United Bar

The Bar

United Bar is at 02 Nguyen Chi Thanh. The door is a banh mi cart: glass case, yellow sign, bread sitting on the shelf. You either walk past it or through it, depending on whether anyone told you. The disguise does not stop at the door. The drinks are street snacks in cocktail clothes. Oi xi muoi is guava with salted plum, the thing sold off carts all over the country. Keo dau phong is peanut candy. One of them arrives with a piece of bread balanced on the glass. The jars along the shelf behind the bar are fruit soaking in spirit, which is what households here have always done with a glut of plums. So the whole room is one idea told twice: something completely ordinary, dressed up and charged for. There are about twenty seats, and on the night these photos were taken a blackboard outside said they were already full. Six thirty until one, every day. Call before you ride over.