Vegetables, vegetarian and vegan food in Vietnam
If all this has put you off meat for ever, it is possible to eat vegetarian food in Vietnam, though not always easy. The widest selection of vegetables is to be found in Da Lat where a staggering variety of tropical and temperate crops thrive. Elsewhere, most restaurants offer a smattering of meat-free dishes, from stewed spinach or similar greens, to a more appetizing mix of onion, tomato, bean sprouts, various mushrooms, peppers and so on; places used to foreigners may be able to oblige with vegetarian spring rolls (nem an chay or nem khong co thit). At street kitchens you’re likely to find tofu and one or two dishes of pickled vegetables, such as cabbage or cucumber, while occasionally they may also have aubergine, bamboo shoots or avocado, depending on the season.
However, unless you go to a specialist vegetarian outlet – of which there are some excellent examples in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Hué – it can be a problem finding genuine veggie food: soups are usually made with beef stock, morsels of pork fat sneak into otherwise innocuous-looking dishes and animal fat tends to be used for frying.
The phrase to remember is an chay (vegetarian), or seek out a vegetarian rice shop (tiem com chay). Otherwise, make the most of the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month when many Vietnamese Buddhists spurn meat and you’re more likely to find vegetarian dishes on offer.
Typical Vietnamese Snacks
Vietnam has a wide range of snacks and nibbles to fill any yawning gaps, from huge rice-flour crackers sprinkled with sesame seeds to all sorts of dried fish, nuts and seeds. Banh bao are white, steamed dumplings filled with tasty titbits, such as pork, onions and tangy mushrooms or strands of sweet coconut. Banh xeo, meaning sizzling pancake, combines shrimp, pork, bean sprouts and egg, all fried and then wrapped in rice paper with a selection of greens before being dunked in a spicy sauce. A similar dish, originating from Hué – a city with a vast repertoire of snack foods – is banh khoai, in which the flat pancake is accompanied by a plate of star fruit, green banana and aromatic herbs, plus a rich peanut sauce.
Markets are often good snacking grounds, with stalls churning out soups and spring rolls or selling intriguing banana-leaf parcels of pate (a favourite accompaniment for bia hoi), pickled pork sausage or perhaps a cake of sticky rice.
A relative newcomer on the culinary scene is French bread, made with wheat flour in the north and rice flour in the south. Baguettes – sometimes sold warm from streetside stoves – are sliced open and stuffed with pate, soft cheese or ham and pickled vegetables.
Fruit
With its diverse climate, Vietnam is blessed with both tropical and temperate fruits, including dozens of banana species. The richest orchards are in the south, where pineapple, coconut, papaya, mango, longan and mangosteen flourish. Da Lat is famous for its strawberries, while the region around Nha Trang produces the peculiar “dragon fruit” (thanh long). The size and shape of a small pineapple, the dragon fruit has skin of shocking pink, studded with small protuberances, and smooth, white flesh speckled with tiny black seeds. The slightly sweet, watery flesh is thirst-quenching, and so is often served as a drink, crushed with ice.
A fruit that is definitely an acquired taste is the durian, a spiky, yellow-green football-sized fruit with an unmistakably pungent odour reminiscent of mature cheese and caramel, but tasting like an onion-laced custard. Jackfruit looks worryingly similar to durian but is larger and has smaller spikes. Its yellow segments of flesh are deliciously sweet.
Sweet things
Vietnam is not strong on desserts – restaurants usually stick to ice cream and fruit, although fancier international places might venture into tiramisu territory. Those with a sweet tooth are better off hunting down a bakery – there’ll be one within walking distance in any urban area – or browsing around street stalls where there are usually candied fruits and other Vietnamese sweetmeats on offer, as well as sugary displays of French-inspired cakes and pastries in the main tourist centres.
Green-coloured banh com is an eye-catching local delicacy made by wrapping pounded glutinous rice around sugary, green-bean paste. A similar confection, found only during the mid-autumn festival, is the “earth cake”, banh deo, which melds the contrasting flavours of candied fruits, sesame and lotus seeds with a dice of savoury pork fat. Fritters are popular among children and you’ll find opportunistic hawkers outside schools, selling banh chuoi (banana fritters) and banh chuoi khoai (mixed slices of banana and sweet potato).
Most cities now have ice-cream parlours selling tubs or sticks of the local, hard ices in chocolate, vanilla or green-tea flavours, though it’s prudent to buy only from the larger, busier outlets and not from street hawkers. More exotic tastes can be satisfied at the European- and American-style ice-cream parlours of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, while excellent yoghurts are also increasingly available at ice-cream parlours, and even some restaurants.
Typical Vietnamese Drinks
Vietnam’s national drink is green tea, which is the accompaniment to every social gathering or business meeting and is frequently drunk after meals. At the harder end of the spectrum, there’s also rice wine, though some local beer is also excellent, and an increasingly wide range of imported wines and spirits.
Giai khat means “quench your thirst” and you’ll see the signs everywhere, on stands selling fresh juices, bottled cold drinks or outside cafés and bia hoi (draught beer) outlets. Many drinks are served with ice: tempting though it may be, the only really safe policy is to avoid ice altogether – dung bo da, cam on (“no ice, thanks”) should do the trick. That said, ice in the top hotels, bars and restaurants is generally reliable, and some people take the risk in less salubrious establishments with apparent impunity.
Water and soft drinks
Tap water is not safe to drink in Vietnam – since bottled water is both cheap and widely available, you shouldn’t need to take the risk anyway. Avoid drinks with ice or those that may have been diluted with suspect water.
Locally made soft drinks are tooth-numbingly sweet, but are cheap and safe – as long as the bottle or carton appears well sealed – and on sale just about everywhere. The Coke, Sprite and Fanta hegemony also means you can find fizzy drinks in surprisingly remote areas. Oddly, canned drinks are usually more expensive than the equivalent-sized bottle, whether it’s a soft drink or beer – apparently it’s less chic to drink from the old-fashioned bottle.
A more effective thirst-quencher is fresh coconut juice, though this is more difficult to find in the north. Fresh juices such as orange and lime are also delicious – just make sure they haven’t been mixed with tap water. Sugar-cane juice (mia da) is safer, since it’s pressed right in front of you. Pasteurized milk, produced by Vinamilk, is now sold in the main towns and cities.
Somewhere between a drink and a snack, ché is made from taro flour and green bean, and served over ice with chunks of fruit, coloured jellies and even sweet corn or potato. In hot weather it provides a refreshing sugar-fix.
Tea and coffee
Tea drinking is part of the social ritual in Vietnam. Small cups of refreshing, strong, green tea are presented to all guests or visitors: water is well boiled and safe to drink, as long as the cup itself is clean, and it’s considered rude not to take at least a sip. Although your cup will be continually replenished to show hospitality, you don’t have to carry on drinking; the polite way to decline a refill is to place your hand over the cup when your host is about to replenish it. Green tea is also served at the end of every restaurant meal, particularly in the south, and usually provided free.
Coffee production has boomed in recent years, largely for export, with serious environmental and social consequences. The Vietnamese drink coffee very strong and in small quantities, with a large dollop of condensed milk at the bottom of the cup. Traditionally, coffee is filtered at the table by means of a small dripper balanced over the cup or glass, which sometimes sits in a bowl of hot water to keep it warm. However, places accustomed to tourists increasingly run to fresh (pasteurized) milk, while in the main cities you’ll now find fancy Western-style cafés turning out decent lattes and cappuccinos. Highland Coffee has become Vietnam’s very own Starbucks-style chain, while out in the sticks you’re best off going for cafés with a Trung Nguyen sign.
Alcoholic drinks
In Vietnam, drinking alcohol is a social activity to be shared with friends. You’ll rarely see the Vietnamese drinking alone and never without eating. Be prepared for lots of toasts to health, wealth and happiness, and no doubt to international understanding, too. It’s the custom to fill the glasses of your fellow guests; someone else will fill yours.
Canned and bottled beers brewed under licence in Vietnam include Tiger, Heineken, Carlsberg and San Miguel, but there are also plenty of very drinkable – and cheaper – local beers around, such as Halida, 333 (Ba Ba Ba) and Bivina. Some connoisseurs rate Bière la Rue from Da Nang tops, though Saigon Export, Hanoi Beer and BGI are also fine brews. Many other towns boast their own local beers, such as Hué (where the main brand is Huda), Hai Phong and Thanh Hoa (where it’s simply named after the town) – all worth a try.
Roughly forty years ago technology for making bia hoi (draught beer) was introduced from Czechoslovakia and it is now quaffed in vast quantities, particularly in the north. Bia hoi may taste fairly weak, but it measures in at up to 4% alcohol. It’s also ridiculously cheap and supposedly unadulterated with chemicals, so in theory you’re less likely to get a hangover. Bia hoi has a 24-hour shelf life, which means the better places sell out by early evening, and that you’re unlikely to be drinking it into the wee hours. In the south, you’re more likely to be drinking bia tuoi (“fresh” beer), a close relation of bia hoi but served from pressurized barrels. Outlets are usually open at lunchtime, and then again in the evening from 5pm to 9pm.
Wine (the conventional kind) is becoming increasingly popular in Vietnam – even in small towns, you’ll easily track some down, and imported bottles continue to crop up in the most unexpected places. Local production dates from the French era, and is centred around Da Lat and the main producer is Vang Da Lat. Only at top hotels, restaurants or specialist shops will you find decent imported bottles that have been properly stored; you’ll be paying premium prices for these.
The traditional Vietnamese alcoholic drink is ruou can, or rice-distilled liquor. Until recently, ruou can was regarded as decidedly downmarket, the preserve of labourers, farmers and ethnic minorities. Nowadays, however, it’s becoming popular among the middle class and especially young urban sophisticates – including a growing number of women – as city-centre bars and restaurants begin to offer better quality ruou can.
Recipes for ruou can are a closely guarded secret, but its basic constituents are regular or glutinous rice, the latter of which is said to be more aromatic and have a fuller, smoother taste. Selected herbs and fruits are sometimes steeped in the liquor to enhance its flavour and, supposedly, to add all sorts of medicinal and health benefits. You’ll also see jars containing snakes, geckos and even whole crows. Traditionally, the basic ingredients are heated together and buried in the ground for a month or more to ferment. Nowadays, more modern – and hygienic – techniques are used to produce ruou can for general consumption. Look out for the high-quality rice-distilled liquors marketed under the Son Tinh brand.
The ethnic minorities of the northwest (Thai and Muong) concoct their own home-distilled ruou can, sometimes known as stem alcohol. Visitors are often invited to gather round the communal jar to drink the liquor through thin, bamboo straws. In more traditional villages it’s regarded as a sacred ritual, which it would be an insult to refuse. You will hear the toast Chuc suc khoe (your health) and, for more serious drinking sessions, Tram phan tram (down in one)!
Vietnamese Breakfast
Vietnamese traditionally breakfast on pho or some other noodle soup, reasoning that these provide enough energy to get through the day; many an expat has come around to this way of thinking. You may also find early-morning hawkers peddling xoi, a wholesome mix of steamed sticky rice with soya bean, sweet corn or peanuts. Simple Western breakfasts (such as bread with jam, cheese or eggs and coffee) are usually available in backpacker cafés or hotels. More upmarket places increasingly stretch to cereals and fresh milk, while some top-class hotels (and a whole bunch of cheaper ones) lay on the full works in their breakfast buffets. In towns, you could always buy jam and bread or croissants for a do-it-yourself breakfast.
