Oct 29

Oct 29 Going All-Meat in Nam Son

HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM. For our Christmas Eve dinner in Vietnam, we decided to skip the fancy hotel restaurants and go somewhere that offers something that is filling and at the same time reasonably priced! Nam Son was just the perfect place to address both. A steak place in the middle of the green-conscious Ho Chi Minh City, we headed on to the restaurant without thinking twice.

We had a slightly hard time finding the place as the taxi driver was not familiar with it. Knowing that it was located somewhere along Nguyen Thj Minh Khai St. which was just a few minute-drive from our hotel and is near the Reunification Palace, we just asked him to drop us off somewhere near where Google Maps directed me earlier while I was searching for it. We did not see the establishment nor any signs that we are on the right track the moment we got off the taxi. But that's the good thing about travel, it is not necessary to get something right or get somewhere you want to go the first time around. Getting lost is part of the whole journey. Anyway, we continue traversing the road armed with just a bit of hope and some faith, never giving up until I found something that would tell me that I am heading on the right direction. After walking a few hundred meters more and asking locals and U-turning, I had finally found the neon sign that made me jump for joy. It says: Beefsteak Nam Son. Aaaahh, that was surely the happiest I had been that day!

You still have to go inside a narrow street up to its dead end to reach the establishment. Two long rows of motorcycles on both sides populate the street as if giving you early on a taste of how popular the restaurant is to the locals.

The al-fresco restaurant was indeed packed with a lot of people. It may look chaotic from the outside but the volume of people did not deter the waitresses from attending fully to each and everyone of their clients. I was amazed that a waitress came up to us, from nowhere, the moment we stepped inside the restaurant which gave a lot about the establishment having a nice system that keeps the place run smoothly.

The waitress then led us to our table and gave us a menu to help us decide what to get. The menu was not that extensive, which was a good thing really as we easily decided on what we wanted to eat. I already forgot what type of meat I got (which was just either beef or lamb) but what stuck to me most was the cheap price of the meal. For only VND 80,000 (Php 170), we were already able to get some nice steak, eggs, fries, bread and a drink (in my case, some sweet, sweet, sweetened milk)! It was already nice to get a meal that abundant that cheap but for it to be so smackingly good that you will never forget it almost a year now after consuming it? Now that's something else.