, cilantro, onions, beef tendon as well and it smells so incredible. Add some herbs in and look at that beautiful clear broth. Smells so beefy. Oh my gosh, this is one of the beefiest bowl of pho I've had so far. Splash of lime. You do not understand the blast of beef you taste with every sip of this elixir of life. Oh my gosh, this is so good. Sipping this broth is borderline hypnotic. This is something I will miss so much when leaving Vietnam. You get to choose all different cuts of beef, the noodle scrumptious, the soup. I want to just pump this directly in my veins. Rich, clean, so so beefy. Yeah, this is something I could eat every single day for the rest of my life. Look at that nice chunk of fat on that brisket. In this country, not much is better than a bowl of pho in the morning. Maybe nothing is better. This place does it so well. It's one of my favorite places. If you just want a bowl of extra beefy, lip-smacking good bowl of pho, this is the place to get it. I feel like I've had a lot of bowl of pho on this trip. This is still probably my favorite bowl of pho in Vietnam. I'm gonna try to eat here one more time before I leave, but oh that was so satisfying. All right, breakfast is really starting to heat up. I saw this bonnet place right across the street from the pho place. And there's tons of people here. I wish I was able to grab a seat outside, but this is another classic Vietnamese dish that you've got to try when you're here. If you've never had it, bonnet is basically Vietnamese steak and eggs. Usually you eat it with a fresh baguette, nice and toasty. You can get it with eggs and beef or eggs and beef and pate or eggs and beef and pate and sausage. And how they cook it is heating up a giant hot plate. Add oil, sizzle the strips of beef, and that thing will cook in less than a minute. Sausage, pate, whatever else you order goes on as well. And that giant sizzling plate is served to you. This is a dish you can get at restaurants, but you got to come to one of these food stalls to really experience it. Man, this is probably the worst seat in the house. Actually, I can't feel any breeze. It's like a night and day compared to when I was sitting in air conditioning. Here it is. A little cilantro on top, onions, sausage. The pate is here. Sizzling beef, scallions. Everything is still being cooked on this hot plate. So it's going to remain nice and hot. Look at this. This egg is fried so quickly. And to eat this, take your baguette, baguette in Vietnam, toasty and extremely light, and dunk it into the eggs. Break it open, dunk it into the pate, onions. This is one of the greatest dishes you'll find at this restaurant. So rich and delicious. They add some soy sauce to this as well for some extra umami. And you're getting so much flavor from the pate and that wonderful gooey richness from the runny egg. Oh, that beef is so tender. It's tender, it's heavy, a little sweet and savory from the soy sauce. This is so much better than your typical steak and eggs. The onion adds a nice crunch as well. What I like to do, open my bread up a little bit and use it to grab some eggs, onions, steak, pate, everything. There you go. Texture, flavor, everything in this dish designed to make the taste buds go wild. The onion is perfect, the steak is perfect, the egg's perfect, the baguette is perfect. Best steak and eggs you'll ever have in your life. This is usually a breakfast dish, but I think the last time I had this like towards the evening as well. But most of these stalls that sell this dish I think closes around noon or 11 o'clock. So seek this out earlier in the day if you can. I mean I'm hot, I'm sweaty, but good food will really make you forget how hot it is. It has that effect. Lunch is gonna be here. Check this place out. Lunch is at this very very popular Michelin food stall that sells Banh Xio, which is a Vietnamese crepe. And these are absolutely ginormous. Okay, I'm gonna get a regular and I think that's good for me until dinner. And you see them cooking it over there. They're cooking like almost a dozen at a time. Like I was saying, this thing is ginormous. You can get a bigger one than this too. Fresh out of the pan. The outside is flaky, crispy, golden. This thing looks like it just came from the beach. Oh, that smells good. And take a look at the inside. Look at that. It's like a food monster opening his mouth. Loaded with sprouts. You can see the shrimp, the pork belly. There's chopsticks. You can also just rip off a piece. Dunk it in lettuce. I say usually you want to get very hands-on with this thing. So what you want to do is take out a giant piece of lettuce. This thing is so hot, by the way. Take the Banh Xio. Look at all that shrimp and pork inside. Put it on top of the leaf. Add some herbs. Wrap it up. Wow. I'm not doing a great job wrapping this. Dunk it into the fish sauce. And then just feel the happiness flow from your mouth to the rest of your body. They keep the skin on the shrimp for some extra crunch. So not only are you getting a beautiful light crunch from the outside of this crepe, you're getting some of that crunchy shrimp shell too. Actually, you got a multitude of crunch going on. You got the crunch from the greens, the crunch from the crepe, the crunch from the sprouts, and the shrimp shell. That's more like a umami crunch. The herbs, of course, a really refreshing element. To me, this is also an absolute must-try street food. I love that toasty, slightly burnt flavor from the outside of the pancake. The pork provides a little richness. The sprouts, even more crunch and juice. And again, that shrimp and fish sauce, of course, just brings the umami. This is a good-sized pancake. Definitely much bigger than the last one I had. Yeah, like I said, I think after this, I'm pretty good till dinner. I think after this meal, I'm down to my last $200,000, which is about under $8 US. So I saved just enough to go to the buffet tonight, which might just be one of the best value-for-money deals in the city. So this buffet I'm trying to go to has got to be one of, if not the most popular buffet chain in Saigon. And it's definitely one of the best value-for-money places ever, and I haven't even been there yet. I will never be used to roads in Vietnam. Like there was a crosswalk right there. There's a crosswalk where I crossed, but the crosswalk goes into this field. There's really no path there. And the only way you can walk is on the road with all the traffic. You gotta just be brave when you're crossing the street in Vietnam in general. There should be a joke about why didn't the chicken cross the road? Because he was in Vietnam. Oh man, that chicken flesh smells good. Here it is. This is the place. Wow, okay. So this kind of reminds me of the butter buffet I went to in Thailand. So on top of every table, there's a small grill with butter sitting on top. Let's sit here, get a little breeze. You get a tissue and a drink. If you want to just come here for the buffet with no drink, it's about $130,000 or around five US dollars for this buffet. And this is the buffet you're getting. Check this out. Wow. Okay, so you're getting a lot, a lot of meat and veg. There's fries, there's chips, fresh herbs, buns, there's fish balls. And I say this is one of the most popular buffets because this location here, 7,600 reviews. Another location, 9,400 reviews, 7,800 reviews. This place just opened. It's not dinnertime yet. Already four tables. With the drink option, you can get boba, teas, sodas. Also, there's a couple of cooked dishes as well. Looks like some snail, different sauces, rice cakes. Oh my gosh, they have intestines here, too. The one with calamansi inside. This one looks threatening. Full-on fresh container of margarine. First, gnocchi mushrooms wrapped in bacon. I got some what looks like beef tendon. A piece of steak. It looks a little lame, but we'll see. Some pork ribs, it looks like. And boneless chicken feet. They also have a bunch of steamer clams. Not bad. Also, got a piece of fried chicken just because. That's not bad fried chicken. Oh, I forgot about my vegetable. Got some corn. $5. How good a deal is this? And of course, you can eat this barbecue however way you want to. I see people just grilling it, dunking in sauce. Some people are adding herbs, wrapping in lettuce. Oh, yeah, if you get the extra drink package, it's less than a dollar more, like 80 cents more. Ooh, so I got a red sauce and a green sauce. This green sauce is spicy. Really bright, too. The red one's more sweet, more citrusy. I think there's some ginger in here. The green one, wow, that thing is made to hurt you. I think my steak is definitely about done. What I initially thought were beef tendon, I think it's just squid. Yeah, it's squid. I don't know why I thought this was beef tendon. Dunk it in some of the green sauce. It's delicious. Snappy and tender. The sauce is really spicy. Pretty flavorful, too. I don't know what else they added in this green sauce. The red one's not bad. I like the green one. More spicy, not as sweet. Everything you're eating definitely tastes really, really buttery. A little pink center. The beef is definitely chewy. Yeah, I think the beef is just okay. Definitely a little chewy. My pork ribs. That's really good. I think this might be my go-to meat from now on. This thing overall, pretty tender. Really nice and juicy. Just really tasty, miniature little pork ribs. That tastes very, very buttery coming off this grill. I'm really excited for this. Chicken feet. And this thing, you can just go ahead and pop this whole thing in your mouth. They took like 99% of the bones out. So most of where you're crunching through, it's just cartilage, tendon, and that awesome collagen. Okay, I might have overcooked this one a little bit. Enoki mushrooms, either wrapped in fatty beef or pork belly. I think it's a pork belly. Best thing on the grill. Enoki is so good. This whole thing is buttery, it's fatty. Nice and juicy, too. I'm gonna let my corn cook and go for round two. By the way, the people working here are so nice. They come over to check on you, make sure you get a new grill. This place, I got some okra. I got some eggplants, pork belly, and they have this very popular Vietnamese street food. This is the beef wrapped in betta leaves. The eggplant looks good. I got a bunch of that. I see everybody grilling okra, so I'll put that in my pan. I got a little smiley face fish cake, some sausage. I think this might look better than my first round. That pork belly looks nice and fatty. My corn is still grilling. I'm really excited for this. That's a lot, a lot of variety of food for what you're paying for this buffet. Five dollars in the US? I don't think nowadays you can even buy a Big Mac. But if you're in Vietnam, get yourself a buffet with seafood, with steak. Also, I never really like okra, but there's gotta be a reason. Everybody is grilling okra here. Pork belly is awesome, especially that skin part. Let's try this. I feel like this okra is pretty nicely grilled. This is pretty awesome. Freshly grilled okra. Who knew? One of my biggest problems with eating okra, this thing was just way too slimy. It's like I was eating something from the Ghostbusters. This thing, pretty snappy and nice, and goes really well with rich fatty pieces of meat. Okra with fatty pork belly is a food mash that's never ever crossed my mind. I think I'm gonna have to include this next time I barbecue at home. I don't know why the sausage looks so appetizing. And when you start to grill this thing, a really nice smoky aroma comes out of it, kind of like a like a Chinese lap cheong. Interesting. Okay, this thing is sweet. It's really really fatty, like really fatty. You know what? I think it goes pretty good with my eggplant too. Not as good as the okra, but pretty darn good. I'm basically just treating this grill as a hot plate. You know what might be good? Take the sausage, dunk it in that sauce, add it onto the eggplant. As you can see, this place is getting packed. I mean, it's such a good deal, like whole families are coming here. Like, why wouldn't you? I'm sure to have a deal where kids probably eat free or half price or something. Good food for the whole family. Look, I think my beef is finally done. Look at this thing. Oh, that looks beautiful. I definitely overcooked this. It's all good. Take it off the toothpick. Let's pop the whole thing in my mouth. That is so freaking good. If you're ever in Vietnam, you gotta try this dish. They sell it everywhere. Walk around, you'll see it. I mean, you'll probably smell it first. So the wild betta leaves that they use to wrap around the beef, what it does is it absorbs all that beefy fat and richness. And the leaf itself has a really aromatic kind of peppery flavor to it. So when that's so full, like so full of fat from the beef, absolutely amazing. On the streets, they cook it to about medium, I think. Maybe medium well. I definitely made this well done. Does not take away from this awesome flavor. That actually might have been my favorite thing on the buffet now. Oh, no. Totally forgot about my little fish cake. Look how evil it looks. Oh my gosh. Look at the flip side. Oh, man. I like it nice and toasty. This is my corn that's been with me since the beginning. Buttery corn. Because this table is so small, my camera is constantly overheating from the heat. So I'm gonna shut this down and I'll see you in a little bit. I just have one round more because my flight back to the US is in about four hours. So I didn't want to overeat because it's about a, with connections, over 20 hour trip back to the US. If you've ever been on a flight with a super full stomach, don't recommend it. And honestly, I wish I had more time here. Oh, no. I'm back at my crossing. So, oh no. I should follow this guy. The crosswalk is over there. Hang on, I gotta concentrate here. I guess this is a way. See the crosswalk is right there. Anyway, like I said, I wish I had more time here. This is one of those food cities I feel like where it's just endless options to explore and taste. And one week in this city, less than one, I spent about one week here total, including the time I came here on the cruise. Really doesn't do it justice. And hopefully it won't be another six years until I come back again. And just want to give a huge thanks to all the local friends who showed me around. Also, everybody I met here, just so incredibly nice and helpful. I mean, I hate how hot it is, but honestly, little sad to leave, not gonna lie. And as always, all the places I went to is down below for you guys. Thank you all so much for watching until we eat again. See you later.