It’s hard to beat a night spent sitting on a stool on the side of the road, eating, drinking, chatting with friends while the hours roll on with the motorbikes puttering on the street. Besides sitting in a coffee shop, it’s the classic Vietnamese way of hanging out, something that even before I’d moved to Saigon I’d known about thanks to people like Bourdain and faint memories from my first visit to the country back when I was a kid. Since my arrival, I've sat on more plastic stools than I can count, drank more beers in mugs filled with ice than I’d care to admit, and watched Saigon’s scenery shift through more blurred hours than I could ever begin to recall, and still, a night spent sitting on the side of the road remains impossible to beat. Much of that is thanks to places like 90k Cocktails on Phạm Viết Chánh.
It sounds too good to be true. At least, that’s what I thought when I first heard about 90k Cocktails. Though PVC has been and remains one of my favourite areas to go to in the city, it was always lacking in a spot with cheap drinks and food that you could stop off at before heading to another joint, or, alternatively, end the night at. Sure, you got your Khoais, Rafters, and Rabbit Holes—which are great in their own way—but they’re missing one key ingredient: that of the stool-on-the-sidewalk experience. So after hearing whispers of the opening of this magical place that served cocktails for 90k, after passing by it a few times on my way to Khoai, Rafters, or the Rabbit Hole, I finally stopped by at the end of another blurry night.
I was surprised to find, after sitting down on the low chair with a back rest, how quiet and comfy the place was. Though it was a few steps down from that strip on PVC with all the many bars and restaurants, you could barely hear the music thumping out of those establishments, you didn't feel as clustered in as you sometimes did on a night-out on the strip. Phạm Viết Chánh opened up and from where I sat, looked much different than it had on any of my rowdier evenings in the area. I had a view of the apartment blocks, some of the cafes across the street, locals on late-night walks and, of course, a steady stream of people coming and going into the strip. The cocktails were, as advertised, 90k and even better was the fact that they served a rendition of a lemon sour, that Japanese drink I’d spent many neon nights in Tokyo enjoying. And so I stayed for a few drinks. And so I watched the locals doing late-night walks, spotted a few lone guys smoking in the distance from the way their cigarette’s cherry lit up like a firefly’s butt. People kept coming and going, in and out of the strip. Grab bikes arrived, whizzed off with passengers on the back barely holding on. Taxis waited while groups staggered inside them, shouting about the next place to go. I stayed for a while longer. Easing into that dreamy, post midnight-mood.
From what I remember, 90k Cocktails didn’t always serve yakitori. But one day I showed up and they had a wooden stall stationed store-front with an electric grill cooking up all manner of grilled meats. Once again, it seemed too good to be true. Cocktails for 90k and yakitori? I was skeptical. Growing up in Tokyo I like to think I have some idea of what good yakitori is owing to many nights eating the dish and in particular, many hours spent at one of my favourite restaurants in the world: a yakitori joint in Sangenjaya. It’s run by an old man who’s seen me grow up from a kid into an adult and yet in my mind he’s only ever been the bony old man with his thin glasses and toothy grin, standing behind the kitchen counter as fragrant meat-smoke billows into his face. In the same way that you might’ve been born to be an engineer or I might’ve been born to be a writer—who’s to say—I believe that old man was born to be making yakitori. All of that’s to say, when it came to sample 90k Cocktails yakitori, I didn’t have high hopes.
To my surprise, the yakitori at 90k is, by all counts and measures, pretty good. In some ways, it even ranks among my favorites in Saigon. It’s simple, hasn’t really been fussed over, and when you think about it, there’s nothing you’d rather nibble on while having several drinks on the sidewalk outside PVC’s strip. In particular, the tebasaki (chicken wing) is to die for, tsukune (minced meat ball) is always good, and the classic negima (chicken thigh) never disappoints. So you visit on a night out, maybe stop at 90k before heading to your Khoais, Rafters, and Rabbit Holes. Or you do it the other way around, hit any of those and end the night at 90k. That’s my preferred way of doing it. You’ve had a few drinks, you’re feeling nice, feeling lazy and you’re done with the rowdiness of PVC’s strip. You love it but sometimes you want something a little more relaxed. So you walk a few steps down the street, take a seat on the low chair, stretch out on the back rest and look around at the neighbourhood. It’s quiet now. This is it, you remember. This is what Bourdain had told you all those times, one of those musings when you used to day dream about someday living in Saigon. And now you’re here. Drink, in one hand. Yakitori in the other. This is what it’s all about.
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