Retreat in the heart of busy Saigon

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Hi Everyone ❤

Today I would love to introduce you to an interesting Vietnamese restaurant at the center of Saigon which I really like. They have a smart business concept that incorporates a zen style to bring a place of retreat; that’s Mountain Retreat restaurant.

Let’s discover this place together :)

The Address & The Location

The address of the restaurant is: 36 Le Loi, Ben Thanh ward, district 1, Ho Chi Minh city. This is one of the main streets at the center of district 1 in Ho Chi Minh city.

The restaurant looks out from this address but is on the fifth floor, the way to access the location is via the alley at this address. It’s like a hidden gem to discover with a local style.

You go inside the alley then go in through an old apartment with a green door, then upstairs to the fifth floor. Yes fifth floor by stairs, we are climbing to the mountain to get to the food retreat. It's okay, more activities are good for our health and it definitely builds up your appetite!

The Space & The Atmosphere

The restaurant has 3 different spaces: indoor, a large balcony and rooftop garden.

The indoor space is cosy with warm yellow lights.

The large balcony is cool and has a great expansive view of Saigon. You can see that the restaurant is opposite the Saigon Center building.

The garden on the roof top is lovely with green trees and feels like a secret place. The view is also beautiful.

The decoration of this restaurant is simple but really effective, made from cheap local material but with good zen style. The ambiance is totally opposite to the noisy and busy Saigon. My favourite place is the balcony, I feel very relaxed there and it has a romantic charm. This restaurant is ideal for a meal with friends, family and couples who want to share some quality time.

The Menu & The Price

I like their menu with all the pictures of the food, that’s so convenient for customer to see and choose the dish, especially if you're not local. They have many dishes to choose from: Vietnamese delight, Vietnamese salad, Mountain Retreat ’s Chef, Protein, Vegetables, Fried rice and Vietnamese soup.

For drinks, they have Fruit juice, Coffee, Soft drink, Beer, Special folk drink, Cocktail, Mocktail and Wine. For dessert they have Cake and Sweet soups.

You can zoom out to see all the details of the menu.

The price here is reasonable for the quality and location at the centre of Saigon.

The Food and the Beverage

For drink I ordered Cane and eleocharis drink and Ambereola juice. Cane and eleocharis drink is a nice and fresh folk drink. I like that they bring sugar syrup separately with ambereola juice as I just need a little bit of sugar, so I can add it to according to my own taste.

The food is served in stoups and plates with an old local style that Vietnamese people use in villages.

For starter, we ordered three dishes: Fresh spring rolls, Amberella salad with deep-fried anchovies and Stir-fried baby clams with rice cracker.

Fresh spring rolls is nice with fresh steamed prawns inside. Amberella salad with deep-fried anchovies is my favourite dish, it has a great combination of the sour taste of amberella and the savory taste of anchovies. And it’s perfect to put on prawn crackers to eat.

Another popular Vietnamese dish is Stir-fried baby clams with rice crackers.

Just put the clams and a small amount of the vegetables on a rice cracker then you can enjoy the great combination of flavours.

And the next dish, deep-fried baby tilapia is so crispy and goes perfectly with my favourite tamarind sauce.

The fried quail eggs and grounded fish dish has a nice taste and is covered in young green rice.

We ordered the fried back ribs with lemongrass and chili dish, the ribs is good but the lemongrass is not small enough to eat whole as I am used to having in other restaurants.

We end our dinner with Vietnamese sour soup with catfish, eaten with steamed rice. Vietnamese usually put the fish to another plate then cover it with fish sauce and chili. This is a very popular dish and easy to eat.

The Service

They open from 10am to 9:30 pm to serve lunch and dinner.
The staff are fast and friendly.
You should make a reservation to guarantee you get a table, and can book via Tablenow or Pasgo to get a 10% discount.

Some of the English words in the menu are wrong. Some plates have some cracks, maybe they made that for the village style but some cracks are a little bit too much and make customers feel disrespected a bit. For good service, every small detail is important to get right.

Rate: 8/10

As a Vietnamese person, I see that many Vietnamese dishes here are very good but some other are not the best version I have had. But in general the food here is good.

And I really like their smart business concept of how they make a lower cost place at the heart of Saigon (in an alley, on fifth floor by stairs, cheap material decoration) become a hidden gem, all wrapped up in an interesting name, “mountain retreat”. This makes the climb a little less of a surprise and it has that unique zen and countryside style. I really like the atmosphere here.

I always recommend this restaurant to my friends, specially foreigners and they all like it.

Thank you for taking time to read this restaurant review for the contest on Tasteem. If you enjoyed reading this, please upvote on Steemit and bookmark this post on https://tasteem.io/post/18897

Much appreciated ! ❤
Hive account@livvu