Trung Nguyen @ Le Loi Street, Ho Chi Minh

Trung Nguyen is like THE coffee brand in Vietnam. It's practically everywhere. In markets, departmental stores, its own cafe etc.

Visited one of the Trung Nguyen cafe that is quite near our hotel, somewhere along Le Loi Street. Exact location, if you ask me now, seriously, I have no idea!

First impression, the place was packed! Many tourists and locals enjoying their cuppa in the air-conditioned and small cosy cafe.

order here if you're taking away

Just find a seat and the service staff will give you the menu and take your order. They will also serve the drinks to you. Trung Nguyen coffee has beans that ranges from number 1 to 5. Probably its intensity level? Seems so. Ordered a number 3 iced-coffee without milk. One cuppa can set you back by VND45,000 thereabout. It's slightly more expensive if it's with milk.

After you've placed your order, the service staff brought us iced-tea (probably oolong or green tea unsweetened). So, instead of ice water, we got iced-tea in Ho Chi Minh. Cool, right?

iced-tea

still need to drip even if its iced coffee

The service staff was helpful. Knowing that we're tourists, he advised us to wait for 5 minutes for the coffee to drip finish. When the 5 minutes was about up, he came by to help us remove the coffee filter. So nice of him!

hot coffee with condensed milk

taking a peek!

done dripping, then add sugar

The sugar is added after the coffee had dripped finished and then its poured into the tall glass with ice.

ta dah, iced-coffee in front and iced-coffee with milk at the back

The taste is pretty intense. Very buttery and fragrant as well. Nice and smooth but can really feel the heatiness after drinking it.

Trung Nguyen Coffee

watch the world go by as you sip your coffee in comfort...

interior of the cafe

We also bought the coffee powder and the drip as well. The coffee powder and the drip costs about SGD6+.

makes a good souvenir, and its slightly cheaper than Ben Thanh market

Heard the staff guiding another tourist from Philippines with regards to the coffee milk ratio. He said 2 spoonfuls of coffee powder and 4 teaspoons of condensed milk. Coffee powder put it inside the drip, while the milk is onto the small cup. Hot water is poured into the drip and should be ready within 5 minutes.

Haven't tried it myself. Will experiment next time.

Jaspas Wine & Grill @ Dong Khoi, Ho Chi Minh

Located downtown of Ho Chi Minh, this place is located at a cluster popular with Caucasians. Traffic was quite bad when heading towards downtown but that's understandable since it was Friday night when we headed out there.

this is the entrance towards the restaurants cluster

front of the restaurant

menu

The only item during Happy Hour on the day of our visit, was the 1-for-1 Tiger draught beer, from 5 to 7pm.

Tiger beer

For food, we started off with french fries.

shoestring french fries

It was quite addictive, eating those french fries. Served piping hot, right off from the fryer. Goes well with the ketchup dip.

My friends had Heineken mostly, since they don't fancy Tiger beer. Tried a local beer too; Saigon Red.

Saigon Red

Found the taste acceptable but my beer drinking friends thought otherwise. Some say it was quite tasteless.  The crowd started to trickle in after 9pm, and soon the place was quite crowded with expats and some locals. There's free wifi too. So, you're well connected even when out dining in this area.

Felt hungry, so decided to order a mixed platter to share.

mixed platter

tuna tataki

chicken skewer

minced lamb meat

duck springroll

The platter has deep fried calamari, duck springroll, chicken skewers, tuna tataki and lamb tacos, and costs about SGD20+ and good to be shared amongst 3-4 pax.

Liked everything on the platter. Unless if you're not a lamb person because the minced lamb meat in the lamb tacos has quite a strong taste. There are various dipping sauces provided and it was fun guessing which sauce is for which. There were wasabi mayo, peanut sauce similar to satay taste (for the chicken skewer?), hoisin sauce (for springroll) and the rest, kinda forgotten how they tasted like. But, we'd just mixed it around and dipped it in more than one sauce just to get a combi of flavours. Somehow, that worked. Hehe.

We stayed for quite a while, had somemore beer, and re-ordered the french fries to munch. Then we saw other tables ordered dessert, and so we followed suit. The menu had just about 3 types of dessert, so we chose chocolate sundae.

chocolate sundae

We enjoyed the cold sundae very much, although it was overdosed with sweetness of the sticky brownie like thingy that no one else wanted to eat.

Our service staff for the night was pretty realistic. She had on a not so pleasant expression on her face when we ordered just beer and french fries. Once when our beer was not arriving after a long while, and we enquired about it, she just barked at us saying that she had already placed the order and it's coming! But when we ordered the mixed platter, and somemore beer, she treated us to a small smile. Hahaa!

In total, we had 7 beers, 2 french fries, 1 mix platter and a chocolate sundae shared amongst the 4 of us. Paid about SGD25 per pax.

Pho Hing Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup @ District 1, Ho Chi Minh

Our second pho stop in Ho Chi Minh. Were there for lunch.

chopstick

Vietnamese chili sauce

Wanted to eat beef brisket noodles but they ran out of it or not available during the time of our visit. So had to settle for beef balls noodles instead. Once the order is placed, they'll bring a large plate of greens out.

greens and more greens; sweet basil/thai basil, mint, spring onions

beef balls noodles

closer view

The soup was light and tasty. I preferred the noodles here, because it is like 粗米粉 (thick rice vermicelli). The beef balls were quite hard though. For the herbs, just pick the leaves and throw it into the soup to eat together with the noodles. My friend hilariously dumped the whole stalk into her bowl. -_-'''

noodles with grilled pork and shrimps (dry)

spring roll

We shared a bowl of cold dried noodles with grilled pork and spring rolls. The dried noodles came with sauce (that looked like watery chili sauce) in a separate small bowl. The dipping sauce for the spring roll was dark like hoisin sauce.

Liked the cold noodles, tasted refreshing! For drinks, we ordered juices and ice coffee.

pennywort with coconut

apple juice

ice coffee with milk

The Pennywort with coconut tasted mild and refreshing, and the apple juice was quite sweet.

Restaurant @ near Lush, Ho Chi Minh

Located within walking distance near Lush, the nightspot that we wanted to go but was closed for renovations. It's next to a place called 'Vixen', and the dining area is at Level 2. Level 1 is a carpark basement. Looked like a seafood restaurant.

beer never tasted better after a hot day full of walking...

our table overlooking the street

We ordered rice and some dishes. Unfortunately, they ran out of pork. So we ordered grilled honey shrimps, a plate of sweet cabbage (which is our xiao bai cai), springrolls and beef cubes with potatoes.

vegetable and beef cubes with potatoes (french fries)

yummy beef cubes

The food was good and tasty. I remembered that the price was decent, though can't remember exactly how much we paid for. Reasonably priced and beer was cheap. But the chicken meat were priced higher. Not sure why too.

grilled shrimps

hahaa, the shrimps were quite ok in size

salt and lime for shrimp

The white rice came in a large plate, so you're free to share amongst the group on your own accordingly. No refill though.

springroll

meaty and yummy

Adored the samosas looking 'springroll'. Categorized under seafood, so I guessed the filling is a mix of pork and shrimps. This is one dish that I'll recommend. One plate contained 6 good sized pieces.

The food and beer here is good. The service, well, we had two waiter who stood behind us most of the time glaring at us. Hahaa, not sure why too. We thought it was because we were holding up their closing time but we still had half an hour more to go. One of them actually look like Andrew Seow of Growing Up fame. Seriously, the waiter might be his Vietnamese twin! The hairstyle, the gaze.. wow, so 70s!

Creperie and Cafe @ Han Thuyen Street, Ho Chi Minh

Located very near the Notre Dame Cathedral. Touted as one with good view for alfresco dining, we came and saw the awesome view was just a park. Hmm.

view from our seats

seats

menu

yup, been trying coffee everywhere I go!

ice-coffee or ca phe da

I liked the ice coffee here. It came already with iced cubes, unlike the one where you have to wait for the drip to finish.

some fruity drink with soda

iced-tea or apple tea, can't remember

For tea-break, decided to order crepes since its the shop's specialty. Tried one sweet and one savoury.

tiramisu

it's melting!

The tiramisu crepes was good! All of us loved it. Sweet and soft, and the crepe skin was very eggy!

pizza crepes

cheesy goodness

The savoury pizza crepes was nice too. However, if you're particular about not having any frozen peas and corns in your food, then you won't like this.

The atmosphere is laid-back and we enjoyed the sunset with the setting sun casting soft lights over the trees. Lots of locals like to throng the park somehow. Slowly we saw street vendors coming out to hawk their food. And saw local 'saman' aunty coming by to chase cars away!

night view at the cafe

Notre Dame Cathedral evening view