Street Food & Ben Thanh Market in Ho Chi Minh City
A visual guide from the Ho Chi Minh City travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Southern Vietnam cooks sweeter, greener and later than the north, and Saigon is its giant open-air dining room. The canon: smoky cơm tấm broken rice, hủ tiếu noodle soup, crackling bánh xèo pancakes and the most overstuffed bánh mì in the country. Ben Thanh Market, under its 1914 clock tower, is the totem — tourist-priced but atmospheric — and the streets around it keep serving long after the hall shuts.
Working Ben Thanh
Inside, mornings are for produce, coffee beans and souvenir haggling — open at around half the first asking price and keep it friendly. The food stalls in the middle of the hall do decent one-plate lunches if you confirm prices first. The better move is timing: when the doors close around sunset, night-market stalls set up on the flanking streets, grilling seafood and pouring cheap beer, and dedicated street-food halls within a short walk collect dozens of vendors under one roof.
The Southern Canon
Eat cơm tấm for breakfast like a local — grilled pork chop over broken rice with a fried egg. Chase it with hủ tiếu, the Chinese-Khmer noodle soup served wet or dry, and an afternoon bánh mì from a specialist counter. After dark, do what Saigon actually does: ốc. Whole streets — most famously Vinh Khanh in District 4 — grill snails, clams and mantis shrimp by the plateful. Finish with chè dessert soups or fresh sugarcane juice, all for pocket change.