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all-day breakfasts, ‘nam sayin’?
WORDS Connla Stokes Photography Long Le
Lauded for having one of the world’s healthiest national cuisines, Vietnam is also home to an abundance of artery-clogging staples. Ho Chi Minh City is where you’ll find the best greasy spoons in the land lying into Ho Chi Minh City, foodies with a taste for Vietnamese cuisine are likely to be salivating at the thought of nourishing local noodle soups, crunchy papaya salads and fresh spring rolls. But this heaving metropolis, with all its crowd favourites, is also peppered with low-key eateries serving up what could be called Saigonese soul food. The leading protagonist of this sub-genre of local cuisine is com tam, literally ‘broken rice’.
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Originally a breakfast item, com tam is now eaten around the clock. Com tam originated to extend the longevity of leftovers – in this case, fractured rice grains. What started as a peasant meal has now evolved into a signature dish. “Com tam is hands down the number one, all encompassing, full-fat, greasy meal of choice for any self-respecting city resident – expat or local,” says Tom from Vietnam Coracle, a resource for street food and off-the-beaten-track travel in and around Vietnam. ti g e ra ir.co m
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good eggs A stallowner fries up glossy plates of bot chien, in dramatic, street-side hawker fashion
Grab some breakfast grub Pork three ways on broken rice Com Tam Ba Ghien 84 Dang Van Ngu, Dist. 3; 6am – 10pm
Com Tam Tu Quy Tan Dinh Market, Dist. 1; 6pm – 3am
Com Tam Nguyen Van Cu 167 Nguyen Van Cu, Dist. 1
Rice-flour omelette Bot Chien Van Thanh 185 Vo Van Tan, Dist. 3, or 306/26 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Dist. 3; 3.30pm – 11pm
The rice-flour omelette Middleweight com tam has nothing on the heavyweight bot chien, literally ‘fried flour’, the most unashamedly greasy dish in the Saigon street food repertoire. A distant cousin of chai tow kway, the fried radish cake commonly found in Chaoshan, Singapore and Malaysia, it begins with cubes of rice flour and/or taro fried with pork fat on a large teppanyaki-style pan, which is invariably part of a cart parked on the pavement. A lightly beaten egg, or two, is subsequently
added to the mix, along with diced scallions. To bring balance, bot chien comes with finely shredded green papaya and carrot, and chilli-laced soy sauce for dipping. The author of The Banh Mi Handbook, and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Andrea Nguyen also appreciates the showy side of this stodgy Saigon staple. “Bot chien is my go-to grease fest, but it’s also great ‘performance art’ street food. I love watching the vendors make it,” she says.
Steak and eggs Nam Son 200 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai; 6am – 10pm
Sunny-side up eggs Quan Hoa Ma 53 Cao Thang, Dist. 3; 7am to about 11am (or thereabouts)
The meatball sub Banh Mi Xiu Mai 189 Cong Quynh, Dist. 3 (next to car garage); 11.30am – 8.30pm
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Steak and eggs (plus pâté) Another breakfast meal which has ascended to 24-hour status is bit tet, from the French bifteck meaning ‘steak’, a culinary descendent of colonial France on the streets of Saigon. At Nam Son, a popular District 1 “steak house”, a cut of steak arrives on a sizzling hot plate with a blob of pâté and a sunny-side up egg. To mop up the grease and goo, you’re armed with a crusty banh mi (a stuffed baguette).
Vietnam’s secret oil slick The national dish, pho (meat and noodle soup), perhaps holds the deepest secret that nobody knows: “Pho is greasy albeit in a subtle way, especially pho gau gion, which uses a fatty cut of beef. The broth is also filled with running fat that the cook skims off and saves for customers who ask for mot chen nuoc beo hanh tran (a bowl of fatty broth with green onion stalks).” For extra carbs, and grease, many locals also order a side-dish of banh mi quay – deep-fried, rice flour batons, which can be dunked in your bowl. And if all that doesn’t have enough of an ‘all-day breakfast’ feel about it yet, then yes, you can indeed get an egg dropped into the broth. ti g e ra ir.co m
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a meat thing to do The Ho Chi Minh City version of a big breakfast of bacon and eggs and bread is done in a no less flashy way; expect hefty banh mi servings with fresh veggies included
Sunny-side up on the street Those who need straight-up eggs, bacon and bread in the morning should make for Hoa Ma, a 40-year-plus old institution on the edge of District 3. The house special here is the hefty banh mi op la, which features two sunny-sideup eggs sitting on a hot plate with three kinds of local sausages diced into the mix, plus a plump, crusty house-made banh mi. If that's not enough, it also comes with some pâté and mayo, slices of pickled carrot, radish and cucumber and thick cuts of fresh green tomato. Another outstanding local breakfast roll is banh mi xiu mai, a culinary mash up. “It’s a quirky banh mi that’s juicy and moist,” says Nguyen. 46
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“The meatballs are inspired by Cantonese siu mai dumplings, but they’re poached and simmered in tomato sauce like Western meatballs.” Ngo Hien, the owner of Red Door, which serves up delicate reinterpretations of Vietnamese cuisine in District 3, also recommends banh mi pha lau made with stewed pig and/or cow intestines and stomach – “it’s greasily delicious”.
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