Dining with Dad Part 1: Shri Restaurant and Lounge & Monsoon Restaurant and Bar

This past weekend, my dad came to visit! He had a business conference in Thailand, so he decided to pop over to Vietnam afterward and see his favorite daughter (sorry, Meredith). I wanted to make sure we ate well, so I did some research about where to take him and this is what I came up with…

In my last post, I mentioned how much I love seeing Ho Chi Minh from above. I think this is especially true when eating because you’re much more relaxed when you don’t have people coming up to you in a restaurant and asking if you want a massage (this happens more often than one would think). Thus, in my restaurant search I made sure to lookup places with view. For Saturday I decided on http://shri.vn/, which is located in District 3 (bordering District 1) on the 23^rd floor of the Centec Tower.

The view from Shri is quite impressive. You can either dine outside with a nice breezy view, or you can dine in an air-conditioning room enclosed by glass windows.  It was a busy Saturday night so the outdoor seating filled up quickly and we were placed inside. The inside was lovely and much cooler without compromising the view. About 20 minutes into our meal, we ended up having the entire room to ourselves, so we were able to walk the perimeter of the room and see Saigon from every angle.

In terms of food, the menu is probably hit or miss. They give you a delicious warm baguette with olive oil, butter and some sort of green (cucumber/avocado?) spread. It was the first time I have had warm bread in Saigon, so that was exciting.  To start, we ordered the peppered garlic prawns as an appetizer to split, which were delicious. However, the prawn/mango salad that I got for my entrée had very fishy and tiny prawns that were kind of nauseating...I wish I had chosen something else. Dad on the other hand, had the seafood risotto, which was actually quite good, so I really can’t knock Shri just because my one entrée sucked.  

On the upside of things, they had an incredible selection of wine—which came with a price. It was about 500,000 VND for a bottle of nice wine (which is not surprising for Vietnam). We had been eying the wine room on our way out--they have an entire room filled will wine in a glass room, and they asked if we wanted to go in. We walked around and dad being the wine connoisseur that he is, pointed out all the different wines that we've tried at home. The wine was by far the most expensive part of our meal, but when you translate the total bill into USD it is still much cheaper than dining out in America. Plus, the tea to top off the meal would have been hard to come by in America. I ordered Jasmine tea, which is plentiful and incredible all throughout Vietnam. 

While I was working all day on Sunday, my dad had a little Spa Day for himself at his hotel. He got a full-body massage while I was tending to screaming children, (lucky man!) but it was well-deserved for him. After an exhausting day I wanted to have a more relaxed and less over-the-top dining experience. I had read really good reviews on TripAdvisor about Monsoon Restaurant and Bar nearby in District 1, so I decided to give that a go. It turned out to be a great decision!

Monsoon had a great ambiance. There was a little stone path with extremely comfortable lounge chairs on a patio leading up to the restaurant, which had dimmed lighting and tasteful decor.The restaurant has all local cuisine from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. The menu is split by region. I ordered a Vietnamese dish: prawns with lemongrass, garlic and vegetables on skewers and dad ordered a dish from Laos (I can't remember what, but he liked it).

At Monsoon, dad tried his first Vietnamese beer! I gave him the low-down on beer in Vietnam and stopped him from ordering a Saigon Green--which tastes like a sub-par version of Heineken (which in my opinion isn't even a good beer to begin with). I directed him to a Hanoi beer, which is much better than the Saigon beers. Yet, I must add that Saigon beer is more plentiful and a Saigon red is pretty good as an everyday beer. Regardless, here he is with his Hanoi beer and one of my prawns,  posing as a kind stranger of Saigon.

 When we finished our meal, I insisted that we order fresh coconuts for dessert. Dad loved them! I had no idea he was such a huge coconut fan...he told me that when he was a little kid he would always order coconut flavored ice-pops in the summer. He said not many people liked them but they were his favorite flavor. Also, he and mom fancied coconuts in Bali. One time while they were there, a local Indonesian man offered them a coconut, shimmied up a coconut tree to get one and cracked it open for them to drink. Our coconuts weren't quite that fresh, but they were certainly refreshing.