When I read this review on Bangalore Metblogs, I couldn’t resist the temptation to go and check out the food myself.
So along with Charles & Debbie (who were game to visit again!), Aqua and hubby, my sister and blogger Sathish K, we had a nice and lovely long meal at Saigon yesterday evening.
Warning: Lots of food pictures ahead!
One of the starters was lettuce leaves served with chutney, chillis, onions, ginger, peanuts… you mix everything, put on lettuce and eat. Yummy!
The tom kha gai soup was delicious and tangy and had just the right balance of coconut milk and lemon grass. My sis and I had tried the same soup at Magnolia (in Koramangala) earlier this week and I must say that this one won hands down!
Another starter was the bhetki fish (absolutely melt in your mouth) and the chicken satay with peanut sauce.
Saigon is located on Church street. Currently, it’s hosting a Thai Food Festival and has flown in Thai chef Chantanee from Bangkok especially for this 3-4 weeks. We left the ordering to her and she did full justice, I must say.
One of the main course items - red snapper fish – nicely flavoured and very tasty.
By this time we were already quite full, but that didn’t stop us from tasting the soft deliciously done crab. Other dishes we had were asparagus with mushrooms, thai flat noodles, prawn glass noodles and a minced chicken with basil and lemon (since we didn’t order from the menu, I have no idea what the actual names are).
And to end the huge meal, we had the khao niew mamuang - sticky rice served with mango – not too sweet and the mango goes really well with the coconut flavoured rice.
As my sis commented, very flavourful food and every dish had its distinct taste but complemented each other well. If you want to visit while the Chef Chantanee is around, you need to go before June 2nd after which she moves on to Civet.
You can ask her to recommend dishes based on your budget; that’s what we did and it worked well for us. And extra for drinks.
Bon Appetit!
May 25th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Thai food in Vietnam?? Lol.
May 26th, 2007 at 11:07 am
I have to say that Thai food is my favorite. And my town does NOT have a decent Thai restaurant (like Chicago did). We do, however, have an amazing range of Vietnamese restaurants because there is a significant Vietnamese population here. I have to go to Denver (65-70 miles) to get to anything decent. But this week I had to go to Denver for work, and I managed to have a wonderful Thai meal, which also included a sticky rice dessert. Good choice!
May 26th, 2007 at 11:46 am
yum yum…i missed the show!!
May 27th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
[…] May 27th, 2007 by sathishk On Thursday I went to Saigon restaurant, thanks to the invite from Anita Bora. This restaurant is located in Church Street just next to Amoeba, the bowling center. It was abotu 6 months since I visited MG Road and these nearby areas. I met few other interesting people at the dinner table. The food was just amazing. Its definitely a place to visit and worth the money. There was chef from who had come all the way down to prepare special thai food. Early June she would be moving over to Civet. So, you can catch up with the chef for her exotic dishes here before June or in Civet early June. For the dishes we had and their names and other people at the dinner table, head to Anita’s blog. […]
June 5th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
I’ll definitely convey the compliments to Yu Hin, chef of the restaurant, who is a dear classmate of mine, an Assamese whose grandparents migrated from China to India…He speaks assamese better than me :)
June 6th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
@ Mj: apparently, yes :) they are good friendly neighbours!
@ Suz: haven’t had much vietnamese in bangalore, i must admit!
@ Rajesh: there’s always a next time!
@ Layon: oh really? i will say hello the next time!!
October 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
[…] Saigon is a restaurant located on the 3rd floor of Ruby Tuesday building besides Ameoba on the same side at Church Street off Brigade road. They have labled themselves as pan asian cuisine. We went in for Oasis first on the same road deciding on sea food but that night the attendent informed they do not have any fish item and told they had a ownership change recently - things will be normal again from tommorow. But we wanted it that very night. So we moved on to Oye Amritsar! but looked like the wait time will be more, so I decided to check the restaurant on the previous floor, which is Saigon restaurant. I went on to enquire and I was quite impressed with the interior. Saigon restaurant have quite a few variety of dishes like Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese etc. This is a little upmarket restaurant so asking for recommendation based on budget in case if you have any from the attenders there may work as mentioned by Anita on her blog. […]