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Friday, July 19, 2024

Bếp Mẹ ỉn (Le Thanh Ton Street), Ho Cho Min City, Vietnam

This is a Bib Gourmand restaurant on the Michelin website. As an aside, and as this is the last restaurant we ate at in Vietnam, and I haven't mentioned this, this is my last opportunity to do so, but I am very happy that there are Michelin rated restaurants in Vietnam. Is it flawless? No. They do look at places that are noodle places, but really just pho restaurants, which as far as I am concerned is not the greatest broth and noodle dish that Vietnam has to offer, but in doing so, Michelin elevates the cuisine. The only downside is that the places we ate at without this recognition were amazing, and they were also places where we ate our fill, each had a beer, and the bill was well under ten dollars. In any case, at this place, which is traditional South Vietnamese food, there were quite a few people like us, there because of Michelin, and from all over the world. I got a chance to teach some South Koreans how to use the translucent but not rehydrated rice paper to eat their Bánh Xèo with, which was very pleasureable.
The food here is really good, and the menu is much more varied than many more traditionally Vietnamese restaurants where we ate are--so it is likely to be geared to us as tourists. We ate at one restaurant in Hue that was this varied, and while there were many Vietnamese eating there, many of our fellow patrons were like us. In any case, it is worth trying this place and places like this, especially if you are on a short trip. We were in country for two weeks and I feel like I barely got started on cracking the code on Vietnamese food. I laughed at a characterization of the Vietnamese that I read in a memoir I am reading by a việt kiều (an overseas Vietnamese person) that characterized the Vietnamese as a skinny people obsessed with food.

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