Although the aim of this blog is to show that Vietnamese food is not only about those well known dishes, I am a fanatic phở lover (to the extent I even tried to cook it at home), and just can’t ignore them completely. Plus, even the best phở in my home country is not 100% authentic, and has been modified compared to the real deal. So every now and then, I’ll have a review entry for phở restaurants I went to in Vietnam.

Today, I will review a dish from one of the higher end restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, which my girlfriend took me for my birthday dinner We had a variety of great dishes, but this time I’m just going to focus on the delicious pork ribs which I got to taste.

The first dish I’m going to review is the simple yet profound ‘chicken rice’, or cơm gà xối mỡ, in particular. Cơm gà literally means ‘chicken rice’, while xối mỡ refers to the cooking method of pouring boiling oil over the chicken to make the skin crispy. This makes it completely different to more popular Chinese style chicken rices, such as the Hainainese chicken rice, which simply uses boiled chicken. There are other types of chicken rice as well, but that’s for another time.