Saigon Food Culture and Local Gems with Food Expert

We begin at Ca Zone Cafe, a newly-opened cafe located inside a vintage residential apartment in Ho Chi Minh City. The reason we're visiting this cafe is first and foremost witness and understand what a "Cafe Apartment" (a big part of Vietnamese cafe culture) is as well as its origin, how it has shared cafe culture in Vietnam as well as its future. This is also where we will taste different types of Vietnamese coffee - Hue Salted Foam Coffee, Egg Coffee from Hanoi as well Lemon Coffee. Here, I share about the different types of coffee and their origins as well as why new cafes nowadays aim to modernise these age-old recipes and how they're doing it. We end with understanding the importance of Robusta Coffee (Vietnam's main coffee bean type since it's the world's largest exporter of Robusta Coffee) and how it's changing.

Tao Dan Park has a long history, beginning ever since the 1860s when the French started invading Vietnam. The Tao Dan Park is located right behind the Reunification Palace and was repaired at the same time when the Palace was rebuilt by the French. In 1869, the French separated the Tao Dan land from the garden of the Reunification Palace and built Miss Cawell Street between them (also known as Huyen Tran Princess nowadays).

Here, we'll enjoy the sights scenes and sounds of a typical morning in Saigon.

We take a 10-minute walk over to Ben Thanh Market - one of the earliest surviving structures in Saigon and an important symbol of the city. Ben Thanh Market is also the second largest indoor wet market in Ho Chi Minh City, home to over a thousand different stall vendors from food to clothes, souvenirs and more. Here, we also pay a visit to a young Vietnamese coffee stall owner modernising one of the oldest coffee forms - Ca Phe Vot or "Stocking Coffee" - in Vietnam and try a little bit of Vietnamese Stocking Coffee while enjoying some locals snacks, fruits and more. Here, tourists can also go shopping and admire the architecture of the market while soaking in the hustle and bustle of the main commercial activities that occur in Vietnam.

For an early dinner, we head to MamaPho to try not one but six different types of Pho from the North to the South of Vietnam. Here, we try everything from the popular Beef Pho to deep fried Pho Puffs and Stir-Fried Pho (which you usually would only be able to witness and try in the North of Vietnam) to steam-fried pho rolls. We deep dive a little more into what Pho is, its importance in Vietnamese food culture as well as its history, the building blocks of a delicious bowl of Pho and how to tell when you've got a good bowl of Pho in front of you.