An Evening At Saigon's Premier Supper Club

Front of restaurant

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Maxim's aims to please. Whether you fancy French onion soup, Vietnamese cha gio, or Chinese fried rice, whether your musical tastes run to folk, pop, or classical, chances are Maxim's will satisfy your every whim.

Saigon's ultimate tourist extravaganza has weathered war and peace, communist austerity and capitalist competition by following a simple formula: it delivers a buoyant, something-for-everyone, rollicking good time. An occasional visitor may chafe at the noise level'you wouldn't choose this setting for a romantic tete-a-tete'but it's a safe bet, dollars to dong, that no one will ever accuse Maxim's of being dull. The self-described "Fifties-Style Supper Club" plunges its patrons into a heady mix of food, drink and non-stop entertainment that boggles the imagination and sets your senses spinning.

More than 200 different dishes, plus variations thereof, emanate from the bustling kitchen, presided over by a triumvirate of chefs who create, respectively, Vietnamese, Chinese and Western fare for their diverse clientele. Then there's the nightly show, a never-ending potpourri of Vietnamese traditional music, modern and classical Western music, folk dances and pop singers, all bathed in a halo of multicolored lights.

In Saigon with a small group of Earthwatch members, I had sampled regional specialties at Vietnam House, pasta at Chez Guido and California cuisine at City Bar and Grill, in addition to the uninspired fare in our economy-class hotel. Still, as our day of departure approached, it seemed unthinkable to leave Saigon without experiencing the city's landmark restaurant/nightclub. "You must go to Maxim's," a Vietnamese-American friend had told me before I left home.

The prospect of dining solo in a supper club seemed a dreary option, so I recruited other members of our group to join me. Peter, of the BBC, his wife Jenny, and three American women agreed to accompany me to Maxim's. When I phoned for reservations on a weekday night, an apologetic hostess announced that the main floor was full, but she could seat us upstairs.

We hailed cyclos for the ride down Dong Khoi ("General Uprising") Street, called the Rue Catinat during the French colonial period. The history of Maxim's is intimately intertwined with this thoroughfare, the acknowledged heartbeat of Saigon through countless incarnations. Old-timers recall with nostalgia the French era, when stylish shops displayed fine jewelry, perfumes and Parisian fashions on Rue Catinat, once the Asian equivalent of the Champs Elysees.

We passed the Continental Hotel and the Municipal Theater that housed the National Assembly during the Saigon regime but once again showcases Vietnamese plays. Our drivers pedaled by the Caravelle Hotel where correspondents once covered the war within ordering distance of the bar. We glided by Givral, the old French cafe that served as a nerve center for the foreign press corps during the sixties, stopping short of the Majestic Hotel at the Saigon River. The building now occupied by Maxim's started life as the Majestic Cinema, circa 1934, at a point when French culture had woven itself inextricably into the tapestry of Saigonese life.

Inside, an attractive young woman dressed in a shimmering ao dai apologized again for the lack of tables on the main floor, then escorted us to the balcony, where we skirted a festive party of local Vietnamese welcoming their overseas brethren back into the fold like latter-day prodigal sons.

Our upstairs table provided a perfect vantage point for surveying the scene below. A mini-skirted vocalist paraded onto the raised, semi-circular stage, swaying to the rhythms of the house orchestra and surprising us with the lyrics to "On the Bayou." At her feet, businessmen from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore clinked glasses in ebullient toasts.

Every bit as eclectic as its menu, Maxim's clientele has always reflected the changing political tides and economic fortunes of the city. Dominated by tourists and business people today, the audience has at times encompassed Soviet advisors and communist cadres from the north, like country cousins lured by the lights of the big city. Former GIs remember Maxim's as one of a string of bars, nightclubs and strip joints that materialized on Tu Do ("Freedom") Street'yet another Dong Khoi alias'during the US military occupation. That, as it happens, marked a low point in Maxim's history. Earlier, at the time of a 1963 renovation, promoters described Maxim's as "the most well-known and sumptuous venue of Saigon's VIPs and aristocracy."

After the fall of Saigon in April 1975, the new government decreed assorted alternative uses for the venerable building: a reporting point for former South Vietnamese military personnel; the Cultural House of District One for public entertainment; a school for training party cadres.

In 1982, an import-export company, now called Sunimex, took over the structure with the goal of resurrecting the lucrative restaurant business. After further renovation, the building metamorphosed once more to Maxim's Theater-Restaurant, reopening at the beginning of 1983.

Below us, after our first vocalist exited to wild applause, a second stepped up the tempo, demonstrating as she sang, "I'm gonna rock around the clock tonight..." As my companions and I gazed, a little bewildered, at the whirl of activity, a tuxedoed waiter handed us two menus. I had learned to request "No ice, please" in my 333 beer, which I sipped while studying the voluminous menu'six pages of European dishes and thirteen pages of Chinese and Vietnamese delicacies. At 800,000 dong, the abalone was easy to eliminate, but that still left a menu the size of a small telephone directory.

An earlier swing through the island provinces of the Mekong Delta had inured us to some of the more exotic offerings to be found in Vietnamese restaurants: grilled snake, pig brain, braised duck feet, goat testicles, and other (to us) eccentricities. My companions settled on more mundane items such as filet mignon from the European menu, and fresh crab, lobster and other seafood combinations from the Chinese and Vietnamese lists.

For my part, I had become enamored of the southern shrimp-on-a-stick known as chao tem, actually minced shrimp paste molded around a stalk of sugar cane, producing an intense, not-too-sweet flavor. A refreshing salad of lotus, cucumber, tomato, lettuce and chicken accompanied the shrimp, and two of us shared a serving of the delightful if ubiquitous cha gio, succulent rice paper-wrapped morsels made for dipping. For dessert I reverted to the European menu and a smooth creme caramel.

Meanwhile another pretty young singer, backed by a ten-piece orchestra, lamented having left her heart in San Francisco. It sounded like a standard number, though coincidentally a San Francisco businessman sitting at a nearby table revealed that he was here to scout investment opportunities.

At intervals, Japanese businessmen took over from the professional singers, clutching the mike in a karaoke break. Then, as a further hedge against boredom, an enormous screen at the rear of the stage alternated scenes of Dutch windmills, Japanese shrines and anonymous skylines, without caption or comment, like a home slide show magnified to mega-proportions.

"Without a doubt the best restaurant in Saigon (and probably all of Indochina)," rhapsodizes the Lonely Planet guidebook, describing Maxim's. More sophisticated food writers find such high praise hard to swallow, intimating that perhaps "enthralled backpackers" lack the necessary credentials to critique haute cuisine.

Such quibbling aside, Maxim's is a true dining experience, a Saigon original. People who have had the good fortune to spend an evening there may comment on the encyclopedic nature of the menu, or the frenetic energy of the entertainers, or the sometimes boisterous parties, but invariably a smile of remembered pleasure accompanies their commentary.

Veteran Vietnam traveler John Pritchard of Am-Viet Marketing has been frequenting Ho Chi Minh City since the 1980s, when restaurants suitable for business meetings or tourist pursuits were scarcer than exit visas. Though today's visitor can choose from numerous new restaurants designed to serve the traveler, Pritchard favors Maxim's for "good food and cute, clever acts, all for a very reasonable price."

Finally, satiated, my companions and I descended the stairway to the exit, congratulating ourselves for having discovered such a perfect celebratory site for the culmination of our tour. Behind us a chanteuse warbled "Don't cry for me, Argentina. "Don't cry for me... those lyrics could serve as the theme song of Maxim's, an institution that's a microcosm of Saigon itself'upbeat, enterprising, exuding energy, eager to please, embracing new influences, and, in the final analysis, utterly beguiling.

Maxim's Restaurant:
15-17 Dong Khoi Street, District 1,
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Telephone: 848-296676

Published on 12/1/95