The number of new Japanese restaurants has been expanding rapidly in Ho Chi Minh City thanks to the enthusiastic embrace of local residents over Japanese cuisine.

The city is now home to more than 250 Japanese restaurants, plus a number of supermarkets and retailers selling food from the East Asian country.

While Japanese restaurants used to be located at several streets in District 1 such as Le Thanh Ton, Thi Sach, or Ngo Van Nam to serve the need of Japanese expats, they have now made their way to almost every corner of the city. These facilities offer a wide range of Japanese food to local consumers, from the popular sushi to other specialty like grilled chicken.

Japanese restaurants are attractive to local consumers as their facilities are well-decorated, and their delicious food suit the Vietnamese tastes, said Thuy Duong, who works at an advertisement company in District 1.

The considerably high prices are not an issue, as they are only a little higher than those offered by Vietnamese restaurants with similar service quality, Duong added.

Dao Minh Tung, manager of the Tokyo Town in District 1, said more than 80 percent of the 600 customers to his facility everyday is Vietnamese.

“Their favorite dishes are grilled octopus, rice cake, sushi, and ramen,” Tung said.

The proportion of Vietnamese customers in some other Japanese restaurants is as high as 90 percent, mostly young people with stable incomes and westernized lifestyle, he added.

“The facilities are set up first to serve Japanese living and working in the city, but they have also attracted a considerable number of local customers,” he said.

Harumitsu Hida, Japanese Consul General in HCMC, said many food companies of his country are enjoying success in Vietnam.

The 250 restaurants in the city have helped promote the image of Japanese cuisine to Vietnam, he remarked.

Cleanliness matters

Japanese dishes are welcomed by the young customers as more and more people are switching to eating clean, while Japanese food are fresh and hygienic, said Truc Dao, managing director of Body Food Restaurant.

Some 80 percent of the ingredients at the Japanese restaurants are imported from their home country, and only vegetables are sourced domestically, said Tung of Tokyo Town, adding this results in high prices for the food.

For instance, while sama fish is not costly in Japan, the target consumers of the fish in Vietnam are those with medium incomes.

Sama export turnovers from Nemuro, the Japanese city that exports the most sama fish to Vietnam, rose from 6.7 tons to as much as 415 tons last year, according to Hiroshi Tokunou, director of the city’s market planning department.

The city targeted to ship some 1,200 tons of sama to Vietnam on an annual basis, he added.

Besides sama, Nemuro is also boosting exports of samon, and other seafood to the Japanese restaurants and supermarkets in Vietnam, he said.