During my stint as an expat in Vietnam from 2007 to 2008, The Astronomer gifted me five “fancy” dinners for my 26th birthday. We were each earning $750 per month working for an NGO at the time, so this present felt like quite the splurge, even though the bill for the two of us was well under $100 in most cases.
Back then, the upscale dining scene in Saigon was largely composed of international restaurants. According to Gastronomy’s archives, my birthday dinners included a trio of old-school French restaurants (La Fourchette, Augustin, and Le Toit Gourmand) and a stop at the Italian restaurant inside the swanky Park Hyatt. My fifth dinner featured a modern Cambodian tasting menu in Siem Reap while visiting Angkor Wat.


Fast forward to 2025, and the Saigon fine dining scene is bursting at the seams. While there are still plenty of international dining options around, the rise of Cuisine Mới, or New Vietnamese cuisine, is an inspiring new development spearheaded by Vietnamese chefs bringing together contemporary techniques and trends with Vietnamese sensibilities.




Ciel from chef Viet Hong opened in 2024 in Thao Dien, an outer district popular among expats and accessible via the new metro system. The building that houses the restaurant — Scandinavian minimalism meets lush Saigon landscaping — was built from the ground up and reminded me some of the grounds of El Celler De Can Roca in Girona, Spain.
Before opening the restaurant, the chef staged at Noma in Copenhagen, Barcelona’s Disfrutar, and Sézanne in Tokyo. The influences from each of these stops in his culinary education are apparent throughout the 10-course progression.
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