At the moment we’re having trouble avoiding the French past of Vietnam (not that we’re minding). It begins at breakfast, where along side noodle soups, salads and rice porridge are served croissants, baguettes and a woman waits patiently to make fresh omelettes when requested.
We headed out to a street market, and in the process walked down a street called Pasteur. We continued on to Notre Dame Cathedral, and around there discovered a pocket of French bistros and cafes. Late afternoon, we got caught up in a downpour, and ran into the first bar we saw to avoid the rain – turned out to be a French place with some rather great rillette du canard.
Embracing this trend, for dinner we decided to return to one of the French places we saw earlier in the day. Only problem of course was finding them again. After much zig-zagging through laneways, and a bit of back tracking we ended up at La Fourchette. We dined on terrine (served with fantasic bread), duck salad, rabbit and steak tartare, finished off with a passion fruit bavaroise, all of which were of a standard you’d very happily sit down to in Sydney. Portions were massive, and while expensive by Vietnamese standards, from our point of view it was amazingly cheap.
The one down side of all this French food is that we have somewhat neglected the Vietnamese street food markets, but I’m sure over coming weeks we can address that. Plus I doubt the cook on our Halong Bay boat is going to be offering foie gras, so best to get it while we can I suppose…
La Fourchette
9 Ngo Duc Ke, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
(08) 829 8143