You know how it is. This city rewards the curious and punishes the complacent. A great room fills up fast. And the next thing worth knowing about is already open somewhere you haven’t thought to look yet. To help, we’ve done some looking for you. From a chipboard-walled seafood kitchen on Mac Thi Buoi to a counter beside an eel tank in District 1, from a 22-year-old’s first bistro to a wine house that’s got bottle — this is where to be right now in our latest round-up of the best new bars and restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City.
Saigon’s dining scene has a habit of making you feel like you’re always playing catch up. You find the place, tell someone about it, and they’ve already been twice. And by the time you visit, they’ve already moved on to the next new spot.
This edition of our insider guide to the best new bars and restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City is an attempt to get you ahead of that curve — or at least level with it. This time, we’re talking wine houses, bistros, eel tanks, sushi tacos, and a French colonial house in Tan Dinh that would rather you make any assumptions about it, thank you very much.
Consider this your running start.
Muội Seafood & Wine Bar
Muội has taken up residence inside The Trieu Institute on Mac Thi Buoi — a room of warm light, set tables, and glasses catching the glow. Thomas Ho, the mind behind the beloved but short-lived Bambino and the newer Thai concept Bah Thai, has embraced a Mediterranean breeziness here: rustic chipboard walls, sheeting arcing over the open kitchen, and dishes that find a surprisingly satisfying meeting point between European and Vietnamese cooking. The Squid Linguine is the clearest expression of it — Italian pasta technique applied to Saigon-style hủ tiếu mực. “It’s a dish that tells Muội’s story in every toss of the pan,” Thomas says.
The team is Chef Son and Sam in the kitchen, affable and attentive Harry front-of-house. The focus is responsibly sourced seafood, handled simply, with enough Vietnamese identity to make it their own.
Start with the sardine boquerones — anchovies cured overnight in salt, sugar, vinegar and fish sauce, finished with scallion oil, lemongrass and kaffir lime. A riff on Spanish tapas via gỏi cá trích that has no business working as well as it does. Follow it with the tiger prawn done kho tàu style — the slow Southern braise, caramelised and deeply savory.
The Leitz Eins Zwei Riesling Trocken from Rheinhessen is the house recommendation and earns the billing. Consider, then, walking in or booking ahead for a glass and a few flavorsome plates, lunch through dinner. But given how quickly Muội has found its footing with Saigon’s diners, the second option is safer.
Why: Vietnamese seafood with bistro discipline and a wine list as savvy as its co-conspirators.
Where: 10 Mac Thi Buoi, Saigon, District 1
Doobie Do Bar
The music was loud. Then the refrain blasted across the speakers — doobie doo — and Koki looked at his business partner and they knew they’d found the name. “It was the right decision,” he says, with the quiet confidence of someone who doesn’t second-guess himself often.
Miyoshi Koki is not easy to place. He spent fourteen years in Manchester. Before that, London — where he cooked as personal chef to the Japanese ambassador at the Green Park embassy, handling daily meals, private parties, and omakase dinners paired with sake to exacting standards. Before that, Japan, then Hong Kong. His base now is Singapore, where he runs a charcoal-grill restaurant and has watched the post-COVID market tighten: rents nearly doubled, restaurants closing around him.
Which is part of why splitting his time between Singapore and Saigon makes sense. And he’s starting with Doobie Doo — though calling it a bar is to undersell it. Part listening room, part izakaya, part cocktail bar, the place lives different lives, sometimes within the span of a single night.
Upstairs at the counter, Japanese ceramics hold dishes that move between registers with enough restraint to feel considered. Kamado-grilled chicken breast with watercress and wasabi sauce. A dashi broth — made fresh daily, onion and daikon bobbing in it — served with red and white curry miso on the side, the heat calibrated somewhere between Japanese and Vietnamese tolerance. A banh mi built on tofu aburaage stuffed with grilled pork, chicken liver paste and garlic mayo. And a Nagoya-style Napolitan pasta — Japanese Italian, or Ja-talian as he calls it — finished with egg.
“Everything comes from the dashi,” Koki says. “It’s the most important thing to Japanese cuisine, and the most important thing at Doobie Doo.”
The sake comes from Izumo, in Shimane Prefecture — he just returned from a visit — a place he describes as sacred, where the gods of Japan are said to gather each year. It’s the kind of context he offers not to impress but because it matters to him, the same way the dashi matters, and the ceramics, and the name nobody asked him to justify. And like Izumo, Doobie Doo feels like somewhere worth gathering.
Why: A Japanese chef who has cooked for an ambassador making something precise and personal in our city.
Where: Ho Chi Minh City, District 1
Contact: Instagram
Tempo House
You walk into an unassuming alley off Pasteur Street and it opens up — festoon lights, a French colonial house, terracotta circle tiles, a mid-century interior, and a surprising level of calm considering what’s happening outside. That shift is the point. From the chaos of the street into something quieter.
Tempo House is the project of Ngoc Le and Thanh, two Aussie Viet Kieu with backgrounds in Melbourne hospitality, Sydney bar culture, and Saigon’s arts community. The name comes from the idea of a space that moves with you across the day — coffee in the morning, a spritz in the afternoon, or a whole evening you didn’t plan on drawing you in. “It’s not a cafe, not a cocktail bar,” Ngoc asserts. It’s both. “Not everything needs to be a concept,” Ngoc says. “Sometimes it just needs to feel right.”
But that’s harder to execute than it sounds in a city that moves this fast. Here, part of it is achieved through the kitchen, where they play with local ingredients — roasted rice, dragon fruit and Vietnamese jellies — without making a performance of it. A charcuterie board, they’ll tell you, works with everything on the menu.
And the best seat is probably at the bar where Leon — a bartender truly worth getting to know — holds court. You get to watch everything happen, ask questions you might not otherwise, and happily get drawn into a conversation you didn’t budget time for.
Outside under the festoon lights works for groups. Inside for something lower-key. Plus, an art space upstairs is in the works — Thanh’s arts community connections suggest it will be worth watching. Another tempo change at this new Pasteur spot.
Why: A Melbourne-meets-Saigon all-day hang that found its footing fast.
Where: 218C Pasteur Street, District 1
Celestia Wine Bar
Saigon’s F&B energy keeps moving outward, and Tan Dinh is one of the smarter places it’s landed. Celestia occupies an old French colonial house in a small alley — quiet, considered, run by a founder who spent years in Europe’s food scene and came home with a specific idea of what was missing. The team is young, the sommeliers know their list, and the chefs are working a French-Vietnamese intersection that shows up in both the food and the glass.
The assumption — that a wine bar in a building like this will be stiff and formal — is the one they most enjoy disproving. New World bottles sit alongside Old World ones, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the crowd skews younger than the refined setting might suggest. Convincing that crowd that wine is as fun and characterful as cocktails is, by their own admission, the challenge they’re working on every service.
The best seat is by the window overlooking the courtyard, where, if you’re willing to look beyond the cocktails, they suggest a glass of Shiraz or a Tempranillo alongside the signature fusion dishes, and let the sommeliers guide the rest. They know this list better than the menu suggests.
Why: A French colonial house in Tan Dinh doing quiet luxury without the stiffness to match.
Where: 9/6 Ly Van Phuc, Tan Dinh
Roll Sushi Tiger
The sister restaurant to Sushi Tiger — the wardrobe-sized standing sushi spot that helped kick-start Japan Town’s post-pandemic revival — Roll Sushi Tiger on Pham Viet Chanh takes the same irreverence somewhere louder. Sushi tacos. Latin Afro House. And the signature large windows flung open to the street. Only this time, you might be relieved to learn, there are chairs.
The face of the brand is Hiro, “Taisho of the Sushi Tiger Group,” as he explains it. The group now spans five locations across Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi – with the masterful, modern omakase restaurant Fume as its centerpiece – with two more coming by June.
Their three-pillar philosophy hasn’t shifted much since the early days in the alleys. “Hayai, yasui, umai,” Hiro says. Quick, fairly priced and delicious. In that order.
The concept sits in what Hiro calls traditional Japanese technique crossed with everything else, with touches of Vietnam, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico and even Korea.
Global influences are absorbed and redirected through sushi. The shari, the rice, remains the non-negotiable centre of it all, obsessively maintained and prepared fresh every 90 minutes regardless of waste and whisked to their venues across town from their central kitchen, ensuring a superior bite, whichever location you’re at.
“The exact ratio remains a top-secret recipe,” Hiro notes, with the confidence of someone who has been asked before and still refuses to give up his secrets. The best seat at Roll Sushi Tiger (we did mention there’s seats, right?) is by the open windows, though standing either inside or out with a drink in hand on a warm Saigon night works just as well. The sake sommeliers are worth consulting. Order the sushi tacos. And stay for the music.
Why: Sushi rolls with a Latin Afro House soundtrack and seats and no apologies for it in the heart of Pham Viet Chanh.
Where: 83 Pham Viet Chanh, Binh Thanh
Contact: Instagram
Cabri – Wine & Eatery
Romain Phoeung is 22. “French by paper, Khmer by blood,” he smiles. His father, after all, is Cambodian-French chef Sakal Phoeung — owner of Le Corto and P’ti Saigon, and President of Les Disciples d’Escoffier Vietnam, a man who once cooked a state dinner for the French president. You might have spotted Romain helming another Sakal venture, Livvanah, serving the two-venue restaurant’s fun small plates as he played around with new dishes for this, the eatery he’s calling Cabri.
Romain grew up watching Sakal’s career, and spent most of his life trying to stay out of the industry, with his dad’s approval. “I knew what to expect,” he says. “Which is the reason I’ve tried avoiding it,” he laughs. But, here he is anyway.
Cabri, as he describes it, is a French bistro built inside a bar — a small team, a small menu, good homemade food, and decor pulled from 80s and 90s pop culture.
The name, ‘cabri,’ is French for kid – a young goat. It suits him. “By definition, we’re a real French bistro,” Romain says. The concept is that simple, and that considered.
The couch by the projector is the seat to find, Romain reckons. There, order the smash burger. “Comfortable,” he notes, “and good for inducing food comas.” The format borrows from the bistro’s original logic — you come to drink, eat, and play cards — and no one is going to rush you through any of it, especially if you’ve slumped into a burger-induced coma. “Realistically, I hope people enjoy what we’re doing and spread the joy,” he nods, his father’s son after all.
Why: A 22-year-old’s first restaurant that knows exactly what it is.
Where: 4A Street 50, Thao Dien
Vier Dining
Vier Fine Wines has been importing and distributing in Vietnam long enough to know that selling bottles is only half the conversation. Vier Dining is what happens when you open them.
The concept is a wine house rather than a restaurant — you walk in, look at the bottles, and take it from there. Then, the food builds around what you’re drinking, not the other way around. The list is large but not designed to overwhelm, and because the wines come from their own distribution, the markups make exploration easier than elsewhere.
The space runs continuously across showroom, bistro, lounge and private VIP rooms — each of the latter themed around a wine region: Italy, Spain or France. There’s no strict separation between any of it, and no fussy wine elitism to put you off trying anything you like.
The lounge level is quieter and, importantly, closer to the full range of bottles. Start with something straightforward, the team suggests. The second bottle, they’ll tell you, usually reflects the table better.
Later in the evening, live music gently shifts the pace. Some tables keep things short. Others linger, they’ve noticed. There’s no fixed format, and, they confide in us, a few bottles never make it onto the official list to be introduced only once the conversation gets going and you’ve earned the right to an introduction.
Why: A wine house where the bottle comes first and the evening follows.
Where: 52 Riverview 4, Vinhomes Golden River, District 1
Photo credit: Ngoc Huy. Ho
Unagi Station
Lanh Phan opens restaurants the way a good chef breaks down a fish — methodically, without waste, and always with a clear sense of what each part is for.
We first encountered him at Maguro Studio, the funky contemporary omakase that turned tuna butchery into theatre. Then came SABI Sky Omakase and Yakiuo Ishikawa, the seafood yakiniku that swapped meat for premium Japanese catches and added tuna auctions for good measure across its two branches.
The latest is Unagi Station, and the focus, as the name suggests, is eel. There is, disconcertingly, a tank of them beside the downstairs counter — winding around each other in a way that will either sharpen your appetite or complicate it. Either way, the sashimi that follows is some of the best in town. And the team have taken their impeccable service standards developed at Maguro Studio, and applied them here to a casual, a la carte-focused spot.
Why: The latest from Saigon’s most prolific fish importer turned restaurateur — and the most unnerving aquarium in District 1.
Where: 6A Thai Van Lung, District 1
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