Tartine Saigon - Binh Thanh — Restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City

I waited until my 3rd attempt to finally leave my review.

1st time: My friend recommended their hummus and sourdough, so I dropped by in person. It was close to their closing time, so I ordered a small sourdough bread to go. Told them to choose the smallest one. The staff were unfriendly and aloof, but it was the end of their working day anyway. Came home, unpacked the break to find the bread... burned at the bottom. Like, a significant layer at the bottom was crunchy dark. Okay, no big deal, maybe the staff didn't see it, but I was surprised a burned bread loaf was still packaged and displayed to be sold. Hummus was good and creamy.

2nd time: the owner posted a promotion on the saigon vegan facebook group for their kombuchas. Had a pleasant exchange on facebook messages with them, and my kombuchas arrived quickly even though the rain was pouring that night. Sweet.

3rd time: Since I had the kombucha bottles to return, I decided to dine in person on the weekend. Stepped in, sat down alone, no greetings until later when a staff came to give me the menus and left (still no greetings, no smile whatsoever). I noticed other foreign guests coming in getting "good morning","hello" and leaving with "have a good weekend", "thank you so much". Then a group of vietnamese went out, not a single goodbye. Time for me to leave, I went to the counter to pay, the cashier told me to sign my bill and said bye. Another foreign girl was leaving at the same moment was waved by the staff cheerfully.

So overall, if you are vietnamese and want to just try it out, use their online service, they are much nicer over there. If you still insist to dine in, avoid the open air area as there are many flies (a street food restaurant is next door). Also don't expect hospitality, or maybe come with a foreigner? Ha.ha.

TBH, there are so many brunch places and sourdough providers in Saigon I won't even bother trying again.

Edit: When I returned the bottles today, I placed them nicely at the counter. There were a few staff around, no one said "thank you" or even...

If you eat this food, check it very carefully and don’t expect them to care about poor hygiene or customer service. We were keen to try this café after seeing their page on FB so went for lunch and then purchased several items to take back home. At lunch all seemed good until one of our orders, the avocado and…….. sandwich arrived completely missing the avocado. As there was no one serving upstairs I went to the counter and advised them and shortly after they brought a plate with some avocado on it for us to add, perhaps better service would have been to replace the sandwich. After lunch we bought bread, buns and a loaf of banana bread and took this home with us. At home we opened the cellophane the banana cake was wrapped in and cut two slices. I ate mine when my wife noticed movement in hers. Closer inspection revealed the cake had ants living in it. I checked the remaining cake and it was infested with live ants, from inside the wrapper. Upon contacting the café ‘manager' and sending video of the ants in the cake she told us to return the cake to them for a refund. Advising we were not located that close she said they would collect it from us and refund the price of the cake. She even said that the ants would have come from us, despite the fact that it was wrapped by them in the café and no other products in the same bag were affected. It was clear all she wanted was to get the cake back and not at all concerned about customer service or our health given that we had clearly eaten live ants from their produce. Having lost confidence, or should I say, appetite, all we asked was for them to refund all the items we had purchased for takeaway but this was refused. We have resealed the cake for inspection by the food hygiene administration following our complaint to them, along with the video footage. For ants to be infesting this cake it is clear this will not be a single incident and means the hygiene standards fall way below acceptable levels. Our advice is steer well clear...

I really want to support this place because it is so close to where I live. And so I really hate having to post bad reviews.

Unfortunately the service is so bad (most of the time) which is disappointing because the venue is great. Last time I was here I got the attention of the waiter who then proceeded to ignore me and then he forgot about me. So I had to go inside to complain about poor service.

I had put this lack of service quality down to teething problems, but as it has persisted it’s now clear there is a problem with training and/ or recruiting.

The coffee is great however and one of the reasons I keep trying again.

They also sell fresh bread (to take away) which is great. They even had hot cross buns one weekend which were delicious.

This review is based on my most recent experience - lunch. I ordered what I thought was a relatively simple option - a tuna baguette. The photo shows what arrived.

When I asked the manager what it was ? She responded: “I don’t know. Is it pate?” I rest my case. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

The manager was however apologetic.

The coffee was good. In fact I ended up just having two coffees for lunch.

So 1 star - for...