Based on a recommendation from the Lonely Planet, and a reconnaissance walk by, we ended up at Nhà Hàng Ngon for dinner. The meal was the most memorable one of our visit to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. There were mostly tourists dining here, but not tourists of the coach tour group variety. Rather, it was more of a crowd or adventurous travellers between 35-50 years of age.

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Restaurant Review: Nhà Hàng Ngon, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

“A terrifically approachable and contemporary Vietnamese Meal that was on point on spice, outside under city lights”

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Nhà Hàng Ngon
160 Pasteur, Phong Ben Nghe,
Quan 1, TP. Ho Chi Minh
Restaurant

The Nhà Hàng Ngon is one of Ho Chi Minh City’s top rated restaurants, having voted among the Top 101 Restaurants in Asia by the Daily Mail in 2013, and winner of “The Guide” for the past twelve consecutive years. They also run an outlet of this restaurant in Hanoi, although this particular review relates to the Ho Chi Minh City location in South Vietnam.

Booking and Getting to the Restaurant:

We were able to able to walk to the restaurant from the Sheraton Saigon Hotel and Towers. It was about a ten minute walk along city streets without any concerns of security or safety. As in some things in South East Asia, the restaurant website is not entirely running and is almost entirely in Vietnamese at the time of our visit. We ended up stopping by earlier in the day to make a booking reservation.

Dining at Nhà Hàng Ngon:

All the dining is alfresco style in a colonial oriented courtyard, with a few tables contained under cover inside the property. Indeed, the restaurant itself is massive, with probably 200+ seats, and you could spend quite a bit of time wandering around. Food is cooked at various stations around the restaurant, but you can only order from wait staff who collect the food from the various stations.

We started off with a traditional Vietnamease Pancake. It was accompanied by fresh fresh fillings.

I was eating light tonight and went with the Chili Salt Wings, cooked perfectly, accompanied with cucumber and lime. It had just the right amount of spice.

We accompanied this with the local Vietnamese wine. It was actually no worse than Como Sur, Chile or any other lower tier mass produced wine available from Chile, Australia etc… It’s been hit and miss on the domestic wines around the world, but this was far better than our experience with The Great Wall of China Table Wine from China. It was a definite “have again”.

We enjoyed the meal (and bottle of wine) for the inflated tourist price of 524,000 Vdng, or $24.27 USD for a meal for two with appetizers, a bottle of wine and all taxes. Talk about value! Truth be told, we came back again a second evening it was so good. It’s a must visit if you happen to pass through Saigon.

Our walk back to the hotel:

The walk to and from the restaurant and the historic town buildings through the Saigon night was pretty good as well. What a memorable way to end an evening of dining under warm temperatures.

My thoughts on our meal at Ngà Hàng Ngon:

We really enjoyed our meal dining at Ngà Hàng Ngon. The food was on point, the spice was just right, and the atmosphere of dining outside under a colonial styled courtyard was just right for our visit expectations. The wines were approachable and the price point of the whole meal was better than expected. We enjoyed it so much, we returned again on our brief stay for another experience. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this location for a meal when in Ho Chi Minh, Saigon, Vietnam on your travels through the region.

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If you’ve dined at Nga Hang Ngon at either location, what was your meal like?

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