The Hidden Food Scene in Saigon’s Expat Neighborhood

Thao Dien is known as Vietnam's most famous expat neighborhood, but beyond the cafes, condos, and international crowd, there are still some amazing local food spots. Today, Jason Pham from Mommy Cocktails is showing us a few of his favorites. Jason, Rochelle, people say that there is no good local food in Thao Dien. What's your response to that? I'd say there is definitely good Vietnamese local spots in Thao Dien. You just got to know where to look. It's not in your face like a lot of spots. Any of the best eats in Saigon, you got to look down the alleyway. The alleyway is where the best places are. Right, right, right. If you guys don't know, Thao Dien, just take a look around you right now. It's almost like a Western oasis. Yeah, you don't feel like you're in Vietnam, right? I love that it looks modern, it feels modern, but you get all the local eats. All right, you guys, let's head to our first spot. Let's go. All right, Jason, kicking off the first spot on our hidden secret local native Thao Dien crawl. Where are we at? This is one of Thao Dien's most loved spots. It's a Bun Cha place. It's called Hai Hoi Wang. This place actually closed for about a year because they moved locations. The day that it closed, a lot of Thao Dienians called it the darkest day in Thao Dien's history. So we're glad it's back. Everybody's very excited it's back. So when we're talking about this Bun Cha spot is good, are we talking about for all of Saigon, for all of South Vietnam, or just for Thao Dien? Definitely the best in all of Saigon. A lot better than a lot of Bun Cha's I've had up north as well. I don't know because it might have been my first ever Bun Cha that I had when I moved here. So it kind of sets the standard. It's kind of like the nostalgic almost taste of Bun Cha for me. But a lot of people would agree that this is the best, if not one of the best. And you guys are both Southern Vietnamese or Central, right? So you guys didn't necessarily grow up eating Bun Cha with your parents? No, I had no idea what it was. When we have a lot of Vietnamese, we have a big Vietnamese diaspora in Melbourne. However, it's all immigrants from South Vietnam. So dishes like Bun Cha from the north is pretty much unheard of over there. You wouldn't be able to get it. Hey, well, I'm excited because I saw on the Google reviews, they said it tastes exactly like Hanoi. And like you said, even better than some Hanoi spots. Definitely. Let's check it out. Let's give it a go. Let's go. All right, so where are we going right now? So we're going to eat in his living room. A lot of Vietnamese restaurants, it's kind of just in the family household. So we're going to take our shoes off, which is customary for all Vietnamese households. In the man's living room. I love it. Was the old spot also in his living room or not? He also lived at the back, but he wasn't quite inside his living room. This place is a little bit smaller. So yeah, we're literally in the man's living room. We've got his family portraits over there. He's the rice wine. He's the man himself. Just busy, busy always. Now, this is such a dope dish. And I think that just from my experiences with Bun Cha, like the flavor profiles, it's so different than what you're thinking. So when people hear it's a fish sauce sort of broth, they automatically think of the fish sauce in a bottle. But it's fish sauce that's been cooked down with a little bit of water, a little bit of sugar. So it's kind of this light fish sauce-esque broth. And not much else goes into it. A little bit of garlic and a little bit of chili. That's about it. Yeah, I'm trying to think of something to compare it to. That exists in another culture. And it's really hard for me to think of. Because you can't even call it a deconstructed Bun Cha, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not a fusion item, right? This is not from any sort of French or anything like that. Not that I know of, no. It's grilled pork belly over coals with grilled pork patties, vermicelli, and this really light fish sauce broth. So the secret here is they have one of the best fried spring rolls that you've ever had in your life. It's the best fried spring roll I've ever had. And that one is the secret banger here. All right, man. We gotta get some. Let's do it. All right. Yo, guys. It's arrived here. We're looking at gigantic Viet spring rolls, double fried. You said in the South, they're called what? Chai Yor. But in the North, it's called Nem. Okay, so Nem. Yeah, yeah. So it's a little bit of a different name. This one's got the woody mushrooms, pork, carrots, and glass noodles. That was probably one of the best spring rolls. And it's good. It's different to the Phong Cha sauce. All right. How do we go at it? For somebody who doesn't know. Actually, I don't really know what's the ratios or how you really do it. Right. So like all Vietnamese dishes, you kind of build your own. So that's garlic. This is a whole ton of minced garlic there. That's a chili powder, some fresh chilies as well. Based on how you like it, you add it to your Phong Cha broth. Okay. Wait, how many scoops are you going for? I do about that much. I'll load you up. Are you a garlic person? Yeah. Yeah, obviously. Big one for me, please. I hope you're not kissing anyone after this. Okay, we'll do that for you. Rochelle likes a big one, so I'll load her up here. Do you like spicy? I do. What do you think? All right, that's good. That's good. Yeah, I'll take some chili. So we're prepping it. We're prepping the Bun Cha. That's it. And we stir it or not? Yeah, we stir it up. So personally, I don't do the lime, but a lot of people like it with the lime as well. But you could try it first without the lime and then go in. You got your little bowl here. So your little bowl is kind of what you build everything in. So you take a little bit of noodles. It's a little bit like hot pot. We got the prep bowl. Right. That goes straight to your bowl. And then a little bit of that broth goes straight over the top. Okay. So this one has the pork belly, the pork patty, some daikon and some carrots. Right. People might get scared when you say this is a nuoc mam based sauce, right? Like fish sauce. But it's really not. Like it's not. It's so twisted, right? Right. So it's cooked down with a lot of water and a lot of sugar as well. So it's very light, sort of fish broth-y. Okay. You wouldn't sip it, I guess, like a noodle soup. Some people sip it though. Some people sip it. Yeah. It's kind of like a dipping sauce almost. So what I like to do is I take a little bit of pork belly. I take some of these fresh greens they give you. Whatever you like, sort of. Just try to get it all in one bite. Make sure you get the pickled vegetables. Okay. Then you've also got that beautiful pork patty. Almost like a pork sausage that they flame grill as well. For people who don't know, it's almost like a superman dipping ramen. That's it. Exactly right. When you go for the nem. So exactly the same deal. Dip it. Pickle. I also like the en piece. I give it a little dip. It's a one biter. Of course, iced tea as customary. We're a very Vietnamese restaurant. I guess there are people also that are, whether they're Vietnamese or non-Vietnamese, because like you were saying, depending on what region you're from, you're only exposed to your family's regional food. How would you describe it? How would you encourage people to try it? Look, don't let the word fish sauce deter you. Fish sauce is a very sort of versatile condiment. We use a lot of noodle soup. We use it as a dipping sauce. We use it in light broths. And a lot of people just, as soon as they hear fish sauce, they all automatically get scared. Like, oh, that's going to be too fishy. That's going to be too sticky, too salty for me, too fermented. But just give it a go. People have been eating this for generations. And that's with any cuisine. That's with any culture. If it's been on the menu for generations and centuries, it's probably good. Do you think more Southern Viets, like you guys wanted to try it after Obama tried it? After Obama visited and he went with Anthony Bourdain, that famous scene, that really blew up Phung Cha. And that really, I guess, gave people the courage and the knowledge to actually try this dish. And since then, it's skyrocketed up the list of Vietnam's favorite dishes. Do you feel like people are more trying each other's cuisines? Because I know in China for a while, people would just eat the regional food for hundreds of years. But then now it's all starting to be like, oh, there's a Sichuan chain in Hong Kong and there's a Hong Kong chain in Beijing. And it's all mixed up now. It's like globalization on a local level, right? Or localization. We have three regions of three completely different sort of cuisines. And even dishes like, say, a bún bò huế, which originally comes from Huế, which is in Central Vietnam. In the South, it's a completely different dish. It's sweeter. It's not made with the fermented shrimp paste as much as it would be in traditional Huế. The toppings are different. That localization or globalization of local cuisine really fits each other's flavor palettes. Right, right, right. It's like, you know, this is what bún chả tastes like in the South. What does a bún thịt nướng taste like in Hanoi? Yeah, they've got to make it saltier and less sweet. Can you even get it in Hanoi? I've never seen it. Yeah, that's a good question. I've never actually seen it. They've got their own grilled meat sort of noodle dishes. Like they've got, it's like a bún bò nam bò. It's beef. And it's kind of like a bún thịt nướng, but it's with beef. And then they've got this, which, yeah. And they also have like their steamed minced pork rice rolls too that you dip in sauce like this too. Yeah. And Hanoians are very Hanoians. They're very traditional to their culture. So they do their stuff really well. They only mess around with the other sort of cuisines. Not to say you can't get it, but it's rarer. Whereas in Sài Gòn, you get everything in Sài Gòn. Right, right, right. It's really like, really kind of a free-for-all here, right? If people like your stuff, go for it. Yeah, that's it. All right, man. Hey, this was the perfect spot to kick off our like secret hidden Taodian crawl. Because like we were saying earlier, a lot of people don't think there's good Vietnamese food in Taodian, right? That's like a common misconception. So, I mean, Taodian is very gentrified, let's be honest. Yeah. A lot of Western-style restaurants from all over the world. And it's great. It's a little pocket of, I guess, you know, globalization. Does it feel like Australia? A little bit. Some looks, it does feel like Australia. It feels like Europe in some places. You know, it feels like America when you're at the American sports bar, watching the NFL sort of playoffs. It's very American. But the general misconception is can't get good Vietnamese food in Taodian. But I would say that this place has been around since before Taodian became Taodian. Right. It's been around since me. Like even before us. Yeah, yeah. We're in Swamplands, right? Essentially. Yeah. So there are some very, very good Vietnamese sort of hidden local treasures here. And yeah, we'll go through those definitely. Hell yeah. Yo, let's keep it going. I'm like resisting finishing this right now because I don't know what I'm gonna do. We got plenty of places to come. So don't fill up. But we're gonna have a couple more bites. Aren't you guys leading off our number two hyper local hidden Taodian spot for locals? Where are we at? We're at Cơm Tấm Bà Đạc. So it's broken rice, pork chop broken rice. We got to talk about the significance of this place, right? Because we're talking to what? Taxi drivers, Grab drivers. Yeah. Betaski. Right. This is like the people's food. So you see there, Betaski worker just had her lunch. Now she's off to work. Hey, she needed a Bà Đạc. She needed a Bà Đạc to power up. Let me tell you guys the significance of this location right now. You got the Taodian stop right here. Tourists coming off. Tourists over there. A ton of foreigners. You got a bunch of influencers taking photos by a new spot over there. And then here we are eating broken rice. But this was here before all this. Yes. This has been here again longer than I've been here. I'd say at least 15 to 20 years. Cơm Tấm is the most what? Like universal Saigon lunch food? Yes. I would say it's quintessential Saigon on a plate. So broken rice is basically the working man's rice. It was the leftover rice grains from, you know, nice rice grains that were served to the elites. And then the working man will get left with like broken rice. So we cook that. Even now today, that texture, that taste has become nostalgic. So we still serve broken rice here. You know, I feel like a lot of really classic street food dishes, they are driven out of like scarcity or a tough situation or poverty. And then it grows into something else. That's where you know it's good. And a mark of a good Cơm Tấm spot is if there's taxi drivers and grab drivers. And that's how I found out about this place. Yeah, when I first got here. Yo, this is crazy right now, guys. If you could just see, like, we just got everything. This is dope. Yo, this reminds me of like Men in Black, you know, when they're in that alien tunnel and everything was going on. I always see people with dogs. Hey man, it's everyday life. People need to get to where they need to get. It's acting. That's it. Yo, we got to give a huge shout out to Salem, which is from the ownership of our friends at Babar and Motley. And it's crazy because that is almost the most cutting edge, social house, international, like, westernized concept in Taotien. And then we're next to the most true school, old school, salt of the earth spot. So I love that duality. Rochelle was nice enough to pick up some milk mia or sugar cane juice for us. It's an extremely hot day here. I like it just straight up. It's good. They just squeeze it right there in the machine. That's it. Which is impressive. There's like a grinding machine here. Yeah. The thing is, this will be about $10 in Australia for a cup. That's probably about half the size of this. You got to close your lid, brother. Let's get some ordering. So here you just kind of have to shout what you want because nobody, there's no table service here. So we'll try it out. All right. We're going to watch Jason do this. How do we, for me coming here and not knowing anything, how do I call for service? Right. So if you don't really know what you're doing, you just kind of just walk up to that little glass cabinet over there and sort of pick what you want. The entrance to Taoding is right at that intersection coming off the bridge. So if you're in Taoding, you have to come through here. You have to drive past here. If I'm a Taodian OG, I can see everything that comes in and out of Taodian from Comtom. Pretty much. Wow. All right. Rochelle, you want to run through what we got here, Rochelle? So we have the broken rice, some pickled vegetables, a fried egg, a sweet lap seung, a steamed kind of a pork egg patty. Yeah. Wood ear mushrooms. Yep. You have the pork chop, some yummy, yummy fried onions. It's like scallion oil. Scallion oil. Yeah. And then boi, which is like shredded pork. Yeah. It's a textural element to it. And then of course, You can eat it all together and with some fish sauce. Take some, depending on how, you know, the fish sauce will be like a little bit sweet, a little bit salty. So again, not just straight up fish sauce out of a bottle. More pungent, a little bit stronger than what we had before at the moon chat spot. But yeah, so just put that on as much as you want or as little as you want. And then basically you want to build yourself an ultimate bite. It's a little base of rice, a little bit of pork, a little bit of egg. And you get three Vietnamese, little bite of chili at the end of it. Oh yeah? But a nice spicy kick. Oh yeah. And how much does this cost? I think this will be about $50,000. So about $2. Yeah. With everything maybe about $60 or $70. Dude, this is the most delicious calories you can get to fill you through your day, to give you the energy you need to just stay alive. For like $2.50 USD. That's it. Oh man, look at that. It's like magic. This is good. You got the ginger scallion on the pork chop too. Lime grilled pork chop. But would you agree that if you're not Vietnamese, Com Tam is starting to get to the people who have never had that before, right? Yeah, yeah. And Com Tam is all day. They wait for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even late, late night. It's the bagels or pizza of New York, the tacos of LA. Yep. Just the quintessential Saigon local dish. Hey guys, I had no idea what was going on at Com Tam Ba Dat, but now I know. Hey, cheers. Cheers to that. We forgot to say it on camera, but one of the most charming things about it is just how gruff and how efficient everybody is. And I know the owners were kind of giving us a little bit of a good ribbing or kind of like busting our balls about only ordering three Com Tam Dat Bic plates instead of four because we didn't order one for our cameraman. But like we said, man, that's true school to the old days. Authentic. All right. We're on Sung Tue, which is probably like, I don't know, in my opinion, maybe what the most westernized street in all of Vietnam. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely like the heartbane of Taodien. You look around, there's cafes, there's donut shops, there's bars, there's restaurants everywhere. Even the Phuc Long is a premium Phuc Long. But we're here to eat the most local thing, almost of local things, right? Pretty much. It's Pork Viet Long or more commonly, I guess, known as Balut. Right. Fertilized duck eggs, basically. Right, right. People know it for the Filipino name because I want to say Filipinos might eat it the most. Yeah. But then I looked on a chart, Vietnam was number two. Really? Oh, okay. That makes sense. It's definitely a very nostalgic food that our parents grew up eating. You know, I'll tell you this. They taste very different in Vietnam, would you say, than they do in the West? Because I think in the West, what, we get really like frozen. Yeah. Yeah, so they come in frozen. Texturally, they're not as good, I guess. These ones are really creamy. In the West, it's almost like a bouncy ball at the bottom of it. You can throw it on the pavement, it'll probably bounce up. Whereas here, they're fresh, they're harvested, and then they're sold, and they're cooked, and they're eaten straight away. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but it's almost like eating a fossilized dinosaur egg. Versus like eating the dinosaur egg right when it came out of the dinosaur. If you ever had a dinosaur egg, I guess you can tell me. So let's check it out. Nah. I know what it has. Yo, I have not been in here when it was this popping. I'm in this. Let's go. Hell yeah. When I'm talking about local eats. This is a local eat. From a structural, just like a lot of only locals. I didn't see a single foreigner having this balut. All right. So crack the top. We're gonna crack the top, yeah. Crack the top, peel it off like almost like a soldier. Gonna have the sugarcane juice. Little Jurassic Park type. Oh, not that much, not that much. Okay. Just enough that you can peel the top because you want to be able to suck the soup. Gonna suck the soup. I like it. It's gonna taste like chicken soup. And then this was like nuoc mam, chili, and white pepper in here. It's like a xiao long bao. I gotta get it. Yeah, you gotta get it exactly like a xiao long bao. Yeah. Cheers. It's like chicken soup. Chicken soup, right? With xiao. Yeah. Yo, deadass, that is the best soup that I've had from a balut in my life. I only had it like maybe like four times in the U.S. and it was mostly just for videos. But I never liked it in the U.S. This place is world famous because every egg is super, super consistent. And you said that this spot is known as being like pricey relative to Saigon. Right. So they come to about 50 cents per egg. Most other places, they're probably about 30 cents U.S. an egg. So it is a little bit more on the pricey side. But you do get a more consistent product every time. A more creamier product. You see on the wall, they've got a grabber wall. So you know this place is legit. That's true. All right. So we're looking at it now. You know, I think a lot of people back home will be surprised just probably thinking there's going to be a little beak right here. But it looks more like an egg. This is the sort of the yolk part. So and then underneath it, then you'll start to get a little bit more of the beak. And then there's this white hard thing. Usually most people throw it out. Yeah. OK. It doesn't really taste like much. It's like a cap. So what you want to do is you want to get a little bit of sauce. What about the veggies? The veggies, you sort of just have as a chaser afterwards. Yeah. Hoi Viet Long. Because the Viet is duck, right? The Viet is duck. Yes. So, yeah, that's the that's the yolk part. This is this is the best part, in my opinion. Cheers. It's really good. It's a lot of, you know, our aunties and uncles who come back and visit. And this is one of those nostalgic sort of snacks that they would have grown up with. So this place, they always love it. They're like, you know, it's nothing like what they grew up with. It's consistent. It's creamy. It's almost like a custard foie gras. Oh, yeah, that's a good comparison. And then, yeah, once you dig past that hard sort of white part. Good macros, too. All protein. So, yeah, now this is the archaeology part. That's it. Now you start to get all the beaks and the feathers and the wings. When are these like harvested? Like, how do we like? Because you're right. Like, this is quite young in the beta stage. But you know how one's like, when do you want to like pick up a loop? They said 19 to 21 days. And then once it hits 28 days, that's when it becomes a baby duckling. So you'll see when they go to the duck farm, I guess, they'll shine a big bright light and you can sort of see how it's developed. And then they can pick it from there to get the best eggs and the best texture. Is there any sort of like folk tales about this? Like curing male impotence or like, you know, I'm dumb. It just looks like one of those foods that would have that story. Yeah, I guess it does. Right. I don't know. That is the thing. You eat Hobyak Lom. And like you, I don't know if I can say you get a boner. Yeah, nature's Viagra. Nature's Viagra. There we go. That's a better way to say it. Nature's Sea Alice. It's like, hey, I don't have a blue too. It's like, nah, just have a couple of blues. So how many are people slamming? You guys told me there's like a superstition around that. So you have to have an odd number of eggs. Otherwise, it's bad luck. So either one, three or five or seven or whatnot. I see uni students come in here and they'll smash like five. I think it's a sales tactic because I usually just want like one is not enough. You want two, but that's bad luck. So you have to get three. And then you're dying at that point. I guess so. But I've seen people smash like seven to nine of these. Like it's kind of crazy. Guys, listen, this was the best Balut Hobyak Lom I've ever had in my life. And that's not a surprising thing to say here, right? No, no. I think it's a fairly accepted fact that this place is one of the S tier top places in Saigon to get a Hobyak Lom. A hundred percent. All right. That's cool. That's it. Thank you. Aren't you guys, our number three spot is actually in a really unique area, right? Because it's below the highway. Yes. So we're not technically in Thao Dinh anymore, but now these regions have what, been merged? Yeah. So now Thao Dinh is kind of gone. It's all been redistricted to An Khanh district. We're here to get a breakfast food, right? We are. So we're here to get Banh Cuon, which is steamed rice rolls, basically filled with pork, woody mushrooms, glass noodles. And it's got like a whole bunch of, so like meat patties on top. Yeah. They got a ton of stuff on the street. I mean, look, we're right next to like a, like a matchbox car, Tonka truck. That's it. Let's get some Banh Cuon. Oh my goodness. This is my first time actually having this dish in a restaurant. So I had it in the U.S. Okay. Obviously it's going to be the U.S. Vietnamese enclave version. I had it ordered on Grab, but this is the first time eating it in the restaurant. So we have a different, another different type of fish sauce again. So this one is more sweet and citrusy, as opposed to the other two. So it shows the versatility of fish sauce as a condiment. Okay. Are we, are we just dousing it on or? Just douse it up. What's the chip? It's called Banh Cuon, which is basically like a fried, there's mung bean in it. And there's prawn in it. So this is the Banh Cuon, the steamed rice roll. So inside it will have some pork, some woody mushrooms, some glass noodles. We have a pork patty here with cinnamon on top. So it's kind of like a cinnamon. Cinnamon? Yeah. This here is a fermented pork sausage. Okay. So not a lap sung. Not a lap sung. It's like fermented pork. So it's a little bit more sour, a little bit more citrusy. Yeah. And I noticed a lot of sprouts. A lot of sprouts. Yes. Sprouts. Typically a breakfast food. So warm, very popular breakfast food up in the North where the climate gets cold. During the winter. So Banh Cuon is from the North? This particular Banh Cuon would be from the North. Yeah. Okay. But every, every region would have their own sort of Banh Cuon twist and take. This is kind of like a grandma, grandpa dish. Most definitely. I mean, my parents used to make this a lot back in Australia as a kid. I never really understood the effort that it took to put this together. And we didn't really like it as kids back then. We were like, oh. But now the older I get, the more I appreciate it. You guys had the machine and stuff? Because you got like a little... So the old makeshift one that had like the little sheet on top. And then they'll put like a double boiler at the bottom and they'll steam it. And she'd make it one by one by one, feeding the whole family. Yeah. Let's just say there's nobody from our generation is making that, right? Oh, hell no. Hell no. You telling me that I can't cook it on my normal stove top at home? I'm not cooking it. It's not an air fryer dish. So to this day, are kids having this for breakfast? Or have they moved on to the Egg McMuffin or, you know, very westernized options? I think local kids still have this for breakfast a lot. It's something that's very cheap. This one here, because we're in Taoding, is 40,000. You're talking like $1.20. Do you think the concept is like don't eat something so heavy in the morning? Steamed foods, something light. Yeah, definitely. It'll be this or a Banh Mi. It's really easy just to drive past, grab one, hang it on your bike as you're heading to school. By the time you get there, just kind of smash it real quick. Dude, if you guys haven't had Banh Cun, definitely check it out. Like in Vietnam too, it's different. This is different than in the U.S. 100%. All right, of the things that we had prior to this. Yeah. So we had Sugar Cane. That was fresh squeezed, right? Hyper local. Bun Cha. Hyper local in the sense it's like even regional in Vietnam, right? And then we had Com Tam. If you had to think which one's going to go mainstream. So we already decided that Banh Cun is probably not going to go mainstream with the western people. Which one out of the other ones got the chance? I think Bun Cha is starting to already go mainstream. Ever since Obama and Baudin went, you can find Bun Cha in a lot more restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants outside of Vietnam. So in Australia, you can find a lot more Bun Cha. If you went back to your Vietnamese enclave now, they would have it. They would have Bun Cha now. And that's a very recent thing. Probably in the last five, six, seven years. How do you think it would taste in Australia? Because you guys got the good meats there. We do, we do. Vietnamese food in Australia is better than Vietnamese food in Vietnam. And America. And America, yeah. I think, you know, we have the quality of ingredients. If you put Australian cattle inside a pho and you've got the same person cooking it, the same techniques, it's going to be a better product. Aren't you guys? We're going to tap in at the next spot. Aren't you guys? Jason and Rochelle had to go handle some business. We're still on Tran Nau Street. You know, An Khanh, Thao Dan Extended. And we are in front of the Three Amigos. The Three An Em. That's Mo Hai Ba, Ba An Em, Mi Quang. I believe it is from Central Vietnam. I'm super excited to try it because I used to eat Mi Quang or Mi Quang at this place in Kent, Washington called Saigon Soul. All the time. This is my first time having it in Vietnam. Hey, listen, man. We're going to tap in with Jason and Rochelle later, but I'm having my first hyper authentic Mi Quang. Had a lot of Viet friends growing up named Quang too. This is the Dak Viet. You know, it's funny. Cantonese means the special. Man, we got a lot of stuff that the Mi Quang in Kent, Washington does not have. We got a piece of fish. This is a very particular type of fish. A piece of sausage. Very particular sausage. Quail eggs. Good to see you again. You know, the noodles here are not as yellow. They put the turmeric sauce on top of the white noodles. In Kent, the turmeric is built into the noodles. Chai Lua. Different types of sausages. Little baby shrimp. You know, looks like double fried. Of course, you got pork. Little spare ribs. And what we're going to do is we're going to take a little lime. We'll squeeze that. As you can see here, we got the nuoc mam right here. Now I know to smell it. Ooh, that's got a really unique flavor. By the way, guys, this is a central Vietnam farmer dish. Oh my goodness. Everything's different. Check this out, guys. Oh, the chip, chip, chip, chip, chip. We gotta put the chip in. And guys, by the way, this is not a noodle soup. It's more like a dry, you know, like a ma zimun or like a, in Kanto, we call it gon lo, which is like, you know, just dry. Get some of my veggies. This is why Vietnamese people are so thin, man. You guys eating this? Mi Quang. My first time having it outside. Really, it was just a few places, man. I had it in 66. Had it in Seattle. Yo, this is so good. Straight up, guys. It's hard to describe. It's like a fish chicken broth a little bit. Get a little bit of soup, even though it's not a soup dish, like we said. Sample the broth. I might just eat this shrimp just head on. Little chickpea in there too. It reminds me of some Chongqing noodles, like Chongqing xiao mian or like wa zhao mian. You know, the dishes from central and from northern Vietnam, whether like it's a boon cha or a mi quang, it's almost like a new taste profile that is so hard to describe. Like many people, you've only been exposed to like the southern palate in the Vietnamese diaspora. Love southern food, by the way. But it is such a different taste profile that it's almost hard to describe it without incorporating new concepts or new vocabulary. Dope, dope. Mi quang. All right, guys. We were just headed on our way back to official Thao Dien. But we saw this black skin chicken soup, this hak pei gai thong. We had to get this in Cantonese, in Viet. I believe it's called what? Black skin chicken soup, man. All right, you guys, it's only like $2.50. Hak pei gai thong. We're talking about grandpa, grandma taste buds, man. You got the goji berries in there, too. Later, I'm gonna eat this black skin chicken on its own with some soy sauce after I get all the medicinal benefits. Goji berries, dates, ginseng. All that good. Oh, my goodness. Listen, guys, I love roast ducks. And behind me, the Viet, the op, it's not ready for another 45 minutes. But I swear to gosh, we are gonna be coming back another time because we just found a roast master pit. He got chicken over there for like six bucks for a whole chicken. You know, he got ham hocks. He got the ducks. This is good drinking food, man. I saw some people doing it earlier. We couldn't film them. Just out of, you know, privacy laws. All right, you guys, we just found this lonely stall right here. What do you recommend? What do you think I should get? I want to get either. I want to get one coffee and then one other drink. Okay, yeah, which how about a matcha bak siu? I've never seen that before. A matcha bak siu with coffee. Okay, that's that's like a fusion. It's good. Just as small as good. How long did you open your shop for? I started for one year. Okay, yo, guys, come to Wabi Cha. What's your name? Come see Tao at Wabi Cha. Tao at Wabi Cha and Tao at Extended. Where are you from, sir? U.S. and Hong Kong. That's what they mean where I'm from. I'm from the U.S., but I'm Hong Kong. As you can see, guys, man, we just we on the local streets, man. I mean, you do see a little bit of that in the foreigner part of Taodian, but not really. Like we really more on the local side, you know, like it roasted ducks. Ladies, man, just going hard, you know, just the work ethic is crazy. Riding manual bikes. That lady probably was like 70 years old. Respect. But you guys, we got Tao's matcha bak siu. Yo, that is delicious. Matcha bak siu. Yo, listen, guys, this might be my favorite. And I'm not just saying this for the video. My favorite drink that I've had in Vietnam, matcha mixed with a sweet foam coffee bak siu. This is a 10 out of 10 banger. Look, listen, guys, there's a lot of drinks out there. 5 out of 10, 6 out of 10, 7, 8, maybe even touching the 9 category. Not a lot that are 10 out of 10. And I ate them and drank a lot. All right, you guys, as you can see, two of my favorite things. They got oysters, chicken. Those guys, they had a good life, hopefully. This almost gives me some District 1 type vibes. And I believe that this is the most hyper local market that is close to Taodian. Taodian being arguably like the least local part of Vietnam. But as you can see, it's a wet market. You know, you got the raw meats outside. And a lot of people are going to debate about whether they would, you know, eat meat from a wet market. But it's probably fine if you develop, you know, the enzymes in your stomach to break it down. It just depends on what you're used to. As you can see, we got lobsters, mantis shrimp. They still bubbling. Flounders. The good thing about flounders is you don't have to give them a lot of water because the flounders, they basically sideways anyway. You know, it's funny because he's sort of like picturesque, like French style, like vertical Louisiana, you know, because Louisiana, New Orleans also has a lot of French influence. You know what I'm saying? Like this looks like so stereotypically Vietnam. But I didn't actually know that D2 had that vibe because I always thought that D2 was sort of this like, you know, westernized area. This is like, this is a picture perfect right here. It goes to show you, even if you're in Taodian, guys, something that looks like the movie My, my favorite movie, My. As we're checking out, you know, I can't say it. They got like an artifact store. We should order the leg first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got the artifact store selling jade. Old, you know, turtle bones, oracle bones. All right. This is the tin to drink. It's pretty much like a homemade beer, like a house made beer, basically. Yo, listen, guys, this is $2 for what looks like to me like a milk pitcher. A milk pitcher of bee hoi. Bee hoi, yeah. All right. So in Vietnam, we go mo, hai, ba, and everybody goes yo. Okay, mo, hai, ba, yo. What does nhao mean? Nhao just basically means eating and drinking. Yeah, nhao. So in Vietnam, when you drink, you have to have moi. And moi is the word for like, basically snacks or food. So we never, we never really just drink. We always drink and eat at the same time. The flex is when you go to restaurants, you just get a whole crate of beer. So you just get the whole slab and you drink it. And then you sort of just leave it there. And whoever's got the most or whichever table's got the most, that's the table. And then when they do the bill, they'll just count all the bottles at the bottom. Like they never take back the empty bottles. They'll just count what's underneath you. Is this from Hanoi? It is from Hanoi, yeah. It's either made at someone's home or just a very small sort of company. I think this bee hoi is made by a little bit of a larger corporation. But it's not like a Tiger Beer or Heineken or anything like that. So in Hanoi, you have a lot of bee hoi stores that they'll make their own beer in the back. Yeah, that's like the traditional bee hoi. So it's kind of like a bootleg moonshine beer, bee hoi. Oh, snap. That's the lamb leg. So what they normally do is after you finish off the meat, they'll take the bone and then they'll make one or two dishes. They'll either ask if you want a hot pot or like a congee. So they'll take the bone and they'll use that to flavor your next course. And that's kind of like the hangover cure already. Hey, I'm excited to have this. I mean, you can see the fat just rendering off of it. And just it's creating the plumes of smoke. It's pretty cool. So once it cooks a little bit on the outside, they'll cut it up. And then they'll probably make like a little skewer out of it. It's kind of like a lamb s'more. So this is our little appetizer. We have a lamb curry with some banh mi. Basically, dandan curry style. So it's a little bit of a sweeter curry. Very coconut heavy. Actually, I like Vietnamese curry a lot. I feel like a lot of people don't order it, but I'm excited to try that. Yeah, you gotta have it. Gotta have it. So what do you think is like different from the West? Where a lot of times we would eat dinner, right? Maybe people would have a few glasses at dinner. Then it almost feels like, at least in America, the shots and all the licorice consumed separately. Right, yes. So like a typical nhau session will go for like, you know, two or three hours. Where, you know, you always have food on the table, but you're not sitting down and you're not just eating everything at once. You kind of, you know, you cut up little bites and you have one and then you'll wash it down with probably like a whole beer. Okay. And then they'll come in courses like that. Like dishes come out slow. Dishes come out slow. So this is not meant to fill you up. The hotpot or the congee at the end, that's what's meant to fill you up. So that's why you're not hung over. You're full at the end. And it just makes it like your stomach is like hardened. Yeah. We call it. But also I think that's why the beer is so light too, compared to like IPA and pale ales. The beer is so light that it pairs well with the food. You can drink so much because it's basically watered down with ice. Right, right. It's not too heavy or anything. It's not too heavy. The ABV is not through the roof. You drink it with ice in Asia as well. So it's kind of like, it's just refreshing and you can drink it all day. And that's what they typically do. They'll drink it all day. This is cool that they're cutting it off and then putting it on its own individual skewer closer to the coals. Yeah. It's like a little marshmallow is small, but lamb even better. Right. Yeah. So you kind of just have these to sort of cooking while you catch up with some old buddies over some beers. And you know, when you're ready, you'll eat. Which is the fermented bean paste. Okay. So it's a little salty, a little sweet, a little stanky. And then based on how spicy you want it, just chuck as much satay or as little satay as you want in there. A little bit more of that. And they got the big star anise in the satay too. That's it. Homemade. That's how you know it's homemade. Oh, this looks good. I might have to go with one big one with the star anise. Also got the chili powder there. So you just sort of dip that straight onto the lamb once it's done cooking. Should we do some curry first? Rochelle, you want to serve us up some curry? Half for you, half for me. Goat curry. I almost want to try this with the bread. It's good. Really thick, starchy one, starchy curry. So right about now is when we go for another cheers. And yes, we do that every time we drink. These are ready. So just take one. Take it off your skewer. This is it. I like to dip it in a little bit of dried chili and then into my bean paste. Oh yeah. Oh, that's good. That's what's up. That's really good. I love that. Let me wash it down. There's something about that combination because you're putting the cumin on it and then you're going with the fermented bean paste and then the satay with the star anise on top of that. Yep. It's so layered. And what, do you like go and eat this leaf with it too? Yep. Vietnamese food will always have some sort of a green vegetable, leafy green vegetable. I dip that in there as well. It's really good. You know, because so many people are going to come to Vietnam for the first time in the next, I don't know how many years, five years, right? Yeah. Is this something they have to come do? Oh, you got to do, I mean, it doesn't have to be this dish in particular, but you have to go for an authentic nhau experience. You know, whether it's in a restaurant like this or on the side of the street, it's something that's just quintessentially Vietnamese. And even my parents moving over to Australia, they would still nhau with their other Vietnamese friends, the culture that they brought over. No, you keep communities together and stay up with each other's lives too. That's it. Exactly right. Exactly right. I guess for them moving away from home and just finding other Vietnamese people in the same situation as them and getting to sort of relive their culture abroad was a big way of them coping. No, this is dope. I can see, man. And even like the smoke, it's like almost like we're at some ancient Native American ceremony. You know what I mean? I'm just like, oh ----, I'm in the fire. Oh, you're going to smell like lamb when you leave here. That's for sure. That's when you know you had a good night. At an hour in, you're probably four or five days in. And yeah. That's slow burn. That's it. That's it. All right. Cheers. All right. I mean, we've deconstructed this lamb leg into a lamb chow. Yeah. So chow, so rice congee. So yeah, let me get you some. I'll try it out. I actually love the congee here, I reckon. But like growing up as a kid, I never understood this until I got older. Then I'm like, okay. Yeah. My stomach needs this now. It's crazy. It's 35 degrees and we're eating hot congee. Guys, this was the perfect way to end this session. My very first... On to the next. Yep. After one more bowl. So this is the corner of Quoc Huong. It's like a little street food corner that we have. We're at Bun Ca Se Day, which means fish noodle soup on a cart, basically. Okay. Which words mean what? So Bun Ca is fish noodle soup. Okay. And Se Day means push cart. So a little homage to how they started in this little push cart here. They used to push around. Now they've upgraded. They have themselves a storefront. Seating's over there. All inside. Is this something you grew up eating or is this more like this? Definitely not something I grew up eating. It's a noodle soup from Hai Phong, so north of Vietnam. First time I had it was when I moved here. Dude, well, I'm super excited because it's not that common that I have not eaten something before. All right. And I haven't eaten this before. Oh, let's urge. Let's do it. The nice fried slivers of fish, fish skin. Bun means noodle, right? Yeah, Bun means noodle. Yeah, so this is the fish cake. Okay, fish cake. Yep, fish cake. This is the fried Ca Ro, which is a Red River Delta fish. You got your vermicelli rice noodles here. And the broth is fish broth? Yes. What is it? Fish broth, dried fish broth on top as well. And then the condiments, you got to have some of these pickled shallots here. Oh, ----. Adds a little bit of acidity. Every region has their own sort of twist to take on it. Like we said before, this one is from the north, so the Hai Phong region. So we fish from the Red River Delta, a little bit more sweet, sour as well. Almost every region of Vietnam would have a coastline, right? Yes, 100%. I mean, the whole country is a big coastline. Some amazing fishes in some amazing places. I think the other elements add something to it too. Yeah. So the best thing about this is it's 30,000 Vietnam Dong a bowl, which is a little bit over a dollar, like $1.10 or $1.20, something like that. So it's crazy affordable, crazy cheap. For us, it's been a staple in our diet when we're working late and we often forget to eat. We normally just quickly pop out here and just fill our stomachs here. What was it like being, you know, you think you know Vietnamese culture from what you guys grow up with and then you come to Vietnam. And then there's so much movement around Vietnam these days, young people from all around the regions, especially Saigon. And then you get to try all these things you never had, right? It's great. It's like you think that you have a pretty good grasp on Vietnamese cuisine and you've tried everything there is to try. And there's like a whole nother plethora of Vietnamese dishes that excites you again. There's only so much pho and banh mi I could eat or so much bún bò I could eat. And then traveling around Vietnam and eating local specialties, that's some of the best parts. Yeah, we've been here for nine years and we're still discovering new dishes that have been around for like decades. Well, this tastes like really, like they really cooked this from scratch, guys. Like you can feel it, you know what I mean? And that's the difference with Vietnamese local eateries like this is they do one dish and one dish only. This place only serves bún cà. You don't have somebody showing you or you don't know what you're doing. It can be very intimidating to walk in a place like this. It's not, it doesn't look the most hygienic. It's a lot of Vietnamese people, but just walk in. More often than not, 99% of the time, they're going to be very welcoming. You just look, point or just say, I have one. One is the only thing that they have in one. So yeah, just give it a go. Get out of your comfort zone and, you know, just try new things, guys. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, on to the next. Yo, I'm pretty excited, bro. We got a feast at Cung Cafe. That's a big croissant. Dude, and we got this, what do you guys call this? This is bánh giò. Bánh giò. Yeah, so it's basically like a sticky rice tapioca kind of a thing with, I think they've got five eggs in there, they said. Quail eggs. Quail eggs, yeah. And then minced pork, some woody mushrooms. This is a Hanoi thing. This is a northern thing, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, tell us about this, like, chain. I mean, like, this is one of our, you know, this is our last spot. Yeah, this is our last spot. So I guess, modeled on, like, I guess, northern pre-war times, like pre-75. Look around, it's like a lot of, like, you know, propaganda sort of posters, old school signages. It's a very northern menu as well. But yeah, it's just one of those big chains now. They've got a bunch of locations. And it's very popular amongst, like, university students. They actually do some great coffee as well. So that's always a plus. I guess, like, what do you feel about it? Because, like, we don't got to get too into it. But, like, there's people back home that from the older generation, they're not going to want to come here, right? Oh, definitely. It's like immigrants or refugees who fled Vietnam. This is probably invoking some, you know, not so good memories for them. For me, it's fine. It's kind of more like an ode to the times rather than a shrine to the times. I mean, dude, I got to tell you this. Politics aside, this was really good. Yeah. This was good, man. The pork and the mushroom. Most of the food that comes to the north is banging, like the bún chả spot that we had earlier today. That's definitely a northern dish. That is probably my favorite. Tell us about this because immediately everybody's going to see this, right? And you're thinking French colonization, right? Pretty much. So, it's a take on a very popular Vietnamese snack for kids when they eat bánh mì or like, you know, like a baguette dipped in condensed milk. Should we all partake in this? Break bread? Yeah, we should. Look how big that is. Oh, it's warm too. What's your guys' like growing up in Australia and Canada and the Vietnamese diaspora families? What was your guys' relationship with, like, French culture? Not really. Not much. I mean, the French left a lot of food. Like, you know, bánh mì is very heavily influenced by the French. Bà cà is heavily influenced by the French. So, we have a lot of French influences, but we don't really, I guess, talk about it much. Kind of before our time. This is good. So, this is an ode to an old Vietnamese snack that even I had when I was growing up in Australia. White bread. A little bit more luxury version, right? Very luxurious. So, you're saying the typical version, you would just dip a bánh mì baguette into condensed milk? Yeah. And you did that growing up? I did that growing up. I still do it now. Yeah, I still do it now a lot. Dude, the croissant version is the— This too. Oh, you put the avocado smoothie? Surprisingly good. Tastes like McDonald's fries with ice cream. That's the vibe. I'm doing it too. But mine was like, you guys said this is the signature, right? This is one of their signatures, yeah. Dude, I think every spot we went to on this crawl, I didn't see, for sure, any European people or white people. And I didn't even see Asians, other Asians that weren't Vietnamese. This was a local crawl. Yeah. So, I mean, debunk the myth that Tàu Đình doesn't have any good local eats. You can definitely find them. You just got to know where to look. Right, right, right. Hey, guys. Look, listen. I hope in that crawl, you guys learn what I learned. There's a ton of stuff. And I think that it's important to have these crawls because it's almost like, if you ask people to go by solo into D5, D4, and like, you know, deep, they're just not going to do it. Yeah. So, you might as well— People always tell you the most extreme solution. People aren't going to do it. It's very intimidating. Here, you can, all of these places, no matter how local they are, they are going to be able to speak a little bit of English to sort of at least get you your order. Here, you can walk in and not speak a lick of Vietnamese. They can still get from A to B. Hey, well, thank you for showing me the beauty of Tàu Đình. Of course. And you guys, check out Mommy Cocktail. Mommy Cocktail's 86th proof. Get there.