He brought me to Cháo Gà Vân Hương, a street corner stall. I like this kind of hyperlocal place when I travel.
The birds in the window looked boiled or poached. They were lean, free range chicken. The skin looked a little parched and dry as they basked in the blistering Ho Chi Minh City heat.
They only have all Vietnamese menu here because more or less zero tourist venture to this part of Ho Chi Minh City 😂
Chicken can be served chopped into chunks, or shredded. Come with shredded raw cabbage salad which can be served as a side or together in a heap with chopped or shredded chicken. Eaten with flavoured rice or porridge, and condiments / dips. With soup.
Gentleman at the next table was having chopped chicken with flavoured rice, soup and dips very similar in presentation with chicken rice in Singapore.
Buddy Meng ordered chopped chicken in a heap of shredded raw cabbage salad.
This was the second time I am having chicken rice served this way in Vietnam. This seems to be the default choice of locals in Ho Chi Minh City when they order chicken rice.
Meng who travels regularly between Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi said this presentation is common in the south but less so in the north. The salad idea is similar to pho in the south with a bouquet of greens while pho in the north doesn't.
Presented this way, this seemed more like a chicken salad to me. The chunks of chopped chicken were buried, invisible under the jumbled heap of shredded raw cabbage, crushed peanuts, shredded banana stem, fried shallot, and aromatic dressing sauce.
The chicken was cooked through. The meat was lean but tender and juicy, sweet in the chicken way. The skin was crunchy with a slight chewy spring. It was quite rich in chicken flavour, much more so than battery chicken in Singapore as these were free range chicken. Love it 😋
The raw cabbage salad was okay. I mean it felt good that my body was getting a lot of fibre 😁 But, I am not a big fan of raw cabbage because of its subtle bitter taste.
Meng also ordered egg sacs (which I also had in Cambodia, so it is a Mekong River thing). It doesn't have an eggy taste though.
Crunhy chicken fallopian tube. All about its crunchy texture, no flavour on its own.
The rice was starchy, clumped together but just the right moistness. Cooked with chicken stock, so it had a chicken flavour, well greased but not oily. Just a nice subtle chicken taste, sweet with a bit of savouriness (but without the smell of fried garlic, pandan leaves, lemongrass aka Singapore style).
One of the main differences between Singapore and Vietnamese chicken rice is the Vietnamese do not dunk their chicken in ice or cold water unlike in Singapore. So, Vietnamese chicken do not have congealed jellified fat.
The Vietnamese style is actually closer to the Hainanese style which air cool and not ice dunk their chicken.
Second difference is in the dips. The Vietnamese use fish sauce, chili flakes & salt, pepper & salt while in Singapore, we use chili sauce with garlic & ginger, and dark soy sauce. Of course, each stall have their own signatures and variations.
Having tried the southern salad style chicken rice a couple of times, I am going to revert back to the familiar chicken and rice version like those we get in Singapore and Malaysia, when I go for chicken rice in Vietnam again.
Stall name: Cháo Gà Vân Hương
Address: 135 Đ. Trần Phú, Phường 4, Quận 5, Thành Phố Hồ Chí Minh
Tel: 090 934 7366
Hours: 8am - 9pm
Written by Tony Boey on 7 Mar 2024
🎗 Opinions in this blog are all my own as no restaurant paid money to be featured.
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Their chicken are more muscular and sinewy.
ReplyDeleteThe Vietnamese simply love their salads. I had their version of fried chai tow kway - it came looking exactly like ours. Then, my Vietnamese colleague showed me how they eat theirs: pile a whole mound of shredded vegetables on top, then pour dressing on the whole thing. It became a chai tow kway salad!
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