Saigon Restaurant and Bakery

The best stuff on earth. Everything from their phở to bhan Mi, to their rice platter! Enormous helpings but yet very delicious! Also great customer service and treats every restaurant patron like family; simple, fast, and easy service!

Very good had v2, the vegetarian tofu bowl. Green snap peas and great sauce! So good and noodles?! Were so tasty and well cooked! Hood area… be careful! But good! Whew! Yeah!

Came to this place based on Unilocal’s recommendation and I must say that I’m pleased I did. Since the waiters are all young, energetic, and active; this places lively. The food is good and the service matches it. I wasn’t disappointed at all, my Phở was good and the service is a great one.

Really good bahn mi at reasonable prices. Great for take out — quick and delicious.

If you love Vietnamese food, you have to check this place out!
They have great phở and amazing spring rolls here! For a chilly day, a bowl of phở is just what I need! Warm noodle-​ly goodness in an amazing stock. Hits the spot and warms me right up. For the warmer days, you can never go wrong with a banh mi sandwich! They have a great selection to choose from, so there’s always something good!
To wash it all down, I would suggest trying the bubble tea. I ordered the mango one and loved every sip!
They have rather large portion sizes and fast and friendly service, so it’s pretty hard to beat! The only downside is that parking is sometimes hard to find if you go during the peak hours, but the food is worth it!

If you’ve never had Vietnamese food, go here. If you always eat Vietnamese, go here.
I’ve never eaten a bad — or even a mediocre — thing at this restaurant in 6+ years of visits. The servers are friendly and helpful, the portions are ENORMOUS, and the prices can’t be beat. It can be hard to find parking, but trolling the lots is worth it for any one of their menu items. Sandwiches, phở, egg roll salads… anything.

This was the first Vietnamese food I had since my stint in Southeast Asia 2 weeks prior, and I was not disappointed.
Our group of seven was seated right away, waters were served immediately, service was prompt and super friendly, our food came out right away, my water glass was always full, and even the late stragglers were approached as soon as they sat down.
My friend and I got the egg rolls which were perfectly fried and crispy, but really, how can anyone screw up egg rolls? I also got my fav, the Phở Bo Vien (phở with meatballs) and it was amazing! First of all, the servings are HUGE. I got the regular (the smallest you could get) and it was more than enough. I can’t even imagine what the extra large looks like. I also liked how my meatballs were thinly sliced for easy eating. Nomnomnom. Brings me back to my days in Vietnam…

Hands down the best phở in the Twin Cities. The «small» bowl is enough to feed a hungry appetite. Their extra large can feed an entire family.
I haven’t had much else there, so I can’t recommend everything. However I highly recommend this place if you are looking for phở.

It’s a very personal choice, but IMO this is hands down the best Vietnamese in St. Paul, possibly the state.
Recently Saigon was re-​branded as iPho, with updated décor and menus, now taking credit card, and a nicer Banh Mi bar. A big improvement over their current building and the previous seafood building they were in before. I think the recipes have improved with their upgrade too.
Overall, just very well done Vietnamese. Generous portions, friendly and attentive staff. Every time I come here there are cops eating up front, so you know it must be a good place! You can get in and out quickly (in mere minutes if you’re getting Banh Mi), but if you want to linger and hang out with friends they are accommodating.
My #1 favorite thing is their grilled pork spring rolls. Forget soggy shrimp! I have never found these anywhere else in a sit-​down restaurant (FYI: they can be found in the Hmong Marketplace on Johnson Pkwy, but not consistently).

New name, new management, new decorating, new review…
Saigon, or iPho by Saigon as it’s now known, has undergone some changes as of late, but they’ve only been for the better in my mind.
Most importantly, the food is still quite good, if not better than it was in the past. Their phở is still tasty, the bun much better than in the past, and their various banh mis still hit the spot and are still available made-​to-​order at the front counter if you’re not looking to dine in. The menu, for the most part, hasn’t changed much (though they’ve added a few Americanized dishes to appeal to a larger crowd).
Service is still very friendly, as many of the staff have been with the restaurant for quite some time. Additionally, the interior of the restaurant has gotten a bit of a face lift, including; new flooring, pressed steel on the walls, new tables and a few coats of paint.
Still one of the best in St. Paul, if not the Cities, for some tasty Vietnamese eats.

OK, getting the one negative out of the way fast — don’t get soup here, well you can, but I won’t. That’s a pretty big strike against a Vietnamese place, but I really have had better Phở in a lot of places.
The phở is an MSG bomb as I said before — but the Hu Tieu type broth that I got with my broken rice platter was fundamentally inedible, AND an even bigger MSG bomb. I almost ordered me some hu tieu hoanh thanh, too! Whew, crisis averted.
It could take out the MSG kingdom of Quang.
So what’s the redeeming factor here? Well, the banh mi are just that freaking good I guess, and the spring rolls are almost as.
Seriously, if this were just a banh mi shop, it would be five stars.
Getting my soup on closer to home doesn’t bother me one bit, in the grand scheme of things.
I’m pretty sure these are some of my favorite banh mi, though they have less of that rough-​edged familial love that you get at Lu’s — it’s a more «taking care of business pâté and everything you want» style. I like the slightly smaller size and holy cow the bread is good. Once the LRT goes in, «Bun Mi» will have no reason to exist. At. All.
I liked my broken rice plate, though it’s kind of weird in relation to other broken rice plates I’ve had.
Spring rolls — are fantastic. Which I would expect and hope for.
This place is interesting. It’s a good place to take a friend who might be intimidated by down home Vietnamese food for their first outing. The staff is just about completely second-​gen and English fluent and there’s very cute intentional branding going on. The servers are hip, but not hipsters, and take good care of their custies. There are some great things to eat here, and some very not-​great things to eat here. I can call this a reason to drive when it comes to the sandwiches and spring rolls, otherwise my butt is still parked in a booth at Caravelle or Phở Tau Bay on the other side of town.

Sigh… I moved to Minneapolis and lived there for a year and after moving back to DC, which has some of the BEST viet food in the nation in northern Virginia, I still miss this place all the time.
I’ve yet to find a place anywhere that comes close to the Bun Bo Hue and Banh Mi here… I would fly back to MN just for this…

I LOVE being home! I arrived straight from Miami and always request going to eat Viet food. Usually we hit up the usually Quangs and others on eat street. I honestly am always happy wherever I eat food when I’m back because the lack of good places in So. Floriday frankly just are ok. So, with that in mind. we totally grubbed when we were here.
I am pretty much a vegetarian and I usually break this rule when I come home (I know so not practical). It is not hard to be a vegetarian when I’m in Miami but when I come home and there is so many good VIet choices to pick from I usually break it when I’m home. I don’t feel bad about it because I have some good choices.
We got some yummy spring rolls and they were huge! I ordered a banh mi sandwich and it was soooo good. I haven’t had a good banh mi sandwich in such a long time. My brother and I both got mango bubbles teas. Also very good. My sister and brother got the pork chop combo with rice and both raved it was very good. I got a fried rice combo and it was also delish. My daugther got egg noodles and some shrimp and she said she really liked it.
The portions are huge and we had a lot of leftovers. I’m not a huge phở fan probably just had a lot of it growing up. But my brother and sister liked the phở. Maybe, I haven’t had good Viet food in a while but either way I“m giving it 5 stars this time around. I’m hoping to get one more trip in for some Viet sandwiches before we leave. YUMMO!
All of the food we got was roughly around $ 60 which was a good deal. Construction is going on and it wasn’t busy but I imagine during the weekends parking is going to be an issue.

I don’t eat Phở. I always get headache when I eat Phở. I know, sad. I like coming during lunch for their grilled pork sandwiches. If you buy 3 sandwiches, you get 1 free. I think it’s a great deal! Parking is a little problem cause it’s always packed and right now there’s construction on Snelling ave too. Good luck trying to get there!

I’d been waiting for a while to go to Saigon after it had switched ownership and unexpectedly closed for remodeling for a few weeks. I’m going to be honest and say I was nervous for the change and, unfortunately, rightfully so. Going at 11:30 am on a Saturday and seeing vacant tables was the first sign.
1. Now they accept credit cards, over $ 10 charge minimum. Finally.
2. Food, ordered the usual: regular phở bowl, though it came with less noodles, tendon, and other meaty goodness. Grabbed a plate of spring rolls for my table, not tightly wrapped or large like I remember. Also ordered some bahn mi to go, bread was different and waited a good ten minutes for the sandwiches to be made… clearly I’m just really nostalgic for the lady who used to make them, she had mad stills.
3. Price, I understand prices going up with the remodeling but unacceptable when the amount and quality of food decreases.
4. Service, when the waiter came to deliver my table’s food he got the orders completely mixed up — I know this can be a common mistake but it took extra long to figure out and makes me question if the new faces around were adequately trained (see #2 again).
Overall, the raised prices and decrease in food and service quality makes me hesitant to come back, it’s not how it used to be. Saigon has fallen from the #1 spot on my list of phở places, taking suggestions now.

I had heard quite a bit about this place from Unilocal and Chowhound. I’m a fan!!! I stopped in for lunch and had their signature Banh mi sandwich. Tasty, tasty, tasty. Red pork, pâté, and fresh crunchy veggies, with just the right amount of heat from the chilies. I had a side of their sweet potato fries with a spicy dipping sauce, very good as well. I got up to wash my hands and got to glance at numerous dishes that the customers had and they all looked wonderful, can’t wait to come back and try their dinner menu.

When it’s about 15° out this is the place to go for a big steaming bowl of phở: yummy broth, rice noodles, and fresh herbs. Get together with friends to order phở and banh mi. Cut that banh mi in half and dunk it in the phở – you have a Vietnamese-​inspired French Dip sandwich. Richly flavored, delicious broth, noodles done just right (not too firm or soft) and plenty of fresh herbs.
Other favorites here are bun (salad noodles) in either the stir-​fried beef or grilled shrimp-​egg roll combo version, and banh mi (Vietnamese sandwiches.)
Banh mi bread was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside without being Wonder-​bread squishy. Juuuust right! And the sandwiches were chock full of yummies: lots of carrot and radish shreds, generous amounts of meat and a good schmear of paté. The woman assembling them cheerfully added a fistful of cilantro when I requested some extra.
Saigon gets an extra star for having a great choice of sandwich fillings. I think there were about 15 options. As I’ve trolled Frogtown sampling Vietnamese sandwiches, I’ve been disappointed to find that some of the other sandwich outlets have only one or two varieties, usually some form of pork luncheon meat or straight vegetarian. While those are tasty, sometimes I want something different.
Sometimes I order a combination rice plate (com doc biet.) I like the runny egg yolk with my rice, and the combo version came with roast pork and pork rinds. I wasn’t sure what the pork rinds were going to be like… somehow I wasn’t picturing the bag of crunchy snacks you buy at the 7 – 11 and I was right. The pork rinds looked like strips of jellyfish you often get at Asian restaurants, but the taste bore no resemblance. It’s basically a heap of soft, porky fat strings. Tasty, but about two bites were enough for me, after that I hit critical mass on my grease-​o-​meter. But no problem, most everything else on the plate was dee-​lish and I will just order something different next time.
Dining companions ordered a rice plate with grilled chicken and stir-​fried beef salad noodles (bun bo xao.) Portions were all generous and tasty. I would have given the food five stars if there were a few more fresh herbs with everything. We all shared an order of fresh spring rolls – fabulous – and an order of fried egg rolls, good but not as exemplary.
The waitstaff are primarily young guys with tattoos, all cheerful, and even when the place is packed, service is quick. After some problems with unanticipated closures, it has reopened as iPho by Saigon. Décor has been spruced up a bit and they now take credit and debit cards.

Always crowded means that the food is good right?
This place proved it wrong
After standing around and getting ignored for 5 minutes we finally got seated. We received our menus and WTF? menus are sheets of papers stuffed in plastic protectors stapled together. Wow! Ding! Ding! This place is screaming ghetto. I’m sure they make enough to put decent menus together. We ordered our food and got it 10 minutes later. Urrrmmmm… where are the utensils? We had to get out of our seats (all the way in the back) to go to the front to ask for napkins and spoons.
The chile pepper oil/​paste was not covered and just in a open bowl. Besides the dirty restaurant there was no fish sauce on our table. Who the heck eats phở without fish sauce?! Some people received their food first at our table and some (like me) finally got my simple sandwich 25 minutes later after everyone is already finish with their food. Seriously? I know a sandwich doesn’t take 25 minutes to make.
Overall the parking is horrible
The food isn’t all that great
Restaurant is dirty looking
Oh and bring cash with you because they don’t take cards. They decided to set up a ATM right at the door knowing they can make more money charging their customers the ATM fee then just charging through credit/​debit.
Go waste ur money somewhere else!

It’s been a while since I’ve been here and today was my first time in the new location.
If you are in the mood for a cheap delicious sandwich, this is the place.
I ordered the #4 (Bahn mi… something something) and it is tasty.
This is a pork sandwich which includes a mayo, pork meat, pork loaf, a relish of somesort (carrots, onion, & jalapeño’s), a cucumber slice topped off with a liberal heaping of cilantro. I added a generous squirt of Siracha for a little more heat and it is delicious.
All of this placed in a fresh 6″ french roll.
Total price for my sandwich: $ 2.75
Deals like that rock my world :)

Their bún is delicious. Get the one with BBQ pork and and egg roll. It’s under the menu as D9 or something. You will not regret it.
I have yet to try their bánh mì, but I’m going to the next time I go. For some reason, a lot of places here do not include the heart-​clogging, fattening pâté that you’d usually find in bánh mì.
Service is super fast. Like five minutes between ordering and getting your food.
I am also in love with their servers, who all sport trendy hair and tattoos.
Like most Asian restaurants, the décor is almost non-​existent. But what is the point? You’re there to eat.