Âu Lạc District 4

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….

Vegan gỏi cuốn

Nicely cooked rice plate

Stall at front selling range of veggie products

The outside of this gem of an eatery

Huệ Bảo

926 Nguyễn Trãi, P14, District 5

Tel: 0987 87 1537 (39508223/66539788)

Went and had some lunch here after going to the excellent Binh Tay market (Chợ Bình Tây) and the Tinh Xa Loc Uyen Pagoda in district 6 – both well worth a visit. Happened upon this little place on our way home and it was rather a nice little find. Quite tasty selections, as you can see from the pictures, and there were some really imaginative touches in addition to the standard veggie fare. The Omnivore’s com dia (rice plate) was pretty tasty and I thought the chilli stuffed with tofu was a great idea. Of all the many different things on his plate, the only thing he didn’t like was something that looked like it was going to be a mock pork slice or something, but turned out to be some kind of unspecified root vegetable…I have to agree, I wasn’t all over that one either, and I’m usually a big fan of the root vegetable. Anyway, otherwise a very nice range of elements on his plate. The soup that came with the meal was also quite tasty and had cubes of butternut squash in amongst the fresh, leafy greens – another nice touch. I had the noodle soup (phở bò chay), which had a great variety of tofu and mock meats in it, in addition to a huge mound of deliciously fresh herbs. All quite a bargain for 54,000VND. Yes, that’s 54,000VND (£1.60/$2.60) for everything, including 2 big tankards of iced tea. Talking of which, we have yet to discover the flavour that infuses so much of the iced tea here; it’s absolutely delicious but we have no idea what it is. I was wondering if it might be lotus, but the bags of that I bought at the supermarket didn’t taste the same at all…. What is that elusive flavour? Anyway, this doesn’t have a whole lot to do with anything, it’s just one of the many things I’d like to know in life.

Yummy noodle soup

Range of vegetables and mock meat

Soup with green leafy veg and cubes of butternut squash

The view from inside

Nathalie’s

S9 Hùng Vương 3, district 7, Tel: 54 100 822

Opening Hours: Not sure, but it seems to be pretty much 24-7…..

Delicious Thai Yumminess. Bit of a  weird post for a blog that’s called ‘Vegan in Vietnam’, I’ll admit, given that this restaurant is neither vegan nor does it serve Vietnamese food. However, it is in Vietnam, and it does serve vegan food, so I thought I’d include it here anyway. It is definitely friend to the vegan and The Omnivore is as happy as the proverbial pig whilst there, so it’s an all round winner.

They have a vegetarian menu. I’m not sure that the curry would be vegan, given that Thai curries often favour a fish-infused curry paste as their base, so I never choose those. Some of the tofu dishes they do there are vegan though; there’s one I always have when I go there – the deep fried tofu with sweet sauce (tàu hũ chiên giòn) – and it is delicious! They also have a good range of vegetable dishes too, including a particularly fiery ‘that-style stir fried morning glory’ (rau muống xào lửa đỏ kiểu thái) dish which I absolutely love. My mouth is still tingling with the spice two hours later! It’s probably worth mentioning that The Omnivore was sweating from the left-side of his head after just two….What would be the right noun here? We were eating with chopsticks not forks, so I’m going with ‘moundfuls’. Or ‘prongs’, perhaps? Well, you get the picture – it didn’t take too much to blow his head off, and he’s typically quite hardy with the old spice. So anyway: sweating on one side of the head: this happens when there’s been a slight spice overload. Apparently this is quite common in menfolk. Why should that be the case? I have no idea. I’m no scientist, just a careful listener and attractor of ‘weird facts about my husband/boyfriend/partner’ stories. What you gonna do?

So, big thumbs-up for this lovely restaurant. Outside seating, which is nice. Perhaps not the best idea when you therefore get a free side order of pure carbon dioxide, but otherwise very pleasant. Not cheap by local standards, but very good qualitydishes and generous portions, too. Tofu was 60,000VND (£1.80/$2.90), veg was 75,000VND (£2.20/$3.50) and rice was 18,000 (£0.50/$0.80). I know, cheap as chips really, but you really can eat out a great deal more cheaply here. Still, definitely worth the full £4.50!

This has been a rather lengthy post. What can I say? I get excited about tofu. Hey, this blog is called ‘Vegan in Vietnam’ – what did you expect?

Deep fried tofu with sweet sauce (tàu hũ chiên giòn)

Thai-style stir fried morning glory (rau muống xào lửa đỏ kiểu thái)

Sticky rice (cơm nếp)

Front of restaurant

Shio Vegan

312 Âu Cơ, P.10, Tân Bình district, HCMC (tel. 08 6265 4379)

Opening Hours: 07:00-22:00

We went here for lunch. The restaurant itself is spread over two floors and is pleasant and clean. The decor upstairs was quite odd: on one side it was going for a Chinese herbalist/apothecary kind of aesthetic with dark wooden shelving on which rested long, glass jars filled with random bits of bark and foliage. The other the wall was adorned with photographs that made the dishes all look a bit boring. On reflection, that was probably not too far from the truth, but more of that in a moment. The service was really good. Although we were using our poorly enunciated Vietnamese, the waiter spoke to us in (very good) English, and the menu was in both Vietnamese and English.

They had a decent range of dishes but the quality wasn’t anything special: good, solid vegan fare with lots of mock meat/mock seafood as well as tofu  and vegetable dishes. They also had yummy-looking brown rice vermicelli, but I didn’t order that. I noticed that they were selling packets of it downstairs though, which is always a nice touch.

Anyway, so I had a ‘seafood’ soup with seaweed. The mock shrimps were quite nice and the broth didn’t taste too heavy on the MSG, which it sometimes can. The Omnivore had claypot beancurd with mushroom, fried mixed vegetables, and rice. And we also shared some fresh spring rolls – these were DELICIOUS. The produce was definitely really fresh, but it wasn’t cooked in particularly amazing ways. The Omnivore found the tofu dish quite “gloopy” (Omnivore, 2012), and once he’d deigned to let me try some, I have to say that I agreed – bit too heavy on the cornflour, I reckon. It came to the grand total of 149,000VND (about £5/$7), and that included plenty of iced tea and two handy wet towels.

So, a tasty lunch, but we probably won’t be going back given how many other options there are all over the city. (One more thing to assist with location: there’s a KFC right across the road from here – Alanis Morrisette would no doubt find that ironic.)

Seafood soup with seaweed (Súp hải sản rong biển)

Claypot beancurd with mushrooms (đậu hũ om nấm) and white rice (cơm trắng)

Fried mixed vegetables (Rau Xào Theo Mùa)

Fresh spring rolls (gỏi cuốn)

Deliciousness inside the spring rolls

Entrance of restaurant