American Bakery, Saigon Heart: The Dulce de Saigon Story

Dulce de Saigon is an independent American-style bakery in Bàn Cờ Ward, District 3, Ho Chi Minh City.

Started in 2019 by a husband-and-wife team — Thu, a self-taught Vietnamese baker, and Garret, an American from Oregon. We build thick, gooey cookies, Basque and New York cheesecake, tres leches, and custom cakes — entirely from scratch, with real butter. The name “Dulce” is Spanish for sweet — not French, despite what people assume.

How it started: a home oven and a lockdown

Dulce began in 2019 as a home bakery — one oven, a small following, a lot of trial and error. Thu taught herself to bake the way a lot of great bakers start now: YouTube, repetition, and stubbornness (Cupcake Jemma got a lot of replays). Before baking, she’d worked as a TikTok business account manager and a data analyst — useful skills for someone who’d end up running a kitchen and a brand.

Then 2021 happened. During Saigon’s hardest COVID lockdowns, when most places shut, we kept going — online-only, made-to-order, because for stretches of it we were living in the bakery to stay operational. For a lot of isolated expats that year, a Dulce delivery was a small piece of home showing up at the door. We registered officially in December 2021, and we’ve never taken outside
capital. What you taste is what we built, slowly, ourselves.

“They were like, ‘Oh my god — what are you doing? Sell it, sell it.’”
— Thu, on the friends who pushed her to go pro (from our feature in
Saucefish)

Who makes it: Thu and Garret

We’re co-founders and a married couple, which means the bakery is genuinely personal.

• Thu (Nguyễn Bùi Minh Thư) — head baker and co-founder. Self-taught, exacting, the one who decides when a recipe is actually ready.
• Garret Nelson — co-founder, originally from Salem, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley. He runs marketing, recipe R&D and direction (and cheerfully calls himself chief taster). The name Dulce comes from his side: growing up around Mexican panaderías in Salem and Portland — tres leches and mil hojas on half the blocks — where “dulce” just means sweet.
  So — a Spanish word, Pacific Northwest baking. Not French, not fusion-for-the-sake-of-it. He’s also a serious Saigon F&B hand in
  his own right: a winner of Best Burger in Saigon (Judges’ Choice), a former kebabs-and-wraps owner, founder of the South African braai popup Braai Boets, and a consultant to local concepts like Lubu — that’s the operator’s eye he brings to Dulce’s menu and direction. Before all that he took a degree in strategic branding at the University of Oregon, served in the military, and has spent a decade-plus in Vietnam — ten years teaching, plus corporate training and soft-skills English for the likes of VNG and HCMC logistics firms. The “American who runs the brand and actually knows Saigon” part isn’t a line; it’s the résumé.

“There’s a lot of value in watching someone eat their first Dulce. Our customers get excited about
sharing that.”
— Garret, co-founder

What we believe: real butter, no shortcuts

Our whole approach fits in one sentence: inspired by the world, built on American traditions —
quality and generous servings at heart. In practice that means:

• Made from scratch, down to the small things — our own marshmallows, our own graham crackers, jam from Đà Lạt strawberries. If we can make it better in-house, we do.
• Real butter, no preservatives. It’s why our cookies go stale like real cookies should, and why people can taste the difference.
• A HACCP-certified kitchen in District 3 — the unglamorous part of doing this properly.
• Generous by default. Big Pacific Northwest portions, warm service. We hire for heart first and skill second, because the room should feel as good as the cake.
• Part of the neighbourhood. We work closely with Laws For Paws Vietnam, supporting local animal rescue — being a good neighbour matters to us as much as being a good bakery.

We borrow flavours from everywhere — Japanese matcha, Spanish-style Basque, Vietnamese kem chuối, New York cookies — and finish them our way. We just don’t dress that up as something it isn’t.

Điều mọi người nói

We’ve grown mostly by word of mouth — Instagram, a tag from a friend, a review that made someone walk down our hẻm. Today that’s 4.8 stars from 682 Google reviews and a TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice. The lines we love most are the simple ones: people calling us a “hidden gem,” or just leaving “ngon điênnnnnn.” We’ll keep earning those.

“Mindblowingly good baked goods and service. I’ve travelled to a lot of big cities and this is possibly the best bakery I’ve tried.” — Krystyna W., Google ★★★★★

“Best western cakes, cheesecakes, and desserts in Ho Chi Minh. We are coming back for more!” — Andrey K., Google ★★★★★

We’ve been good company to write about, too: featured by:

• Saucefish,
• VietnamNews
• Saigon Scene; voted Top 3 for Best Cake & Dessert two years running at the Where In Vietnam People’s Picks;
• and written up in Japanese by Vietnam Sketch.

Nice to be seen — but the cookie still has to earn it.

We built this for you

We didn’t take outside capital. We didn’t franchise. What you taste is exactly what we built, slowly, over years in our District 3 kitchen. If you’ve been looking for an American bakery in Ho Chi Minh City that doesn’t cut corners on butter or scale back the portions, come find us.

• Tiệm Bánh Dulce de Saigon Quận 3 — 382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward (District 3), Ho Chi Minh City.
• Open daily, 8 AM–9 PM.
• Order: order.ipos.vn, GrabFood, ShopeeFood, or Zalo 0903 305 993.

New here? Start with the bánh quy — they’re how most people fall in. Planning a visit? Here’s the District 3 neighbourhood guide và every way to find our desserts around the city.

FAQ

What is Dulce de Saigon?
An American-style bakery in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, founded in 2019. Known for cookies,
cheesecakes, tres leches and custom cakes, made from scratch with real butter.

Who owns Dulce de Saigon?
Co-founders Thu (Nguyễn Bùi Minh Thư), the head baker, and Garret Nelson — a married couple. The
business is bootstrapped, with no outside investors.

Is Dulce de Saigon a French bakery?
No. It’s American-style. “Dulce” is Spanish for sweet, from co-founder Garret growing up around
Mexican panaderías in Salem and Portland, Oregon.

How long has Dulce been open?
Since 2019 as a home bakery; officially registered in December 2021. It stayed open through the 2021
lockdowns.

Where is Dulce de Saigon and what are the hours?
382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward (District 3), HCMC. Open daily, 8 AM–9 PM.

Written by Garret, co-founder. Thanks for reading our story — now come taste it.
382/15 Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai, Bàn Cờ Ward, daily 8 AM–9 PM.

Visit / order:

• Google Maps
• order.ipos.vn
• GrabFood
• Zalo 0903 305 993