May13

Âu Lạc District 4

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60 Tân Vĩnh, P6, District 4

Tel: (848) 8265856, (848) 8730720

Opening hours: 6am-9pm

This is one of our favourite spots for lunch. Not far from district 1, this place is on the corner of Tân Vĩnh. They have a really tasty selection of dishes, from various tofu and mock meat dishes, to one of the yummiest vegan phởs I’ve had in Saigon. I didn’t have that today, opting instead for the vegan gỏi cuốn, which are also way up there on the list of best veggie gỏi cuốns in town, in my opinion. They’re so fresh and are stuffed to the brim with herbs and noodles, with a tasty tofu slice and some mock shrimp inside, too. The mock shrimp freaked me out a bit the first time I came across them. The Omnivore assured me they were definitely not actual shrimp (since the big CHAY sign outside was not, apparently, convincing enough in the face – literally and metaphorically – of these little pink coils)….Anyway, I’ve since become used to these – they are tofu-like in texture and are not remotely fishy in taste, thankfully. They come served with a yummy peanut sauce which is nicely spicy (you can ask them to leave out the chillies if spice is not your thing), and are really filling. (There’s something that looks suspiciously eggy in the com dia selection, so you need to be clear about which options you do and don’t want.)

There’s a shop at the front selling a range of mock meats and veggie sauces. This is a veggie but not a vegan place, so not all of the packeted goods are vegan. Most of the mock meats are 100% vegan though. I used to be very unenthusiastic about the whole mock-meat thing before I living here, but the way they use/make it in this country, it’s really just a variation of tofu in terms of adding a different texture to your diet. Better still, it’s an amazing source of protein. They’re named after different meats only in so far as colour and what you might use them for, I think – they don’t really taste that different from one another, and The Omnivore says that none of them really taste like meat, which is fine by me. The mock chicken slices they sell at the shop here are a mega source of protein and the bags are really cheap, too (about 13,000VND – 38p or 63 cents for a bag which is good for 2-4 different dishes – total bargain!).

Our lunch cost 58,000VND (approx.£1.75/$2.80) in total, including iced tea: 30,000VND for the rice plate, and 6,000 (that’s 18p/30 cents) per spring roll. So cheap and soooooo delicious! This place is a complete gem. It’s also part of a chain; there’s another one is district 7 which is amazing. I’ll save that one for another post….

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