Job Discussion Forums

[teacherkev]

Hello All,
While I enjoy a bowel of Pho or a Banh Mi as much as the next person, I'm used to a balanced, healthy diet. Unfortunately I do not have access to a kitchen, so cooking is not an option, at least in the short term (1-3 months). While I'm happy to explore the various cafes, restaurants and street stalls. I wanted to reach out to any others who may have already gone through the trial and error process, or stumbled upon that gem of a place. Does anyone have any recommendations preferably in and around Dist 1, that offers either healthy local fare or food from other Asian and/or Western nations? I would prefer a name rather than anywhere along a particular st.
Thanks in advance

[toiyeuthitmeo]

Try www.eat.vn and www.vietnammm.com

These are really handy websites where you can order from tons of restaurants across town, no credit card, just pay cash when they deliver.

Pretty reliable and a great range of options.

Off the top of my head, Ben Style is a healthful food delivery-only business owned by a Canadian teacher / bodybuilding champion. All of the food comes with nutrition info and some of it unfortunately sacrifices flavor for health, but there are some gems on the menu. 0906912730.

[skarper]

Eating long term in restaurants and street stalls/cafes will damage your health.
Especially in Vietnam but even in Western countries.

Excess salt, lack of vitamins and many other problems.

2-3 months is not so serious, but a year or two and you will really feel a difference.

[mark_in_saigon]

food can be pretty difficult here, though it certainly is cheap. My gf is vegetarian, so, much of the time, we tend to go to the few places that can accommodate her. Some of it is quite good, inexpensive, and seems cleaner (and safer) than meat eaters places. I have no moral problem with meat, but am moving towards vegetarianism (just while living in VN) based on the unsanitary way meat is handled here. The closer you look, the worse it appears. Their standards are appalling.

Her favorite place in HCMC is the Loving Hut, it is in 3, right off CMT8 about a block from the park. Best to go close to the meal runs, otherwise they serve the food at whatever temperature it has settled down to, although you can get food cooked up fresh too, which is more likely to be hot. They have a lot of items that are on display so you can see what you are getting.

There is also a chain called Pepperonis (also part of the chain is called Al Frescos), some of those are in 1, one or two of those have a buffet that is about 5 bucks, a true all you can eat. They get a lot of foreigners in there. One of them is in the backpackers area. Some of it is really pretty good, seems clean enough, and is a fairly good substitute for western food. Pizza, lasagna, salad, forget what all. Maybe not as good as what you would get back home, but you would not get it for 5 bucks back home either. Some of the high end buffets here are just totally ridiculous, like 25 bucks or some crazy amount.

[teacherkev]

That was quick thank you very much for the replies, I'm scanning over the websites and will check out the recommendations, there was a Loving Hut near me in Hong Kong.

I've also been thinking about becoming vegetarian too. Not that I've taken any action on it yet, some further reading on the matter is required. Once again thanks.

[DNK]

On eatvn is Hoa Khai. It's a vegetarian restaurant that's pretty clean and healthy. Good prices, too.

Annam Gourmet Grocery on Hai Ba Trung (another in D7-PMH, but it lacks the salad bar and cafe) in the central area has a salad bar that's phenomenal though a bit pricey. Well, there's a lot of dairy available, but as an American that's what I'm after. It CAN be quite healthy if you avoid the dairy and deserts. They also have a wide selection of Western ingredients, though without a kitchen you'll be more limited in what you can buy - but premixed Western salads, some varieties of leafy greens, western spices, and other ingredients are available if you want to mix it yourself (as the premixed is way more expensive per kg than any of the ingredients, which makes no damn sense).

But they have oats, granola, cereal, etc, you can eat cold of course, plus a really great bakery and deli, where you can get sliced meats, tons of cheeses, and the only stuff that resembles "bread" in town (and great cookies, also a supreme rarity). Basically, you can get all the ingredients for home-made sandwiches there.

Point being, start there.

Chi's cafe has a decent salad offering, too, and you can add chicken to it for about 25K. The rest of the food is well above average in terms of health, too.

I'm not sure how unhealthy the local places are, assuming you eat like a local and get a meat, rice, soup, and vegetable dish. High sodium isn't such an issue when you sweat 3 pounds each day, either (if it's really that big an issue to begin with), and I have to imagine fish sauce, for all its horrid taste, has to be quite healthy with a great Omega-3/6 ratio.

I think the food here - outside of the "Western" food sold in Bui Vien - is way healthier than American restaurant food at least, though home-cooked will always be best (usually).

Oh, there's a lot of sushi around for a decent price. That's pretty clean, healthy stuff I think. "The Sushi Bar" has a bunch of locations, and it's decent stuff. So long as you don't get fried stuff, it's as healthy as can be.


@mark Which park? Tao Dan or the burning monk one? Could you be a little more specific?

[Mattingly]

[Dekadan]

For some reason my reply was in the wrong thread. Here it is:

When I was living there, I started to have some problems because of the food I ate. I found that vegetarian food was less likely to give me issues, probably for the reasons that MIS said. There's a pretty good restaurant in D. 1 fairly close to Bui Vien. A street called Tran Dinh Xu has a restaurant called Dao Vinh. It's off Tran Hung Dao moving towards the river. The Ca Ri Thai Chay was delicious, as were the fried mushrooms and a durian dish (and I don't like durian!). I definitely recommend checking this place out and it's reasonably priced.

[Jbhughes]

Yeah, I have to say I find leading a healthy lifestyle really quite difficult here, for the following reasons (most of which have already been mentioned of course):

1. Oily Food. Any savoury dish has its fair share of grease or oil and, as mentioned, this is hardly extra virgin olive oil.

2. Salt. We do live in a hot climate (despite northern winters) and of course that means a little more salt is necessary, but the amount in food here is crazy. Other sources of salt: nước tương (x� dầu), nước mắm.

3. Sugar. If it isn't loaded with salt, it's loaded with sugar. Sugar must be seriously cheap here as it's used as a cheap sweetener for everything it seems. Even savoury dishes have too much sugar in them. I find this happens a lot with foreign cuisine cooked in VN restaurants, they load it full of sugar to try and compensate somehow (I'm not sure what they are compensating for). Have you ever looked just how much sugar they put in your coffee or in a fruit drink? Scary.

4. MSG. You've got to wonder why some dishes taste soo good, yet you can't quite nail down that flavour to anything identifiable. I fear that when we're slurping up a nice bowl of pho, imagining all the history and family secrets that have gone into the dish, we're just tasting some Korean powder.

5. White rice and or white rice based products (i.e. noodles). Now I haven't necessarily got anything against rice or white rice in general, but as a staple food there are some problems. White rice is refined (like all that sugar too) and doesn't have the fibre or vitamin content of brown rice. Further, it's a very 'quick' carb, as starchy carbs go. Depending on how you eat, this might not necessarily be a problem, but you can often find yourself with a lot of blood sugar not long after a rice meal (if you were doing exercise at this point, that would be great), followed shortly by feeling hungry long before a planned meal time.

6. Cheap 'poison'. Beers, smokes, coffee are all cheaper than cheap here, making it hard not to say 'yes' if you're into any of them. I'd imagine any other poisons are also relatively cheap.

7. Poor quality meat. I'm not even sure if you can call most of the beef here meat at all, it's terrible. I honestly can't imagine what the farmers are doing herding the cows along the side of the road all day. What do they eat? Plastic bags? The other meat is incredibly fatty - pork, fried chicken...

8. Night shifts. I think it's fair comment to say that the bulk of our work is made up of evening classes? I don't know about everyone else, but I for one find it difficult to go home and get an early night after four hours of teaching. I always need to wind down a bit and this inevitably ends up in a late night, especially with no specific hour to start work in the morning. This usually ends up in eating late too. I find it quite inconvenient to have to have a main evening meal at either 4pm or 10pm, neither is great for healthy eating.

9. The heat. Most Vietnamese wake up at some kind of ungodly hour before the sun comes up to do exercise. This isn't so easy for us if we've been working til 9 or 10 the previous night (see number . The alternative is to go out and do exercise during the heat of the day, quite an undertaking and for anyone with health problems or who isn't already fit, potentially dangerous.

10. Motorbikes. I basically never have to walk more than 20 yards anywhere at anytime, ever. About the most exercise that is actually required by my daily life is wandering around the supermarket or going up and down the stairs in school. No-one walks anywhere here, the pavements aren't for walking on. People who walk are usually really down and out, like beggars or pedlars (and most of them can afford a bicycle). Compare this to the UK, where everyone at least will walk to the bus stop or the tube station or from the parking lot. I found it so liberating being in London in February this year, just walking around and using the bus or tube when necessary.

Of course, all of the above can be circumvented (and I for one will hold my hand up and say I don't put enough effort in), but then you start to lose some of the benefits of living in Việt Nam. Cheap food, coffee shop lifestyle, cheap beers, not having to get up for the 9-5, the awesome convenience of a motorbike that can be parked anywhere.

[8balldeluxe]

Really well written post Jb. Sums up pretty well. The sugar question is especially vexing. Why is it necessary to put gobs of sugar into things like white bread, or ban Bao dumplings, and spagetti sauce ? I went to Toulouse Jours bakery and bought some tasty looking garlic bread toasts. Yes they were fresh, and had butter and garlic , but loaded with sickly sweet sugar. Who taught anyone to do that? All that talk of worlds greatest cuisine here?
How about going to the cinema and buying a bag of popcorn? Butter, and SUGAR. i asked them if they could not put sugar in and they said impossible. I even offered to pay extra money to make a whole batch with no sugar. No dice. You would have to be physically and mentally compromised to ingest that kind of sugar and continue on with your homeostasis unabated. Im not talking sugar high, but when you feel hungry for a starch snack how in hell can you chomp down on sugar without getting a headache? And iced coffee?

[On Like Saigon]

This is all great info on the food. I lived in Saigon a few years ago and ate out all the time. I think that was a major factor in my feeling "run down" over time.

Matter of fact, I developed a rash on my face that got more pronounced as time went on. My next move was to China and a few weeks in my new life there my appendix ruptured and then was removed. 9 days in a local hospital, all flushed with antibiotics I never saw that rash again. Fortunately I only have one of those.

I'll be headed back in a few months and am already thinking of checking an extra bag loaded with organic goodness and supplements that will cushion the blow of going back to pho and all the salt/sugar mention prior. I'm hoping the foreign food marts have improved in the last 5 years, but reading through the posts, its safe to assume they havent.

[sigmoid]

11. Few rooms/apartments have kitchens, so it is nearly impossible to cook for yourself.

[DNK]

12. Few of those kitchens have ovens (what's that?), so good luck baking anything.