Amano Pizza Saigon — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

Food is generally ok but with lots of room for improvement.

For a neopolitan inspired pie, the crust wasn't as airy as I had hoped (stretching technique and hydration levels perhaps?) and the cheese could have been of better quality (bufala, fior di latte etc). Pre-shredded mozzarella releases oil when it's baked at high heat. Hence, the pizza did feel quite oily. Also, I've my reservations about using a lighter to create char spots for a good-looking cornicione after taking the pizza out of the ooni since that 1.5min high-temp baking process should already be enough for the leoparding. Flavour wise, I felt that the cheese was bland and didn't do much other than add a stringy cheese pull texture. The half with pesto sauce for my half-and-half pizza didn't do much for me since the pesto was rather bland. Perhaps it needs some extra seasoning. The sausage made what was already an oily pizza even more oily and kind of drowned out the flavour of the sauce, cheese, pesto, and dough. On that note, I think the tomato sauce can be more pronounced as I didn't taste much of that tangy fresh tomato flavour.

The japanese style carbonara was just normal. Noodles were al dente. Bacon can be made crispier. The noodles were quite wide for a dish of carbonara. For the price, the portion can also be larger.

Apart from taste, the execution needs work. There were quite a few lapses in the pizza preparation - from stretching to layering to plating. I'd imagine how this will greatly add to the waiting time if the restaurant is full.

Service staff told me halfway in my meal that the tiramisu I had ordered was out of...

Service is off, prob a bit racist, but food’s okay. Overall, it’s a good one-off spot, not good enough to replace more popular pizzeria.

It’s a little hole in the wall place in the middle of district 1. The head chef (prob owner) looks like he knows his craft, does it well. The menu is simple, pricing and portion are very good.

I came without a reservation on the weekend so I was waiting for a table (15 minutes), the server gave a free table to another white couple who just walked in. When we asked them why (the people seated before us didn’t have a reservation either), the server skirted around the question and just say we can wait inside.

We had 2 sides: wonton salsa and chicken wings. Both are so so. Helps you get you over the wait for your pizza. We had the duck and truffle pizza, it’s good but nothing I would miss. Food would be good if the server wasn’t letting...

Tucked away in a small alley, Amano Pizza is a little difficult to find, but is an absolute gem.

I ordered a Minestrone Soup and Spicy Prawn Pasta. Everything was delicious and to my liking. The service was very polite and food was served very promptly. Pasta has a nice al-dente bite, sauce was rich in flavor and had smooth texture without being too heavy.

As someone who has lived in Europe for 4 years, I will caution that you should not hold this place to Italian standards. Vietnam simply does not have the same produce, and importing Roma tomatoes is prohibitively expensive for any small business here. However, Amano Pizza has managed to deliver a very lovely local adjustment on classic Italian dishes. Sure, it's not perfectly authentic, but it tastes bloody good and delivers great value for its price. Looking forward to coming back to try...