How to Eat Your Way Through Ho Chi Minh City

The best food in Ho Chi Minh City is served at waist height, from carts that move, by people who make one dish and have made it for thirty years. None of it is complicated once you know the rhythm of the day.

Breakfast is broth. Mid-morning is coffee, thick and sweet over ice. Lunch is rice plates — point at what looks good. The evening is when the city eats properly, and when a guide earns their fee, because the best stalls are unsigned.

Two rules: eat where it's busy, and drink where they bring you the ice bucket. Both are about turnover.