Saigon Top 10 Western lunches

At least according to Asia Life Magazine,

1) Café L’Opera
31 Ngo Duc Ke, D1

2) Restaurant Tell
5 Nguyen Binh Khiem, D1

3) Sesame
153 Xo Viet Nghe Tinh, Binh Thanh

4) Pacharan
97 Hai Ba Trung, D1

5) Xu Restaurant & Lounge
Level 1, 71-75 Hai Ba Trung, D1

6) Ty Coz
178/4 Pasteur, D1

7) Pizzamania
76 Nguyen Trai, D1

8) Square One
1st Floor, Park Hyatt, 2 Lam Son Square, D1

9) The Refinery
74/7C Hai Ba Trung, D1

10) Luna d’Autonno
102 Suong Nguyet Anh, D1

I can vouch for Sesame and for Restaurant Tell, but for the rest I'm hopelessly out of touch. FWIW, I still hold by my own top ten for Saigon.

Comments

[m@t]

I think Pacharan is pretty ordinary, but the rooftop bar is cool.

I like Xu a lot, but not sure I would file it under 'western' - its a fusion place.

Refinery always seems empty - cant believe Au Parc didnt make the list from the same owner.

Square 1 at Hyatt is nice, but you pay for it. Opera downstairs a better lunch bet.

Juice didnt make the cut?

I rate Underground highly for western comfort food, although I had their BBQ the other night and it was just crap.

[James Gordon]

You may not agree with the top ten given, and you have to take into account that if the list is made by a magazine, often the magazine does business with the venue, through advertising and the article-format advertisement called the advertorial (which may be marked this way or not). The other day I spoke to a magazine executive in Vietnam who said that in Vietnam lists are routinely influenced by business relationships, and undercover payments are universal. This executive told me that corruption was a universal, worldwide phenomenon, even though it is outlawed (of course) even in Vietnam, and there are severe penalties that can be used, even in Vietnam. I am not saying anything about the list in question here. I am talking about lists in Vietnam, where it appears to many that 99.9 per cent of all public dealings in money or in kind are subject to what many western countries would call improper influence. I would go further and say that in the past 20 years there has been a shift to buyer beware, in magazine articles around the world, and that you as a reader will get the article that pays the publisher the most in dollars terms, one way or another. We must note here that in the long run a magazine will defeat its competition if it can supply more reliable information consistently. I have seen the magazine the list in question comes from, and I have no reason to believe that it is not trying to build a reputation, and that its list is not entirely accurate.