One of the things that consistently strikes me as odd when visiting Vietnam is the fact that there seems to be a bit of love hate perspective of American culture. Whilst the government continue to emphasis the horrors of the Vietnam war; the new generation seems to be engrossed by American food and culture – and to be honest, the expat community in Vietnam is growing at a rapid rate – Ms. Buddha and I wanted to experience this a little and decided to try an American BBQ called Quán Ụt Ụt.
The place itself was actually a bit hard to find, especially for our Uber driver – but one suggestion for those looking for the restaurant is firstly look for the crowd, and second, to look for the massive sign with the pig!
You’ll soon find out the reason why the sign is so big is because the restaurant actually runs across all the floors of the building, we walked about 2 floors up to our table. The restaurant is located next to the water and the temperature was very pleasant at night – I can understand why so many expats visit.
As the name suggest, the place is popular for its meats, so Ms. Buddha went for ribs and I went for some roast pork – to share we went with some fried mozzarella. For drinks, I just went for my generic gin tonic whilst Ms. Buddha went for a “smoked” coconut – which had a nice light smoky flavour when you drink it.
The first thing that came was the fried cheese and the texture of the triangles were crunchy like crispy fries whilst there’s a nice softness to the cheese – flavour wise, I would’ve preferred it to be slightly less salty.
Next were the roast pork and also the ribs, and whilst the ribs were nice – they weren’t the best ribs I’ve had – in particular the meat was not as tender as I had hoped – Ms. Buddha was slightly disappointed as well.
The roast port on the other hand was quite good and in particular the fact that it wasn’t super salty was a plus! The pineapple’s sweetness complimented the fattiness of the meat nicely as well.
Overall – the place was nice but to be honest, we left feeling somewhat underwhelmed – the quality was good by many standards but I think we were just spoilt by the amazing local flavours so much more that we were anticipating a lot more.
Buddha Explores 