Vegetarian variation at Michelin restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

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Vegetarian variation at Michelin restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

Market news

08/10/2024

Michelin-recommended restaurant in Thao Dien transforms traditional Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, and European dishes into vegetarian dishes, adding to the culinary experience for visitors.

Among the 164 restaurants and eateries in the three cities of Hanoi, Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City named by Michelin in 2024, there are 5 vegetarian restaurants. Du Yen is the only address in Ho Chi Minh City named in the Michelin Selected 2024 list, after a year of opening in mid-2023. The restaurant is located in a building covered with trees in the Tay Thao Dien neighborhood. The space from the outside to the inside has a pure Vietnamese architectural style, "rustic but luxurious", introduced by Michelin Guide.

Located in an area with many foreign guests, the restaurant's menu has an international color to meet the diverse needs of customers. The dishes are inspired by traditional Vietnamese, Thai, Indian and some Western cuisines.

Tat Bat (pictured) is one of the restaurant's signature dishes. The dish is inspired by miang kham - a traditional Thai salad. The original miang kham has ingredients including ginger, dried shrimp, roasted shredded coconut, peanuts, shallots, chili, lime, sweet sauce made from palm sugar and shrimp paste. All are chopped and wrapped in betel leaves.

The vegetarian version of Tat Bat is varied with 8 ingredients including bell peppers, lime, grapefruit segments, roasted peanuts, cashews, dried coconut, lemongrass, macadamia, wrapped in betel leaves, for a balanced flavor of sour, spicy, sour, salty, sweet. This dish is often used as an appetizer. A tray of 4 rolls costs 135,000 VND.

Indian Mushroom Puffs (pictured) are a vegetarian version of the famous Indian Pani Puri. The local dish has a hollow, fried flour dough shell. The chef then carves a hole to stuff it with mashed potatoes, stir-fried chicken, green beans, onions and a spicy, sour and sweet pani sauce.

The dish at Du Yen restaurant replaces the filling with chopped stir-fried straw mushrooms, decorates the shell with butterfly flowers and dried shredded coconut, and skips the pani sauce. A plate of the cake costs 145,000 VND.

"Without sauce, the cake is still soft and moist inside and the crust remains crispy, very impressive," said Ms. Cheru (in blue shirt), from India. This is the second time that a tourist and her compatriot have come to the restaurant to enjoy. She said she loves the minimalist Vietnamese space at the restaurant and commented that the menu is suitable for a vegetarian diet.

A representative of Du Yen said that the restaurant's members were "surprised and overwhelmed" when their name appeared in the Michelin Selected 2024 category. At that time, the restaurant had been open for a full year, just enough time to be approved by Michelin.

"Conquering strict culinary experts is both a blessing and a motivation for us to do better every day," said the restaurant representative.

The ingredients used for vegetarian dishes in the restaurant are organic products, guaranteed to be fresh because, according to them, if the vegetables are not fresh, they can be seen with the naked eye and no spices can hide it.

The two dishes use lotus and termite mushrooms as ingredients. The restaurant owner shared that lotus flowers are both used for decoration and are fresh ingredients, so they must be evenly colored, the petals must not be crushed or bruised. Fresh lotus flowers are preserved in buds for about 2-3 days at a temperature of 4-8 degrees Celsius. Lotus petals used for the dish are the young petals near the pistil.

Lotus salad (pictured before) includes fresh lotus petals, stir-fried termite mushrooms, peanuts, and fried onions. This dish is served with dried lotus seeds to increase the aroma and richness. The price of the dish is 190,000 VND.

Lotus leaves are used as plates to hold stir-fried termite mushrooms (pictured after), helping to increase the aroma of the dish. The dish costs 155,000 VND per plate.

Butterfly flower ingredients (pictured above) are used in many of the restaurant's signature dishes. The flowers are imported from Da Lat and used within 2-3 days to ensure they do not wilt or darken. The restaurant owner said that butterfly flower is often difficult to import on rainy days because the petals are easily crushed.

"The butterfly flower spring roll has been around since the restaurant first opened," said the restaurant representative. The dish includes carrots, lettuce, eggs, vermicelli noodles and butterfly flower as the highlight in both appearance and flavor, creating a slight sourness. This dish has peanut sauce as the dipping sauce. A plate of rolls costs 165,000 VND.

The restaurant also has dishes inspired by regional Vietnamese cuisine. Pictured is a vegetarian square spring roll, a variation of Hai Phong's specialty crab spring rolls.
The filling for the vegetarian spring rolls is replaced with vermicelli and stir-fried mushrooms. The ingredients for the spring roll wrapper remain unchanged from the original dish. This dish cannot lack the accompanying vegetables and vermicelli, dipped in vegetarian fish sauce mixed with garlic and chili. The price of a spring roll tray is 175,000 VND.

Baked cheese bell pepper is a European-style dish, popular with Western diners. The restaurant representative said that Asian diners rarely order this dish because not everyone can eat whole bell peppers with little seasoning.
The dish has a cheese top layer, inside is tofu with mushroom sauce, baked in the oven for about 3-4 minutes until the cheese melts. The price per portion is 185,000 VND.

The restaurant representative said that since being recognized by Michelin, the number of customers has increased by about 20-30%. The characteristic of vegetarian restaurants is that the number of customers is not evenly distributed on normal days but increases dramatically on the 15th and 1st of the lunar month or on Buddha's birthday. On these days, the restaurant with a maximum capacity of 120 guests is always full.

Bich Phuong

Photo: Mai Trung