Ok, so we had a real(ish) Thanksgiving meal later on with our Nike expat family...but it was a "holiday" so Matt and I took advantage of the day off and he took me to lunch at a rooftop restaurant appropriately named Secret Garden for some homestyle Vietnamese food. Located at the top of an old apartment building down an alleyway that smells like cat pee, I was beginning to think we may have been lost. A few cute signs amongst the trek up five flights of rickety stairs offered some encouragement before we reached an Asian oasis offering some of the best dishes in Saigon. The menu is a masterpiece of beautiful photos of their offerings presented in Vietnamese with a small description in English. Normally, I'd save room for a Thanksgiving feast...but the food was too good to pass up.
We ordered:
Rau thập cẩm kho quẹt - mixed vegetables with a fish sauce reduction (the sauce is liquid gold!)
Canh chua bạc hà cá điêu hồng - Vietnamese sour soup with red snapper fish
Cơm chiên tỏi - fried rice with garlic
