we're in Saigon Vietnam and today's gonna be all about the best street food
here in Ho Chi Minh City we've got a bunch of street food gems lined up for you
wander the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and you'll be assailed with the intoxicating
smells of the city's food culture Saigon is a wonderland for people who are
passionate about eating this is our second video from Saigon and we're
eating some of the city's best food we share with you Saigon's most delicious
banh mi one of the world's most beloved sandwiches a small shop front serving up
an epic plate of broken rice and delve into some of Saigon's best night time
street eats in this Saigon series we'll show you some of the city's best
food from traditional Vietnamese dishes to iconic street food you don't want to
miss this series get ready for some mouth-watering food I'm Thomas and I'm
Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry
let's eat
Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon is such an exciting city when it comes to street
food the amount of street food here is absolutely mind-boggling probably a
higher density and concentration than in any city we've ever been to and we
travel full-time to eat street food so we've been to a lot of cities with a lot
of street food this place is incredible and we're starting with one of the most
famous Vietnamese street foods and that's banh mi let's go get this
first eat
banh mi is one of the world's most famous sandwiches and we have eaten
our weight in banh mi in Saigon in order to show you the best in the city
this one is the clear winner let's go and order we've put in our banh mi order at
this little street cart so we ordered a banh mi thit which is a classic Vietnamese
sandwich with cold cuts inside but besides just being a street stall this
place is actually a bakery as well so they bake their banh mi the
bread rolls in house so you can see those big ovens out there and then
also the fresh banh mi the fresh baguette just hanging out in the window
waiting to be eaten and we have ordered so a classic one with lots of cold cuts
there's mayonnaise going in there there's pate there's pickled daikon and carrot
there's coriander all sorts it's gonna be amazing
oh don't worry about a bag we'll just eat it
this is the little banh mi stall and I love these stalls because you can see all
of the ingredients lined up we have ordered a classic banh mi thit which is
just made up of all sorts of different cold cuts you can see all the cold cuts
lined up here there's pork floss, there's radish, pickled radish, pickled
carrots, coriander all sorts all stuffed into this it's a really good one
it has been a long but not very arduous road to get to this banh mi so we've been
eating them all around town to find the best one for you guys so that was not a
hard task because these sandwiches are absolutely incredible but it definitely
we realized that we'd found the one when we found this bakery it's amazing
look at this sandwich so it's got this beautiful bread roll so basically a
little baguette so the French did occupy Vietnam until 1954
that's where bread comes into it so the bread came with the French to Vietnam
when they left this sandwich got invented in 1954 so what the deal was
was the bread was eaten in the very standard European way when the French
was here just as bread and they'd have cold cuts and things on the side and
then when the French left the Vietnamese kept the bread they took their
ingredients and put them into that bread and there is many versions of banh mi
but this one is unreal so you've got pate down there that's obviously a
leftover from the French as well you can just see these cold cuts here so we've
got different styles of pork so we've got some ham and some pork
underneath we've got cucumber we've got a pickled daikon carrot a whole lot of
coriander some pork floss some mayonnaise sticking out the end there
some chillies hiding in there to just make the most perfect little sandwich in
the world
mmm oh
now with a banh mi I don't think the true joy comes until at least
mouthful three so I gotta keep going
mmm mmm so I'm starting to get in to that cross
section and that's what I mean by mouthful three you've got to get in
there get right to the heart of the sandwich and find where the mayo and
the pate and things are a bit thicker and stronger
there it is mmm
incredible so you've got those different layers of meat I can see three different
styles of meats and then the pate on top of that I got some really strong chilli
so very spicy nice and sharp because it's a fresh chilli coriander very
strong pickled veg cuts through those different the fats in the meat and then
the mayonnaise is a little bit sweet I love that they use mayonnaise as
well actually because when the French was here were here they used butter but
it doesn't fare very well in this weather it's amazingly hot here so the
mayonnaise fares a bit better in this weather
oh this is such a good sandwich so this bakery like I said when we found it
it just blew our minds because the the quality of this sandwich is unreal the
bread is just so crispy on top nice and fluffy inside how good does that mouthful
there look at the sheen coming through from the mayonnaise now I think I should
probably talk about why we we found that this sandwich was the best of all the
ones we had why did this one take the cake and we had a lot of these on the
build-up to filming this piece for you this one took the cake for one it's very
simple it just works other ones had too much meat or the meat was cut too
thickly or they had too much mayonnaise or too little mayonnaise this one was a
perfect balance the coriander is the perfect balance with the pate and the
meat it is absolute harmony as a sandwich
mmm absolute harmony I love it sweet spicy salty savoury perfectly put
together and just the joy of standing on the street here eating a sandwich like
this I'm covered in crumbs because the bread is so flaky and that is a very
good sign actually Sheena said they bake the bread in-house and that means a
lot for a banh mi so you know that roll is going to be as fresh as it can be
this is just one of those food moments that you absolutely dream about and a
sandwich that is just it's life-changing honestly life-changing a sandwich like
this it is so well done and so so delicious
we love exploring Saigon on foot because you get to escape the big busy streets
and wander down little lane ways through local markets there's so much to see
and it's so invigorating this city it's so exciting we have just arrived at our
next spot and I'm so excited to share this dish with you it's one of my
favorites to eat here in Vietnam and it is called com tam or broken rice it's a
dish that was born out of poverty and now has become the nation's most
beloved dish really it's eaten for breakfast lunch and dinner
let's go and order this restaurant is known for doing one of the best
com tam or broken rice in Saigon it is super delicious we ate here the other
day it was phenomenal can't wait to share it with you, xin chao
how are you? Com tam mot thoi
beautiful!
so I've just put in an order for broken rice and it
starts with the steamed broken rice so you've got a huge plate
of that here and then next comes the toppings so you can load up all sorts of
things with the broken rice so I have got the pork chop I've got some steamed
egg meatloaf all sorts of things going on there
ngon quá it looks so good
whoa, what a plate, cảm ơn
I love broken rice and this is
the perfect setting to be able to enjoy this dish so we're sitting in the laneway
right next to the restaurant there's a barrage of scooters rolling past you've got
the smells of being out on the street it is perfect and then you've got this
incredible looking dish so the centre piece of the dish is of course the
broken rice so let me show you so you've got the steamed broken rice here and
it's called broken rice because it is actually broken up so it's structurally
fragmented and the rice gets broken up because it gets damaged
during milling or in the transportation process and it's basically a dish that was
born out of poverty so it used to be a poor person's dish because only poor
people ate broken rice because they couldn't afford the long grain rice but
now it's become one of the nation's favorite dishes people eat it all the
time and everyone eats it because it is so delicious
all right so what you've got also with the rice are the toppings so you
can choose all sorts of toppings I went with the whole shebang because I am
super greedy and I wanted to share with you all the different toppings that you
can get so what we've got is a grilled pork chop we've got here like a steamed
egg meatloaf so that's got egg it's got bits of wood ear mushroom that's the
black bits it's got some pork in there then we've got some spring onions
cooked in oil and then we've got a fried egg on top
this here is pork skin and then we've got some pickled daikon and pickled
carrot and then to go with it we've got this dipping sauce so this is the
dipping sauce which is made up of our fish sauce and vinegar and sugar and
what I'm going to do is actually just add some of this chilli to it to give it
a bit of kick so this actually goes all over the plate so I'm going to move the
egg aside and make sure I've drenched the rice with that sauce okay it's
time to get in alright let me construct the perfect mouthful so I'm gonna get a
huge dollop of that rice a little bit of pork some of this meatloaf and then some pickles
all right
Oh
holy moly that is good the rice is really really soft so it's steamed it
just falls apart in your mouth soaked up all of that delicious fish sauce
mixture it's sweet tangy little bit spicy of the chilli this pork chop is so
smoky and it's got this beautiful marinade on it which is really sweet
okay assemble another mouthful I wanna get some of that pork skin look at that rice is
flying all over the place because my plate is so full alright
oh man that's good the green onions have a really delicious aroma the skin a
little bit chewy but quite soft and then that pork is just unreal it is so
smoky and sweet and tender this is such a great plate full of texture and
flavor it is delicious
it's now evening and Saigon comes alive with street food at nighttime we have
come to a really famous place this place right here for bot chien which is one of
the most popular street foods here in Ho Chi Minh City
it's made up of a stir-fried rice flour and tapioca cake let's go in and order
some you can see them actually cooking right at the front of the restaurant
the smell up here in front of the restaurant is just phenomenal so this lady is
cooking up the bot chien which is like a cake made out of rice and tapioca
flour and the smell is just heavenly so she's stirring up the cubes of the
bot chien in lots of oil at the moment and it's sizzling and making such a
delicious sound
our plate of bot chien has arrived and it is a very pretty looking plate now
essentially what I think it looks like is a potato cake but that is not what it is
at all these cubes so you can see all these little cubes here are made up
of rice and tapioca flour mixture which they make into a cake
they steam so it's steamed as a whole cake then cut up into
little cubes and then fried up and that's how it's got that beautiful golden crispiness all around it and then
they've got some egg on top and some spring onion but the things that comes
comes with are quite interesting so this is some shredded green papaya and the
deal is that we're gonna dump a whole lot of that on top just basically cover
it and that'll give it a bit of crunch and a bit of freshness
and then we have this special sauce which we're gonna drown all over
this but I'm gonna add some chilli oh these look fiery look at that chilli full
of seeds as well so I'm gonna add some chilli to that special sauce so that then
when we spoon it all over its coated in everything you know what spoon is
way too slow let's just go to town ohhh got those fiery chillies on there
and that sauce has gone down it's running nicely into that into that tapioca and rice
flour cake all right let's get a bit of everything I want some of that green
papaya coated in that chilli
it's not overly flavorsome it's incredibly nice
and very tasty but it's not a huge ridiculous burst of flavour it's
got a beautiful balance of salt and sweet now this secret sauce finding it hard to
pick what it could be I'll just have some by itself
oh yum yeah so a lot of the flavor's coming from that secret sauce
tasting maybe a little bit of soy in there
it's got a quite a saltiness and quite a sweetness very tasty now I didn't get some of
the spring onion so I just want some more spring onions
oh yes so golden
hmm
it's crispy on the outside soft in the middle
perfectly fried up it's not too oily so they haven't coated it in so much oil that it's
taken it all on it is a great little snack I can see why it's one of the city's
most favorite street foods because it's the sort of thing you're riding along on
your scooter and you think to yourself I want that you swing in and you eat it because
it would just tickle your tastebuds it's a very good plate of food
now conveniently our next street food is only about 20 meters away from where we
just ate and it is this little pudding shop right here so this stall we ate
here the other day and it was phenomenal he sells traditional Vietnamese
desserts called che so we're gonna go and order a couple of desserts
this guy here is surrounded by all of these different pots of traditional desserts
and you can see everyone tucking into their desserts great atmosphere tiny
little stools in this laneway tucking into their pudding so we're going to
order a couple of bowls of chè chuối
hai chè chuối please cảm ơn
they look great we've ordered up two balls of chè chuối
so chè is a traditional Vietnamese dessert it's like a
collective term for all sorts of puddings and desserts and drinks and this one
is made up of a coconut cream sauce it's got tapioca it's got banana and
it's got some peanuts but before I get into the food I just want to about the environment
it is quintessential Southeast Asia so you've got the pudding stall right behind me
people gathered round the pudding stall tucking into their puddings people are
driving up on their scooters and then literally look at this main road which
we're right by there's just so much traffic roaring past and we're sitting here
eating our hot puddings it is so so brilliant I love Vietnam okay so this is
the chè chuối so you can see how gloopy it is so this is the coconut milk or
cream sauce and then you can see the tapioca sort of threads in there I've
got a bit of peanut and also this here is the sweet banana so let's just get
into this thing
Whoa that banana it just bursts with flavor it is so sweet
and this gloopy sauce
it's almost a little bit savory so the main sweetness
is coming from the fruit from that banana there's not that much sweetness
in the sauce I love the crunch of the peanuts
I love sort of the the gluggy tapioca
so good I'm loving this experience and look how many people there are now all lining
up for a taste of this guy's pudding this is amazing