This tiny spot in the back corner of Saigon East Mall in Eden Center has been the site of quite a few good restaurants over the years. Now Diem Xua has managed to stick around for the last two-and-a-half years. There’s a small printed menu plus some specials on the white board, listed only in Vietnamese :
We got the Lau Cha Ca Kho Qua, normally translated as a fish paste hotpot, in this case with the addition of bo tai which pho fans will recognize as raw beef you add to pho.
I am still not clear what the fish was …. the proprietress periodically scooped it from a tray into our hotpot and said it would take about a minute to cook. For the sliced beef we used our chopsticks to swirl around in the bubbling hotpot for just a few seconds. There was also a huge pile of greens (maybe chrysanthemum?) that she tossed into the hotpot. And there was an orange spicy sauce we dumped in the hotpot. We put rice noodles in our bowls and then topped them off with the broth/fish/sauce/greens. It was very delicious. And the beef (she said it was filet mignon) was heavenly.
It was a huge amount of food and it felt like a very special experience. And it is not cheap. At $60, it’s best to share with three or more people.
While waiting for the hotpot setup, we enjoyed a dish of ‘apple snails’ which had some kind of coating with bits of green pepper. You pull the snail out of the shell using a piece of lemongrass which has been threaded underneath the snail meat. Not my photo:
The sauce pictured is the same one we used for the hotpot.
I am encouraged to go back to check out the other choices on the printed menu. And I’d definitely go back with more folks to get the hotpot. She also makes a Thai-style hotpot with seafood and another dish with kimchi which apparently is popular. She ran out of the kimchi.
