Apparently one of the favourite haunts of the notorious Vietnamese gangster Năm Cam (executed in 2004), today Vĩnh Khánh Street is one of the most popular places for street food in Saigon, especially seafood. Every night young people throng the sidewalks sporting trendy hairdos, tattoos, and the latest fashions from South Korea – you rarely see anyone over the age of 25 here. The atmosphere is electric: hundreds of small and large groups of friends hunker down at tiny red and blue plastic tables, splitting shells, cracking crab legs, clinking beer glasses and having a really good time. As if the thundering cacophony of laughter, traffic, and orders being shouted wasn’t enough, some enterprising teenagers pull up on the curbside with giant amplifiers strapped to the backs of their motorbikes and proceed to blast out karaoke for the ‘entertainment’ of all street food customers. There are fire eaters and street dancers too. To say that the food scene here is vibrant is an...

Cô Giang is a long, straight street that unofficially marks the southern perimeter of Saigon’s burgeoning backpacker area in District 1. However, Cô Giang Street is a lot quieter than Phạm Ngũ Lão, Bùi Viện and Đề Thám streets whose bars, western restaurants and mini-marts make up the centre of the backpacker district. In general, travellers who choose to stay or spend time on Cô Giang Street are looking to get something more ‘authentic’, more ‘Vietnamese’ from their time in Saigon. While Cô Giang is not as densely packed with food stalls as other streets in this guide, it still offers plenty of local street-life and bustling open-air eateries, especially around the intersection of Cô Giang and Đề Thám streets. In the evenings bright fluorescent light bulbs illuminate streetside barbeques, whooshing woks, and bubbling cauldrons. Scented cooking smoke fills the air and hangs, like a Dickensian fog, over the diners sitting at tables on the sidewalk. Right on the corner of Cô Giang and...

A chaotic jumble of motorbikes, cars, pedestrians, food vendors, and diners on the sidewalks devouring their dinners, Tran Khac Chan Street is a throbbing street food mecca. In the space of a couple hundred metres there are close to 50 food outlets, all vying for space and attention on this busy little street. Hemmed in at one end by the Thi Nghe Channel and at the other by the tree-lined Tran Quang Khai Street, this is a place to really let your ‘foodie instincts’ guide you: follow the smells, the smoke, the neon signage and, most importantly, local people, towards anything edible that takes your fancy. I think of this street as an open ‘wardrobe’ of food in which I’m free to try anything on. Most of the action is at the Thi Nghe Channel end of the street. A good place to start is at the popularBanh Canh Cua 87 which, predictably, serves bánh canh cua at number 87 Tran Khac Chan. This gooey, slimy, crab-based concoction, uses thick and doughy noodles which are...