When in Ho Chi Minh City and not feeling like local food, we can recommend you this amazing spot we discovered 5 years ago in District 1 called The Vintage Emporium. For expats around Thao Dien (District 2), you probably know this place for its delicious breakfasts but you should actually start considering this place for dinner!
Affordable but also delicious, this place will serve you the best Arabic fusion flavours you can actually can forget about Beirut (expats in Saigon would know this place!).
If you are visiting, you should just take a ride to District 2 and discover many of the cafes and perhaps have a beautiful sunset drink at The Deck before heading over The Vintage Emporium for dinner. District 2 in Ho Chi Minh city is renowned as an area of town for upcoming micro brewers and boutique food joints. Tucked in a side street, The Village Emporium is an international style restaurant that has quickly got the attention of expats and locals alike for its breakfast/brunch. With a diverse menu running all day (and evening as well), foodies in Ho Chi Minh City mostly have done the journey there for this culinary delight.
Although, a common misconception is that The Vintage Emporium is only good and open for breakfast & lunch. The truth of the matter is that they also open for dinners and you should be trying it out as the manu is different, very tasty and surprisingly nails the Arabian flavours perfectly (after living all these years in the Middle East, we sure have the knowledge of a good hummus!).
We ordered a whole lot of things. Starting off by ordering some colourful drinks like a berry shake, peanut butter shake and green shake. The menu has many options so make sure to get the flavours you like.
For starters, we got some, Hummus, Labneh and Salmon salad. Would 100% recommend you to not miss on the hummus and labneh as it is all made fresh and we actually enjoyed even more than some places we would get it from Dubai. As much as the salmon salad was good, we should’ve ordered something different as it wasn’t that special.
For mains, we received the best dishes recommended by the chef which is the curry with rice, gnocchi, fried shrimp and seared tuna. The winning dish for all of us was the gnocchi. It was made differently from any other places we’ve been and simply tasty. We all wanted a second (HUGE) serving. The Moroccan flavoured curry was perfectly done and James, a Moroccan, even approved it being on point. Fried shrimps were great for me, but the dish is too fried for westerners and cooked too much the Vietnamese way. As for the seared tuna, it was extremely well done even though we did have our doubts such place would do it perfectly.
Overall, we were very satisfied with all the dishes that sounded more exotic and tough to do. All the special and unique dishes of the dinner menu were fantastic and worth a try (especially that gnocchi, craving for it just thinking about it). If you are an avid breakfast fan of The Vintage Emporium, we encourage you to organize a get together for dinner and go ahead and order the different stuff versus the easy regular conservative dishes. You won’t regret it!
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