10am today and the crowd hasn’t quite descended on the temple yet on the day of a birthday of Buddha’s mother. Lots of varieties of food.
I will write more later. The drink was refreshing and the fried sticky rice was great.
It all looks wonderful! Do they have little signs telling what various dishes are for those of us who are not familiar with the food?
Not really. The food is most cooked for the Vietnamese buddhist population. And they probably all know what the food is.
But usually the volunteers who runs the food station speaks good to some English, and they are so nice that one can ask them about each item and they are more than happy to explain to you what’s in it. Don’t let the lack of signs deter you from going.
I’ve gone there enough times that I don’t run into new stuff much any more. And everything I have come across is probably already described at some point during this discussion. So you wouldn’t be completely surprised if you go.
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3 recent meals at Giac Minh.
I needed to do a lighter meatless meal after a really heavy meal so I went to Giac Minh. Some dishes that I haven’t seen before on a recent visit:
Noodle of the day was a curry-based noodle soup. Mildly sweet curry with lemongrass.
Pickled vegetables.
Imitation crab meat soup in a thick gelatinous broth. Mildly sweet. Lots of cilantros. Since I like cilantros its a soup to detox the body.
Don’t remember what this was but I think they said its a potato dish.
The pandan waffle. I am not a waffle kind of guy. The very friendly volunteers / nuns offered me a small piece to try. Its pretty good.
Another meal had the pho. This was the first time I had a pho here. Every other time it was the round noodle. The pho was excellent. The veggie broth had a lot of umami.
The sugar cane drink, this time with kumquats:
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The making of the pho:
Some dessert with coconut flesh, taro, seaweed, and i think coconut milk:
Fried dessert:
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A variation of the coconut milk curry noodle soup, but made with winter root vegetables- carrots, taro, sweet potatoes. Comforting.
This is a new to me item at Giac Minh. Basically tofu skins wrapped in a roll with some sweetish soy sauce based sauce, I believe. I didn’t buy it but someone got me a small bite to taste.
This is a new-to-me item. The griddled rice ‘bun’ was absolutely fantastic. The rice was a little cruncy, and the filling was a mix of mushroom and tofu and was a umami bomb. I got two, and had to go back to get 3 more.
What’s this?
Fried banana:
Gentleman making cane juice and pandan waffle.
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That looks great! I’ve had a couple of Mo’s Burgers (with a regular bun), but have never had the burger with the rice “bun”. Would that be the same as your picture, or at least similar?
If yes, I will have to give it a the Mo’s Rice Burger a try next time.
This rice ‘bun’ didn’t remind me of a burger, but more the socarrat inside a clay pot rice combined with some really tasty filling. They must have marinated the filling. In this case they didn’t try to imitate meat.
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The rice bun was a bit of a hit or miss. The second time wasn’t bad at all, but missed the magic of those from the first time. I guess it depended on who made it.
First time I had egg noodle at the temple. Good bounce. Also first time I had red dates in a savory noodle soup.
Coconut milk dessert.
You know things are different nowadays that Chua Giac Minh gets a food review from the Chronicle. 
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“If you decide to eat here rather than grabbing everything to-go, a volunteer will load up a plate for you of whatever you choose.”
Hmmph, what does that mean? I’ve always just grabbed the noodles and food from the ‘stall’.
I just went there today, the first weekend after the article was published. There didn’t seem to be more tourist traffic than usual.
Does anyone know if Chua Giac Minh still have service these days? I presume not, but if anyone knows if food is still served on the weekends, I’ll be happy to get some.
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They do for take out only.
During a recent weekend trip to the temple we saw some new to us dishes. Picked this broken rice dish to try and it was fabulous. The seasoned tofu strip and chunks were total umami bomb. We cleaned up the dish in no time.
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Have had this broken rice dish a couple more times since then. Slightly different each time. All good.
They now have free packaged noodle takeouts again. You kind of have to know to find it. The volunteers running the counters can point you there.
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The curry came recommended by the staff, though I thought their other food items were much stronger. It came with things like okra in it. A little bit too sweet.
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