Our Best Eats - Vietnam

I was introduced to Vietnamese food a few months before setting out on this trip by one of my best friends, who took me to a great restaurant called Song Que on Kingsland Road in east London. I had no idea what to expect, but the food was amazing – lots of really fresh flavours, and DIY dishes where you put together elements of your meal based on how sweet/savoury/spicy/tangy/herby you prefer. I dragged Karl there a few weeks later and, as you can imagine, we soon became very excited about the prospect of eating our way through Vietnam on our trip.

Well, we've now had a chance to sample a month's worth of food in Vietnam, so without further ado here's a round up of our favourite dishes:


Noodle soup – there's a huge variety of noodle soups in Vietnam, and all the ones we tried were fantastic. One of our favourites was in Dalat. I have no idea what it was called, but it had thin slices of pork, little crunchy pieces of pork crackling, pork wonton dumplings, vegetables and noodles. Mmm pork pork pork. Hey, who you calling porky?

Pho – possibly one of Vietnam's most well known dishes, Pho is another noodle soup, this time made with a meaty broth, thin slices of pork, beef or chicken and rice noodles. It often comes with a plate of bean sprouts, chillis, lime and herbs (coriander, Vietnamese basil etc) which can all be added to taste, along with fish sauce if you fancy it.

Pho!

DIY BBQ – Basically, you choose from a selection of meat and seafood, which comes marinated in spices along with a miniature barbeque on which you cook your own dinner! Whatever you choose comes with a portion of lightly salted and spiced okra, which is really good when slightly barbequed. Some people might not be in favour of cooking your own dinner when you're supposed to be eating out, but it was fun and tasty so I have no complaints!

Me looking rather shiny faced with our DIY BBQ

Bahn Xeo – they say it's a pancake but essentially it's a really thin omelette filled with pork, seafood and beansprouts. It's delicious eaten on its own with the small accompanying salad of fresh herbs and a sweet & spicy dipping sauce, but it sometimes also comes with little rice pancakes so that you construct your own wraps which is equally nice.

Baguettes – we had a lot of baguettes in Vietnam. No matter where you are, you're probably not far from a baguette vendor. They can be made with anything from pork meat or omelette to Laughing Cow cheese, and they usually come with cucumber, herbs and chilli sauce. They make a good, cheap breakfast or lunch, but by far the best baguette we had was on the way home after a night out in Can Tho. It had pate, pork meat, chillies, herbs, cucumber, soy sauce and chilli sauce and it was mmmm mmmmm tasty.

Baguette ingredients

Vietnamese iced coffee – unfortunately we didn't discover this treat until the last week of our stay, but I think Vietnam does one of the best iced coffees we've ever had, and like no other iced coffee I've ever had. It's a really strong shot of Vietnamese coffee, mixed well with about an inch of condensed milk and loads of crushed ice. The condensed milk makes it taste almost chocolatey, while the ice makes it quite refreshing to drink - it's actually very moreish. Karl loved them and managed two or three a day, so as an early birthday present I got him a little Vietnamese drip coffee device. I think we'll definitely be having a go at recreating these once we're back home!

Vietnamese coffee - it's even darker than me!

Pork and rice – this is a pretty simple dish that we had in various different forms, whether the pork was grilled, barbequed or braised. I don't know what flavourings or spices they use, but the pork is always absolutely delicious. The dish often comes with some kind of fish sauce to pour over the rice, some fresh cucumber and a little bowl of clear chicken broth. The best versions we had were usually at food stops on long bus journeys.

Pork and rice at a market in Saigon

Grilled chicken and rice – this is a meal we had at a food stop on a bus journey from Hoi An to Nha Trang. It was 10pm, I hadn't eaten anything since lunch and I'd spent the past hour of the journey too hungry to sleep, day dreaming about my favourite foods. The chicken had been marinated in chilli, tumeric and garlic before being grilled, and it was served with some stir fried greens and a little bowl of soup. It was like the best thing I'd ever eaten.

Strawberry shake – Fruit shakes are pretty common throughout south east Asia, especially in tourist hotspots. Dalat is well known for growing strawberries so it only made sense to try out a strawberry shake when we visited the market. It was essentially fresh strawberries blended up with crushed ice, but it was easily the best shake we've had on this trip so far.

Strawberry wine – another one from Dalat. It tastes more like some sort of liqueur than wine. If you've ever had plum wine, it's similar in taste but, well, strawberry flavoured. I like.

Artichoke tea – the last in my list of Dalat drinks! Dalat's also a big producer of artichokes, and this apparently is a popular drink in the area. It's blended with sweet herbs (I don't know what exactly) so it has a slight caramel aftertaste. We had it after a cable car ride through the hills, and it's pretty good.

Drinking artichoke tea in the hills. Yes yes, I'm short, he's tall, get over it...

Mangosteen and Rambutan – two fruits we've tasted for the first time. Mangosteen has a deep purple, soft outer shell that you break open to reveal segments of white fruit inside, which have a sweet and slightly citrus taste. It's delicious and unlike any other fruit I've ever eaten. Rambutan is a red fruit with soft green spikes and looks potentially poisonous, or like some kind of alien plant life. This again is a soft shell. The fruit inside looks and tastes quite similar to lychees.

Mangosteen (left) and Rambutan (right)

I'm sure there's loads of other food that we didn't get to try, but there's always next time! Meanwhile, I'd definitely recommend seeking out a Vietnamese restaurant wherever you are. As I mentioned at the start of the post, Kingsland Road is a good place to start. I've only been to Song Que, which has good reviews on Time Out etc, but I've heard from London-based Vietnamese friends that a lot of the others in the area are worth checking out, even if they don't seem quite as busy or well publicised.