This weekend is a holiday in Vietnam and it actually took me a little while to figure out why a lot more people were in the tourist town that I live in and found out that it was "Reunification Day" - which celebrates the day that the North and South of the country were reunited following that France / USA debacle so many years ago. It was the day that the Viet Cong forces captured Saigon and this signaled the official end of the war.
So this was a 4 day weekend and a lot of stuff was closed. I was warned by my landlord that we should "probably use the ATM before Friday because they likely would be empty and not refilled, until Tuesday. This was confirmed on Saturday when a friend of mine who did not heed the warning had to borrow money from me :)
Anyway, this weekend is also an opportunity for the restaurants that have been struggling to make ends meet to throw events for the holiday, and I participated in one of these at a place that had a menu that costs a great deal more than I would normally spend in a day, let alone on one meal.
The crazy thing about this restaurant is its location: If you were traveling here there is almost zero chance that you would ever just happen to stumble upon this place. It is down a side street quite far away from the main drag, so to speak, and there are not many hotels nearby. They must do ok based on their reputation though because even though there is exactly zero international tourism in Vietnam at the moment, they were quite busy for this event.
The lowest priced item on this list is the first one and give you some perspective that is just over $30 a person. The highest priced one is around $60. I don't know where "Labor Day" comes into this and I suspect it is just a reuse of another day's menu.
The menu items were very cheese-centric, which is something I always find appealing. It must be the French influence and I'm guessing that is what this place specializes in because nearly everything was covered in cheese that was placed on top of whatever item you wanted on the spot, right in front of you. The drinks were also free-flow and I got my money's worth on the white, and then later the red.
You can see here that this is basically a cheese platter other than the singular oyster, which was also incredible. I have no problem with cheese and basically can't get enough of it. I did try to not take more than I could eat but in the end we really overdid it and when I was looking around at the other patrons, all of them were doing the same thing so I don't have to feel bad.
The cheese options just kept coming and despite the fact that my stomach was telling me "no dessert" we did have 2 and half hours to get the job done and eventually the dessert display was calling our names.
As amazing as the starters and mains were, I was expecting to be underwhelmed by mass-produced cakes and other such garbage that you normally find on buffets around the world - but alas, I was wrong: These were all amazing and while we didn't finish all of them the tiramisu was definitely obliterated by the time we were done.
Every now and then you gotta splurge in life and that is exactly what we did over this holiday weekend. Even though I very rarely spend $50 in a day over here in Da Nang, this experience was worth it and I would definitely go again. Le Comptoir doesn't do this every weekend and it is just a holiday-oriented experience but looking at their wall when I was there I noticed that they will make up a holiday at least 2 times a month in order to repeat this event on a regular basis.
If you feel like treating yourself and you happen to be in Da Nang you can find Le Comptoir HERE. It would probably be helpful if you enjoy cheese though.