The Vagabond Patisserie - Great croissant with ice cream inside!
Avocado Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
The Vagabond Patisserie
One of the cafes/patisseries in the missus checklist to try in our recent trip to Saigon and this is our first stop. But more to come!
Note: We are always limited with the amount of time we have in Saigon after visiting the in-laws and close friends. So we are very selective with the food places we wanted to try plus going back to our old haunts, as we can’t eat that much at our age (not that young anymore 😂).
Cross section of the Avocado Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Avocado Ice Cream Croissant (90k VND)
Taste: Very nice and fragrant buttery taste (not surprised as they are using premium French Échiré AOP certified butter), along with the mild, creamy, and earthy avocado flavoured ice cream.
Texture: Crisp exterior croissant, fluffy and doughy inside.
Note: I like how they can have the ice cream rather cold but not full frozen (yet the croissant is still warm), so when you are eating, it is very convenient to eat together with the croissant. Overall, it is a good and clean experience.
From my memory, we took like around 20+ minutes to finish eating the croissant, it still didn’t melt.
Overall: The croissant itself is already great, and I’m surprised when combined with the ice cream it still maintain the same level of quality and the user’s experience when eating it.
Rating: 3.75/5
Coffee Tiramisu Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Cross section of the Coffee Tiramisu Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Coffee Tiramisu Ice Cream Croissant (90k VND)
Taste: Combination of coffee and butter for the croissant base, this time round it leans towards more on the coffee side, can easily get the coffee strong and bitter notes with a mild buttery fragrant taste. Along with the tiramisu ice cream which has notes of vanilla, cocoa, and hint of rum (?) to balance out the stronger coffee flavoured from the croissant base.
Personal opinion, the coffee part on the croissant base slightly tilt the balance off and wasted such a premium butter they are using.
Texture: Crisp exterior croissant, fluffy and doughy inside.
Overall: Similar to the Avocado Ice Cream Croissant, but the croissant base is different. I will say it is very personal preferences for this croissant, thus the score of 3.5 compared to 3.75 for the Avocado Ice Cream Croissant.
Rating: 3.5/5
Matcha Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Cross section of the Matcha Ice Cream Croissant
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Matcha Ice Cream Croissant (100k VND)
Taste: Combination of matcha and butter for the croissant base, this time round it is balance (compared to the Coffee Tiramisu Ice Cream Croissant), can taste the presence of the butter, but the matcha feels like a hint. The matcha ice cream taste is a-ok, probably due to the real premium matcha / matcha powder is too high cost, have to be realistic for this part.
Texture: Crisp exterior croissant, fluffy and doughy inside.
Overall: The standard of their ice cream croissant across the board is there, it’s more of the personal preferences on the croissant base to be full butter or hybrid of butter and x flavour.
Rating: 3.5/5
Mirage
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Cross section of the Mirage
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Mirage (160k VND)
Firstly, it is a cute cactus designed cake!
As per the cross section photo, you can the different layers and ingredients used in the cake. We will try to dissect the tastes in layers for you as per our hobbyist knowledge (not pros at all), so might be wrong also.
From the main core in red which consists of the prickly pear and aloe vera cubes, gives a little sour hit that cuts through the cream’s sweetness and refreshing feel.
The layer outside the core red will be the aloe vera cream which is silky, moist, refreshingly light and melt in the mouth feel.
Next, the thin white layer below the core will be the diplomat cream infused with black tea and bergamot orange blossom, although we don’t really taste the black tea and bergamot orange blossom, probably very subtle only.
The last layer below the diplomat cream will be the sweet ambarella jam/puree in the middle of the tart, sweet and slightly bitter with jelly mouthfeel.
For that tart shell, it also consists of honey cake inside it which then wraps the sweet ambarella jam/puree.
Altogether, it is a harmony of a wide range, dimensions and complexity of sourness and sweetness. One has to think about it to truly pick out all the subtle taste and details of the ingredients.
Overall: It’s good, but we find their ice cream croissants to be more of the signature in our opinion. Heard from other friends that their regular cakes are also their signatures, we will probably try it on our future visits.
Rating: 3.5/5
Salted Caramel Coffee
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Salted Caramel Coffee
It is part of the combo set, buy 2 ice cream croissants and get a free Salted Caramel Coffee.
Counter
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Pathway to the cafe
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Shop Front
The Vagabond Pâtisserie
Closing Thoughts
The ice cream croissants are really good, especially the croissant part.
Using such a premium butter (Échiré AOP certified), even it’s not quite as rare (or pricey) as Bordier, it’s still leagues above what most of us would ever use for home baking. Even the missus and I (hobbyist home bakers) don’t have such budget to use Échiré for our cakes/bakes, we do use a good butter, but definiely do not have such high budget for Échiré.
To put it into perspective:
Échiré 250g - $15.20 SGD
Bordier 125g - $9 SGD (so around $18 SGD for 250g)
The butter we usually bake with is around $6+ SGD for 250g
So yeah, you can imagine the treat of eating such premium butter in their croissant at this price point is really value.
And just to clarify, based on our blog’s rating scale, we score purely on food quality. Value isn’t factored into the final rating.
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Address: 9 Trần Cao Vân, Phường Đa Kao, Quận 1 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Opening Hours: 7.30am-9.30pm Daily
Payment Method: Cash & Cards
Website: https://www.instagram.com/thevagabond.patisserie/
(Last visited: August 2025)