Hum Garden

Farm-direct vegetables at the station

The deep-fried mushroom rolls arrive crisp from the pass, a small decision of batter, heat and filling. Kai Horitzky, chef at Hum Garden in Ho Chi Minh City, works that vegetarian brief through ingredients bought mostly direct from farms and handled without leaning on imitation meat. His route to this bench began in Germany and moved through resort kitchens across Austria and Switzerland, where regional appetite and season set the terms of the plate. At Romantik Hotel Verwall in Montafon, his cooking used Vorarlberg products in fresh compositions; in Kitzbühel, at Römerhof Stüberl, Hotel Tennerhof and Relais & Châteaux Hotel Tennerhof, the register sharpened around Tyrolean produce and French precision. Hum Garden asks for a different hand. The landscape changes to Vietnamese herbs, mushrooms, lotus, tofu, rice and fruit; the discipline remains one of reading place before adding technique.

Mushroom rolls, lotus crisps, holy basil rice

Hum Garden opened in 2017 in Thao Dien Ward, inside the Hum Dining group, with a kitchen built around modern Vietnamese vegetarian cooking. The menu moves à la carte and through tasting-menu form, but the strongest thread is the sharing table: deep-fried mushroom rolls, braised tofu, lotus crisps, holy basil fried rice, pomelo salad, tom yum soup, Thai curry, and longan with lotus seed sweet soup. The cooking keeps its focus on vegetables, legumes, herbs and rice rather than mock proteins. That choice matters at the bench, because texture has to come from the ingredient and the method: mushroom against fried casing, lotus sliced into crispness, tofu carried by braise, basil released through hot rice. The beverage program follows the room rather than competing with it, with craft cocktails and regional drinks set beside a curated wine program. Michelin has awarded Hum Garden Bib Gourmand recognition, and inspectors called out the mushroom rolls in particular. The dish has become a useful signature because it is specific, repeatable and still modest in scale.

The Moon Courtyard keeps the room quiet

The room turns around the garden before it turns toward the plate. Hum Garden sits on a quiet residential street in Thao Dien Ward, in a villa setting shaped around Sân Trăng, the Moon Courtyard. Warm natural light, rustic furnishings, indoor planting and soft meditation music slow the pace without making the service feel ceremonial. Conversation stays low. The counter, the pass and the dining room all seem to borrow from the same register: green shade, polished wood, water, ceramic, leaf. For Horitzky, whose previous kitchens were marked by alpine produce and hotel discipline, this is not a stage for force. It is a place where Vietnamese-inspired vegetarian cooking has to meet the cadence of a garden courtyard.

A signature held by repetition

The next measure here is not a new claim, but whether the kitchen keeps the same clarity as the menu changes with local produce. At Hum Garden, the deep-fried mushroom rolls remain the dish that holds the line between the pass and Sân Trăng.