How to Eat in Vietnam – Your Guide to a Foodie Adventure in Vietnam

 Doing your research before an upcoming trip to Vietnam? Here are a few tips to help you enjoy your time exploring the local cuisine of the country. From tips to help you get by at small local eateries to those on some of the best dishes to try, here are some things to know before you set off to Vietnam.

Image by zompoch from Pixabay 

 Step One – Try and Eat Like a Local

 Inexpensive, local food from a food stall can be just as flavoursome, if not more sometimes, than what you’d find at a more commercial restaurant that caters to foreigners. The one thing to remember though is that unless you are familiar with the language, it’s going to be very hard to communicate with the vendors to find out the intricacies and ingredients behind any particular dish. 

 One way to get around this is to first try popular local dishes at one of the hotels in Hoi An where language is not a problem such as Anantara Hoi An Resort or a similar other. Then, once you’re familiar with the ingredients and how the dish is prepared, if you’re still game, you can go ahead and try it at more humble eateries that you might stumble upon as you venture off the beaten path for tourists. This way you get to enjoy different takes on the same dish. This technique can be very helpful if you have special dietary requirements and need to avoid certain foods, are vegetarian or vegan or simply like to know exactly what goes into a dish that you’re eating.

 Step Two – You Must Try Pho

 If you already like Vietnamese food, you’re likely to have sampled ‘pho’ several times. Pho is an iconic dish in Vietnamese cuisine, and it’s gained popularity all over the world. So much so that that are many pho-based restaurants across the globe. What is pho? For those of you that aren’t familiar with it already, it’s a soup dish that features rice noodles as well as other ingredients such as some vegetables and meat or seafood. It’s simple, yet very flavoursome and usually contains a lot of herbs and other ingredients such as beansprouts. No two pho’s are alike, as everyone has a slightly different take on how they like to flavour their broth. And when you travel inside Vietnam, you’ll notice that the broth changes in flavour significantly in the southern and northern parts of the country. The southerners usually prefer to make pho using a clear broth that’s filled with meat such as beef. In contrast, the northerners generally use an opaque broth that tends to be red in colour and quite spicy in flavour and prefer usually to fill it with seafood or meatballs.

 Step 3 – Try A Vietnamese Take on a Classic

 When it comes to Chinese takeout, one of the staple foods is Spring Rolls. However, the Vietnamese have their own take on this classic, so be sure to try it while you’re in the country. Vietnamese spring rolls are usually quite different to the Chinese spring Rolls that you find around the world. The main difference is that Vietnamese spring rolls tend to be made from translucent rice-based wrappers. Conversely, at Chinese Restaurants, when you order spring rolls, you usually get a deep-fried, crispy and crunchy golden roll that’s made from a wheat-based wrapper, and it’s not really very translucent at all and leaves you guessing as to what the fillings inside are. When you see a Vietnamese spring roll, you’ll know the difference. The wrapper looks more white and see-through, and you can see the colours of some of the ingredients inside (like the orange of the carrots) showing through. What normally goes inside these? Fresh, raw vegetables vermicelli noodles and seafood or meat such as prawns or pork.