Cost of food

Over the top prices?  Not hardly.

Food cost in Vung Tau is much lower than in Saigon.  To feed two people, I buy 10K of vegetables daily.  For fruits, it's between 60K - 100K a week (we eat a lot of fruits and drink a lot of smoothies.) 

We buy fresh fish directly from the boats.  What we recently paid per kg:  50K for tuna or sardine;  80K for mackerel, silverfish, or pompano; 100K for catfish, herring, or grouper; 120K for sea bass, sturgeon, or mullet; etc.  Each kg of fish usually last us 3 days when I cook them, or 2 days when I have people grill them for me.

There is a well-known practice in Vung Tau: seafood price is higher from Fridays (sometimes Thursdays) through Sundays, because that's when tourists arrive.  If you want to live like the locals, you buy your seafood at the source and during the week.  If you don't want to cook, pay a bit more to have it cleaned and grilled/fried in front of you, then take it home and eat on your balcony.

Your post indicated that you eat at "Western places", I assume you mean where tourists gather and probably when tourists gather (if you see Vietnamese there, they're also tourists from other cities or overseas.) 

It's the same in every tourist trap in every country:  if you hang out where and when tourists hang out, then high price is the natural outcome, no justification needed.

Western like McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins? Yes it is surprising that their prices are ~3 times local equivalents. Although Highland Coffee is about the same as Starbucks, yes?

Also surprising is that American fast food has sufficient cachet with Vietnamese that they happily fill the places, regardless of cost.

Why would a restaurant ever have to justify it's prices to the public? 
Capitalism is good. Hail capitalism.

gobot wrote:

Western like McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins?

Ah. I misunderstood the OP's question then. 

If the OP meant the price of Western chains such as McD, then no, they're not that exorbitantly high.   A McD cheeseburger is 45K (69K with fries and drink), double cheeseburger is 55K (79K with fries and drink), and Big Mac is 65K (89K with fries and drink).  Those prices are only slightly higher than a meal in small local restaurants.  Cannot compare with street food price because McD doesn't cook and serve their food on the pavement.

In addition, McD and all fast food chains (Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, and all pizza places) offer delivery (mostly free of charge, during opening hours even if it's 2AM) within 20 minutes from the time of ordering.  Not bad prices or bad service for non-local food.

Disclaimer:  As pesco-vegetarians, we don't eat at McD or any fast food restaurants.  I only know about their prices and services because I always talk to delivery people.  My annoying habit.

Is Maccas now regarded as being food?

Ciambella wrote:

*snip*

Disclaimer:  As pesco-vegetarians, we don't eat at McD or any fast food restaurants.  I only know about their prices and services because I always talk to delivery people.  My annoying habit.

"pesco-vegetarian"...yeah, that's what I hope to be in Viet Nam. Especially at the prices you quoted. It's pretty expensive eating "fresh" fish regularly in Tennessee. And I especially like the tip of having the monger clean AND broil the selection to take home (even if I don't end up with a balcony...)

😎

OceanBeach92107 wrote:

"pesco-vegetarian"...yeah, that's what I hope to be in Viet Nam. Especially at the prices you quoted. It's pretty expensive eating "fresh" fish regularly in Tennessee. And I especially like the tip of having the monger clean AND broil the selection to take home (even if I don't end up with a balcony...)

😎

You need to know the vendors to buy your fish.  Almost all vendors sell fresh fish, but few of them sell fish that aren't touched by preservatives.  Not one fish sold in Saigon is naturally fresh.  The minute the fishermen throw the fish into the containers to ship out, the fish are immersed in preservatives in order to hold their freshness until they reach consumers.

If you buy fish from the boats, you'll need to be at the spot before the boats come in, then walk up and buy directly from the fishermen before the fish are put in the containers.  The fishermen will not clean and cook the fish for you, but the vendors at one of the stalls will, for a fee.

On weekends (higher prices, as I mentioned earlier), Saigonites drive to Vung Tau in their vans and with their coolers to buy large quantity of seafood directly from the boats (no preservative), then drive back home and put them in the freezer instead of buying them at the so-called fresh fish markets (with preservatives) in Saigon. 

If you end up living on the coast, ask the locals to personally introduce you to their trusted fisherman or fish vendor at the market, and to tell the vendor that you only want natural (tự nhiên) seafood, and only the wild caught, not farm-raised ones.  Raised fish (including the ones that are raised in seawater) are fed with enhanced fish food.

Once you have a trusted vendor, the process is much, much simpler.  I only go to the dock once a week just to see what's there.  Other days, I simply call up my vendor at the fish market (who also has a boat that goes out daily) to tell her the amount of fish I wish to have, or the kind of dish I want to cook.  She then selects the fish from her boat's fresh caught the next day, cleans and delivers it to my apartment, no extra charge.  Whenever I buy crabs, she boils (nominal charge) and delivers them with her free homemade dipping sauce.

That service is available to the vendor's regular customers, thus a personal connection with your trusted vendor is very important for everything you need -- seafood, vegetables, and fruits.  As for the latter, you want to make sure that your veggies and fruits are picked that day from the vendor's own garden, not products that she buys from a distributor for resale.

Sorry I should have said western bars for food. Example oxtail soup 160000dong ??????

Go eat in local places....problem solved.

Sexiebeast wrote:

Sorry I should have said western bars for food. Example oxtail soup 160000dong ??????

1-  Oxtail is not cheap.  Two prices on the Internet show 216,000/kg (clean local beef) and 243,000/kg (Australian beef).  An oxtail weights approximately 2kg = 432K or 486K.  The locals do not eat oxtail often.  When they do, they cook it at home with other add-ons.

2-  Ditto on what Colin said.  And don't order oxtail.  Problem solved twice over.

If I understand the op's question correctly,

just like hotels, restaurants, shopping malls, and other business establishments, these western places will charge whatever price tourists are willing to pay.  And they will.  A number of them are on business so their expenses are covered.  Others will be paranoid about trying new things so they stay at recommended places or stick with well known brand names out of fear.  Even at inflated prices, it still seems like a bargain when compared to back home.  Then there are Vietnamese who are rich enough or pretend to be rich enough that prices don't matter to them.

To justify prices was my question not asking where I should eat.and still no answer.

Gobot gave you the answer for that question (post #3), I gave you the reason for the high price of your specific dish (post #10), and Wellfed concurred with Gobot (post #11).

What other answer do you wish to hear?

Geez, if you cant figure it out from the replies you need to do some personal research. At the end of the day, why does it bother you what they charge if you aren't going to eat there. You seem to be trolling........... just my two cents worth.

Ciambella wrote:

Not one fish sold in Saigon is naturally fresh.  The minute the fishermen throw the fish into the containers to ship out, the fish are immersed in preservatives in order to hold their freshness until they reach consumers.
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...Saigonites drive to Vung Tau in their vans and with their coolers to buy large quantity of seafood directly from the boats (no preservative), then drive back home and put them in the freezer instead of buying them at the so-called fresh fish markets (with preservatives) in Saigon.

Does this mean that the street markets and fish street stands in HCMC only sell fish and seafood which are immersed in preservatives (not untreated)?

When we buy fish and seafood in Binh Chanh (near D8) or Long An (near Binh Chanh) in the street markets the fish and seafood are still alive. Doesn't that mean they're untreated?

I also see there fishermen fishing in extremely polluted rivers. I wouldn't like to buy those fish.

Can you share your experiences and say something about selling fish on the streets in and around HCMC?

Thank you in advance.

Andy Passenger wrote:

Does this mean that the street markets and fish street stands in HCMC only sell fish and seafood which are immersed in preservatives (not untreated)?

When we buy fish and seafood in Binh Chanh (near D8) or Long An (near Binh Chanh) in the street markets the fish and seafood are still alive. Doesn't that mean they're untreated?

I also see there fishermen fishing in extremely polluted rivers. I wouldn't like to buy those fish.

Can you share your experiences and say something about selling fish on the streets in and around HCMC?.

I don't know what kind of preservatives the vendors use on their seafood, but I do know that there's no way that fresh seafood sold in Saigon are untreated. 

There are two kinds of fishing boats from seaside cities like VT: weekly and daily boats.  Fish from daily boats are the freshest.  On weekly boats, as soon as the fish (let's just use the term fish for all seafood, it's fewer characters for me to type) are caught, they're thrown in containers with preservative to keep them alive until the boats return to shore -- maybe that day, maybe a few days later.  By the time you buy them in VT, they're still fresh but they may not be freshly caught that day and may not be untreated.  By the time they're transported to Saigon, they're definitely not untreated.  When the vendors in Saigon tell you that those fish are just off the boats in VT that day, they're not lying, they just don't know when the fish were caught.

As the reason the fish is still alive and jumping, it's simple: they're kept alive but not necessarily in untreated condition.  I'm not saying the treatment is harmful, it's just that the fish are either not truly fresh caught and untreated of the day, or they're not from the sea.

Half of the fish in VT are farm raised, so yes, they're as fresh as they can ever be if you buy them directly from the farm, and a day or two older if you buy them in Saigon.  Every once in a while, I think I want to buy farm raised seafood from my trusted vendor here (she only sells seafood, not fish) because I know she raises them as close to their natural condition as possible: in seawater and with real (not powder) shrimps or tiny fish for their food.  However, I always ask before purchase, "Should I buy those or should I wait for whatever your boat bring in tomorrow?"  Nine times out of ten, she would tell me to wait.  If I say I want naturally fresh fish, she would get them for me from another daily boat that goes into the area that she approves (not all areas of the sea are created equal, but my knowledge of that issue is very limited.)

That's all I know about buying fish (again, that means seafood in general). 

As personal experience of buying fish in Saigon (not selling, since I'm not a vendor), I have none because I don't buy them.  I know how far they have to travel before reaching the market, and that's a bit too far for me.  (Disclosure: I bought frozen shrimp all the time while living in the States, but I didn't have other options then.)

I don't buy river fish, ever.