Netflix series on Asian street food focuses on Saigon

Produced by creators of the hugely popular Netflix series Chef’s Table, David Gelb and his frequent collaborators Brian McGinn, Andrew Fried and Dane Lillegard, the upcoming series, ‘Street Food’, will tell the stories of the people who make and sell flavorful dishes on Asian streets.

All nine episodes of ‘Street Food’ will be available on Netflix, the world's leading internet entertainment service, from April 26.

The series will tell life stories of street food hawkers in Japan, Thailand, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The Vietnamese episode was filmed in Ho Chi Minh City, known as Vietnam’s most popular street food paradise. It focuses on two chefs - one selling snails and another selling pho (beef or chicken noodle soup).

It also provides interesting information on two of Saigon’s most popular street foods - com tam (broken rice with grilled pork, pig skin, egg and fish sauce) and banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwich.

The Vietnamese banh mi has been listed in the top 20 street foods that one must try around the world by Fodor’s Travel. And according to the New York-based travel publisher, the best place to eat a banh mi is on the Saigon streets.

Banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwich, is best had at a Saigon street corner. Photo by VnExpress/Phong Vinh

In a trailer for the Netflix series that was released on Thursday, street food hawkers from across the continent are shown cooking up various local dishes and sharing their inspiring stories of overcoming the hardships inherent with making a living on the street.

Vietnamese food has been named among world’s most favorite, according to a recent survey by YouGov, a U.K.-based online market research company.