Saigon House Cuisine @ Sri Bahari Road, Penang

After Thai restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants show significant grow in Penang in recent years. Saigon House Cuisine (GPS: 5.42152,100.33164) is located at Sri Bahari Road (same road in which The Ship and Foong Wei Heong Restaurant 风味小食馆 are located) occupying a unit of the renovated heritage shoplot. It was one evening when we were craving for Tomyam and planned to visit a Thai Fusion Cafe at Sri Bahari Road, just to find out that the cafe was under renovation. As a result, we walked few shops away and stumbled upon this Vietnamese restaurant. No Thai, Vietnamese also OK.

Vietnamese cuisine is somehow similar to Cambodia cuisine using Thai basil, lime, bean sprouts, chili and various herbs as ingredients. A fun fact for both countries sitting next to each other is that both used to be French colonies and since then, Baguette (French long and crispy bread) is in their menu and we found the same item in Saigon House Cuisine.

Stuffed with juicy pork cube, the cripsy Vietnamese Bread with Grill Pork (RM7) is ready to mess your dining table with bread crumbs. We particularly enjoyed the aroma from coriander.

Saigon House Cuisine serves more than 80 dishes and is definitely worth multiple visits, especially if you are beef lover since beef is their recommendation. For non-beef taker like us, the lady owner introduced us Vermicelli with Fried Spring Roll (RM13).

It was like Japanese’s Hiyashi Chuka (中华冷面) in which you stir everything in the bowl and enjoy, except Vietnamese version comes with Spring Roll and burning homemade chili sauce. Still, vermicelli tastes better with the piquant chili sauce.

Selecting few items out of 80+ choices was definitely not an easy task. Fortunately, the friendly lady owner recommended us some dishes, including Shrimp on Sugar Cane (RM12 for 3 pieces). First thing came to our mind was the Chinese’s mocking vegetarian chicken drumstick. However, the Vietnamese version was totally new experience with shrimp/fish paste coasted on fresh sugar cane, so fresh that you still can chew out juice from it.

Vietnamese Coffee is a must-order whenever we visited Vietnamese restaurants. Unfortunately, not all baristas were able to make a perfect coffee out of it. Saigon House Cuisine, however, is an exception with careful selection of fresh coffee bean and perfect coffee-water ratio, turning it into a perfect alternative to coffee brewed from espresso machine.

As a whole, Saigon House Cuisine is definitely worth multiple visits thanks to variety of authentic Vietnamese dishes. Other than street food and noodles above, “Choo Char” dishes are also available. Pricing-wise, it is at the premium side compared to street food in home country but judging on the comfy environment with “new home” smell still intact, we really can’t complain much.  The Vietnamese restaurant is opened daily from 11am to 10pm and is closed on Tuesday. For more information, kindly visit their Faceboke page or call +604-261 2301.