HCMC Eats

Following my previous post about Ho Chi Minh City, I wanted to do a small photo dump of some of my favorite foods from my time there. 

Coming into this trip, my knowledge of Vietnamese foods was, admittedly, pretty dismal. I knew obvious classics like pho and bahn mi, but I was completely oblivious to other dishes, let alone regional styles. Southern Vietnamese foods tend to have much stronger flavors than those in the north. Signature southern foods like bo kho and bo lo lat are darker, more spiced, and richer than signature foods in Hanoi. Southern Vietnam even has its own heartier style for beef pho (pho bo), a dish that originates in the north. All of this was quite new for me, as all of the Vietnamese food I have had and sought out in the US has more closely resembled the food from the north. Hopefully some of these photos can share some of the uniqueness of the food we ate in HCMC.

Yue and I are both great enjoyers of noodle soups, so we were very excited to have our first dinner in Vietnam, fittingly, at Pho Viet Nam. While they are famous for their hot stone pho bowl, Yue and I opted for their more traditional pho tai (beef broth pho with raw slices of meat added as the bowl is being served). Pho tai is the most common version of pho in HCMC, so we wanted our first bowl to serve as a sort of benchmark. 

As I mentioned in my last post, Pho Le was my favorite pho bo of the whole trip. I watched a Mark Wiens pho video in preparation for Vietnam where he describes a good bowl of pho bo as “capturing the essence of beef.” For me, this means a soup that’s not overpowered by non-beef inclusions like fish sauce, but still contains enough to bring out the interesting complexities of such a long simmered stock. I think Pho Le really achieves this. Their soup is uniquely sweet in a way that lets the richness of their beef shine in a way that I don’t find often in food. Often with rich stocks like beef, we either try to amplify the richness (with salt or umami) or cut it (with citrus or vinegar). For a dish as clean as pho, this can lead to making the bowl a bit too “much.” At Pho Le, it seemed that all the flavors were perfectly balanced. 

It wasn’t until our second visit to Bahn Mi Hong Hoa that I realized it was not, in fact, “the most famous bahn mi of HCMC” that I had found in my research (that would be Bahn Mi Huynh Hoa, and it was one block over). But that really didn’t matter; the fact that we opted to repeat the mile long walk through the morning heat and smog was a better vote of confidence than any reddit thread. Our favorite order was the “Bread with Extra Mixed Meats” which featured paté, mayonnaise, ham, jambon, chalua, boiled pork, and hotdot. In truth, I don’t know what half of those are, but I cannot recommend the end product enough. 

Bo lo lat (in the bottom right) are grilled pieces of beef wrapped in betel leaves. They are most often eaten by wrapping them with herbs and dry rice paper, and then dipped into a fish sauce-forward sauce. I was unfamiliar with bo lo lat coming into this trip, but they remind me a lot of Korean ssam wraps, which I love. Compared to ssam, bo lo lat is a bit more peppery and ginger/garlic forward. The beef being wrapped before grilling lets it retain a lot of its meat juices which subsequently cook with the added aromatics. The rice paper and dipping sauce procedure is also very cool, but I am still working on finding a technique that soaks the rice paper enough to not maul my inner mouth on its way in. 

Bo kho is another food I had never once heard of before. The name literally translates to “beef stew” or “braised beef,” and that it is. Mine came with this very large, and very tender, beef shank that I unfortunately caused havoc while trying to disassemble. But it was all worth it for the delicious rich soup + braised meat combo that followed. Something that I have grown to appreciate about Vietnamese foods, particularly stews, is the variety of meats that are provided with each dish (this statement is foreshadowing a chicken pho post to come). This bowl of stew contained the beef shank, beef balls, beef chunks, beef tendons, and some assorted beef slices (?). Very beef. Certainly lives up to the name. 5 stars. (Also check out this amazing coconut dessert we had after, shown below).