A Trendy Food Hall in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

It’s funny, Ren and I love street food when traveling. We don’t shy away from it. But when we’re home in Manila, we never touch the stuff. We do eat street food fare all the time like taho (tofu snack), turon (banana spring roll), and balut (duck embryo), we just never eat them on the street. ?

I guess it’s because we grew up in Manila so we’ve heard all the stories. As a kid, I remember my sister telling me how her friend’s cousin’s brother’s classmate’s sister (or something like that) bit into a fish ball and wound up gagging on the vendor’s toenail clipping. I don’t know how much truth there is to that urban legend, but I believed it and have largely stayed away from street food ever since. In my mind, it’s dirty.

I didn’t have those fears or biases on our recent trip to Vietnam. We enjoyed all the eateries on our itinerary, many of which were street food vendors, and not once were we concerned about finding toenails in our food. …