Saigon Favorites - A Touch of Japan in District 1

Where did we spend our last night in Saigon?  Slurping bun streetside?  Nibbling cleaned-up versions of streetfood at ever-popular Quan An Ngon? Jostling with Saigon's hipsters at just-opened nightclub Lush (what a name)?  Getting sloppy at a popular expat watering hole?

No to all.  We passed our last evening at what I would argue may well be Saigon's best restaurant: K Cafe.

 

Owned by a gregarious Japanese expat and his slightly wacky Viet khieu wife (they met in California, where both lived for many years), K Cafe is a tiny (4 tables + a small sushi bar downstairs, traditional tatami seating up) gem of a Japanese restaurant in District 1.  What sets K Cafe apart from the other Japanese contenders in town (there's one just doors away on the same street) is the loving attention to every single detail and the consistently high quality of the ingredients.  Mrs. K Cafe is a fanatic stickler for hygiene and freshness, which means this is probably the only place in Saigon -- perhaps in all of Vietnam -- that I would eat local oysters, raw.  And Mr. K Cafe is a warmly welcoming (if sometimes, at night, a bit tipsy) presence, circulating table to table making sure that customers, most of whom are Japanese, are happy.  (Don't expect to run into him on Saturday afternoons, when he's out golfing.)

Much of the credit for K Cafe's success must be given to this man, sushi chef Truong Tri Nhan.  Chef Nhan has more than a decade of experience mixing rice and slicing fish, and he is as adept at every other restaurant kitchen skill -- from deep frying to assembling a plate of fish so beautiful one hesitates to disassemble it -- as he is with a sushi knife.  (He's also quick to laugh and has an infectious smile.)

I'd love to show you some of K Cafe's best dishes, but the light in the restaurant is not conducive to great photography, says Dave.  You'll have to try for yourself --- the aforementioned raw oysters, flown in fresh from Nha Trang, lying plump and glistening in their shells, garnished with shredded daikon radish, seaweed, a sliver of skin-on lemon, and pucker-inducing ponzu sauce.  Sliced raw small horse mackerel marinated in -- completely permeated with -- fresh ginger.  Housemade uni tofu, soft and silky as fresh panna cotta, topped with a button of uni.  Wonderfully fragrant smelt sashimi, wrapped in bits of seaweed.  Meaty deep-fried softshell crab (absolutely oil-free ... did I mention that Chef Nhan knows his way around a deep fryer?), on its own with a dipping sauce or stuffed into a stellar sushi roll (another spectacular roll: deep-fried salmon skin).  And more.

As for K Cafe's fish, some is very local (from Ben Thanh market), some is long-distance local (the fish Chef Nhan is holding had just arrived from Nha Trang) and some is flown in from Japan.  There's an extensive menu, but check the blackboard for specials, and always ask Chef Nhan what's good.  He never once steered us wrong.  And try the plum wine -- straight up, on the rocks, or with soda.  Mr K Cafe makes it himself.

Compared to local fare, K Cafe's is expensive --- an obscenely large lunch for two, heavy on the fish, costs around $45.  Our farewell dinner, which was no holds barred, added up to about $90, including a couple of small flasks of sake (we brought our own champagne).  But you can get out of K Cafe for much less.  And given the quality and the creativity -- something akin to what you'd find in a small off-the-beaten-track cafe or sushi bar in Japan -- K Cafe is a bargain.  We miss it, and Chef Nhan, already.

K Cafe, 74 A4 Hai Ba Trung, District 1 (almost directly across from the new Park Hyatt Hotel). Tel 8-824-5355. Open for lunch and dinner daily.

Comments

[pieman]

Interesting. I flit between Jap-joints, but haven't checked this one out thus far. I'm liking Totoya on Le Thanh Ton at the mo, although I know it's not the world's greatest, I do like their clams in sake. I stuck it up on flickr.com somewhere. haven't blogged it.

IMO, Vietnam's oysters, and any tropical oysters for that matter, are way too fat to be eaten raw. Baked, grileld or whatever is fine. But, if it's raw and taste I'm after I have to hit the northern hemisphere, France or UK works for me.

[Robyn]

pieman, I'm with you on the oyster front -- much prefer cold water ie northwestern US coastal oysters to tropical ones. These are, however, surprisingly tasty if perhaps a bit of a mouthful. The garnish and dipping sauce send them over the top.
If you want to bake, grill, or whatever some oysters in Saigon I know that Mrs. K Cafe will sell you some, with advance notice. She's quite accomodating. Oyster stew, perhaps?

[pieman]

That's worth knowing. Oyster chowder might well work. However, I will go and try this joint next time we need a Japanese fix.

Talking of northerly oysters. I was talking to a writer recently who did a story on someone who has reintroduced the 'famous' New York oyster. Will try and find it and email it to you.