Want to know where to eat and drink in Ho Chi Minh City (commonly still known as Saigon)? Don’t miss “The Tasting Menu: Saigon,” our new four-part video series that explores the Vietnamese city’s culinary landscape through the local chefs and experts who know it best. Moving seamlessly between beloved street-food stalls and buzzy contemporary restaurants, the series aims to bridge the past, present, and future of dining in Saigon. Zeroing in on everything from the rise of cơm tấm, the city’s famous broken rice dish, to the booming coffee scene, each episode shows how Saigon became a world-class food destination with a culinary identity all its own.
Episode 1: Where a Vietnamese Fine-Dining Chef Goes for Cơm Tấm in Saigon
Few dishes capture the spirit of Saigon as well as cơm tấm. What began as an economical meal built around discarded grains of rice left over from milling has evolved into one of the city’s defining culinary traditions. A testament to Vietnamese ingenuity out of necessity, it’s now served everywhere from humble street stalls and longtime family-run institutions to ambitious new-school restaurants.
Primarily eaten for breakfast, cơm tấm is all about balance of flavors and textures. The rice is topped with sweet-savory charcoal-grilled pork, pickled carrot and daikon, scallion oil, and a drizzle of fish sauce seasoned with sugar and chiles. From there, the dish can be customized with your preferred toppings like bì (shredded pork skin), chả (steamed egg-and-pork loaf), and a sunny-side-up egg.
For our first episode of “The Tasting Menu: Saigon,” we wanted to answer a simple question: Where does one of Vietnam’s most accomplished young chefs go for cơm tấm? To find out, host, writer, and former SAVEUR editor Dan Q. Dao caught up with chef Lê Việt Hồng and his business partner, Mai Thanh Liêm, the team behind CieL Dining, one of the country’s most celebrated tasting-menu restaurants.
Since it opened in early 2024, CieL has transformed Vietnam’s fine-dining landscape, earning a Michelin star before its first birthday. Hồng blends Vietnamese ingredients and flavors with the techniques he developed while training abroad—at spots including Noma in Copenhagen, Disfrutar in Barcelona, and SÉZANNE in Tokyo—creating a distinctly modern expression of Vietnamese cuisine that remains deeply rooted in a local palate.
Despite Hồng’s global résumé and high-concept tasting menus, the meal he most regularly returns to can be found at his local cơm tấm shop in Bình Thạnh, where his family has lived for decades. “I’ve been eating here since I was six years old,” he says. “It’s part of my childhood.” Watch the video below as Hồng revisits Cơm Tấm Dũng 43 to break down every component of a perfect plate of cơm tấm.
