Saigon Taste is a Vietnamese restaurant on Majoribanks Street in Mount Victoria, a leafy inner-city pocket of Wellington, serving the full breadth of Vietnamese cooking from 11am to 10pm, Tuesday through Sunday.
The kitchen's calling card is its noodle-soup line-up: fifteen broths led by the house-special combination beef pho, with rare beef, chicken, Hue-style spicy beef soup, wonton and pork, crab, seafood and hot-and-sour variations over rice or egg noodles. Around the soups sits a menu that roams the country — Hanoi-style and Saigon-style fried spring rolls, fresh summer rolls, Vietnamese pancakes, lemongrass and chilli chicken, curries, crispy noodle stir-fries and Saigon-style noodle salads.
Vegetarians are well looked after with a dedicated section of eleven tofu and vegetable dishes, and desserts stay traditional with hot or chilled coconut puddings and a mung bean rice bun in ginger syrup. Vietnamese coffee — hot or iced, black or with condensed milk — anchors a long drinks list that runs to fruit teas, smoothies, juices and Asian canned drinks. The restaurant is licensed, with a drinks menu available in store.
Delivery is available through the restaurant's Uber Eats store, and you can keep up with what's new on Facebook and Instagram.
Saigon Taste sits on Majoribanks Street in Mount Victoria, a leafy inner-city pocket of Wellington, and it does what its name promises: it plates up Saigon, from midday broths to late-evening sweets. Doors open at 11am and stay open until 10pm, Tuesday through Sunday, which makes it an easy call for a long lunch, an early family dinner or a relaxed evening bowl of pho.
The first thing to know is that this is a pho house at heart. The noodle-soup page of the menu runs to fifteen bowls, and the combination beef pho is flagged as the house specialty — a full-build pho with assorted beef cuts over rice noodles. From there the broths branch out: rare and well-done beef, chicken pho, beef meatballs, wonton and pork in both rice- and egg-noodle versions, beef casserole soups, Saigon's own spam-and-meatballs bowl, crab, mixed seafood, and a hot-and-sour seafood-and-beef soup with real attitude. Hue even gets a look-in with its spicy beef noodle soup, a fiery counterpoint to the gentler southern broths.
Starters set the north-south theme early. You can order Hanoi-style fried spring rolls and Saigon-style fried spring rolls side by side and work out your own allegiance, or go the fresh route with rice-paper summer rolls. The rest of the starter list is a tour in itself: prawn spring rolls, fish cake with prawn, tamarind chicken wings, beef and chicken salads, steamed pork buns, steamed rice cakes, crispy Vietnamese fried wontons, a bowl of fries for the cautious, and garlic roti with peanut sauce for tearing and dipping.
Mains step away from the broth pot. Rice plates cover pan-fried pork with egg, pan-fried chicken breast and fried chicken thigh, while the wok side of the menu handles combination and chicken fried rice, stir-fried lemongrass and chilli chicken, and beef, chicken or seafood tossed with vegetables. Curries come in chicken, lamb and seafood, and the Vietnamese pancake filled with pork and prawn arrives crisp and golden.
Noodles get their own chapter beyond soup: stir-fried egg noodles, crispy egg noodles and rice noodles, each with seafood, beef or chicken, plus Saigon-style noodle salads — pan-fried pork or chicken topped with a spring roll, stir-fried beef with onions, and a Hanoi fried fish noodle salad.
Plant-based diners don't get a single token dish here; they get eleven of them. There's a vegetable summer roll with tofu, vegetable fried spring rolls, vegetable and tofu pho, a tofu curry, tofu fried rice with egg, stir-fries over rice, soft egg noodles and crispy egg noodles, a tofu noodle salad and even a vegetable pancake. It's the full menu, translated.
Desserts stay resolutely traditional and come hot or cold: coconut puddings built on sweet corn, black-eye beans or taro, plus a mung bean rice bun served in coconut cream and ginger syrup. If you've never finished a Vietnamese meal with a coconut pudding, this is a friendly place to start.
The drinks list is where the Saigon obsession shows most clearly. Vietnamese coffee comes four ways — hot or iced, black or with condensed milk — and there are iced lemon, lychee and peach teas, hot green and jasmine teas, ginger brews, and smoothies in avocado, lychee, durian, coconut and soursop. Fresh juices, soft drinks and a shelf of Asian canned drinks — grass jelly, winter melon, sugarcane, aloe vera, chrysanthemum — cover the rest. Note that Saigon Taste is a licensed premises, with a full drinks menu available in store.
Practically speaking: the kitchen closes on Mondays, so time your visit between Tuesday and Sunday. If you'd rather eat at home, the menu links straight through to the restaurant's Uber Eats store, and new dishes surface on their Facebook and Instagram pages. Bring an appetite, order a pho, and let the condensed-milk coffee do the rest.