Most expensive "broken rice" in Sài Gòn!

"Broken rice" or cơm tấm in Vietnamese is one of the most popular, favourite breakfasts for many Vietnamese in Saigon. If before "Cơm tấm" was like a morning meal,  but nowadays we have "night broken rice" for young nigh crawlers. They open very late at night, close just before the sunrise.

When I was a kid, how much I loved sitting on the low chair, on sidewalk, waiting for the "cơm tấm" vendor to open the huge container of freshly cooked broken rice, just to smell its fragrance and the other thing, also very important was the "fish sauce", I couldn't remember the taste in the old days, but remember at that time cơm tấm mostly served with typical "the egg cake", the shredded pork's skin...and that was good enough for me!

                              Cơm tấm Nguyễn văn Cừ is famous for their grilled pork ribs...

In Saigon we have so many choices for "cơm tấm", it depends on your taste, your convenient location and also on how big is your budget, like what I had this morning with my friend, before his going back to the US, was very expensive, compared to other places.

To be honest, I never heard of "Cơm tấm Nguyễn Văn Cừ" until the same friend took me to this place, 2 or 3 years ago, it was not that good, not that bad but both of us were shocked when they charged 100,000 VND for a cơm tấm with a quite big grilled pork rib. Ok, just think the pork is big!

                               The grilled pork rib almost half size of the plate! 

                         The other two : the "egg cake" (chả trứng) and the sunny-side-up (ốpla) 

Today we came back and intentionally ordered the same as what we did order few years ago, curiously to check how expensive now...

                     always loyal to my all time favourite "cơm tấm with egg cake and shredded pork's skin"

                       fish sauce for broken rice should be special : salted but sweet, a bit spicy, a bit sour... 

                           Cơm tấm could be good or not good, depends on the fish sauce very much! 

The quality remained the same, not impressed me much, I couldn't feel the fragrance of the rice, the fish sauce was ok, not too sweet, but slightly salted to me, the "egg cake" was also ok, I didn't like the texture, the shredded pork's skin with a lot of pork meat was not bad, but overall what we paid, as we thought, probably for the huge portion of grilled pork rib...the rest we didn't feel it worth!

We shared a same table with a young couple, and it seemed that they were also impressed with the size of the pork rib here!

Just for your information: 140,000 VND (6,5 USD)  for my friend's plate with pork rib, egg cake and sunny side up, mine was 70,000 VND - only egg cake and shredded pork's skin! You can try, the place is right at the corner of Nguyễn Văn Cừ street and Trần Hưng Đạo. At another place for a good "cơm tấm" and quite good portion of "pork rib" - you will pay probably much less!