What to eat in Vietnam and where, from the dishes that belong to one city to the ones every menu carries. Vietnamese food is regional in a way that surprises visitors: the same dish changes name and flavour between Hanoi and Saigon, and breakfast is the meal that matters most.
Dishes
What to order, and what arrives when you do. Each of these says where the dish is from, how it changes as you go south, and what a plate of it should cost on a pavement rather than in a restaurant.
Vietnam is not only noodles. Com tam, com ga and the rice-plate lunch that most of the country actually eats, with what each costs and when to find it.
Xoi is steamed glutinous rice heaped with whatever the stall does best, wrapped and carried. What the varieties mean, what it costs, and when it runs out.
Goi is shredded green fruit, herbs, peanuts and fish sauce, eaten as a course of its own. The five worth ordering, what they cost, and which ones hide meat.
Vietnam has 3,260 km of coast and sells its seafood by weight, which is where visitors lose money. What to order, where, and the four questions to ask first.
Half of what smells good on a Vietnamese pavement came off charcoal. What nuong covers, the dishes worth crossing a city for, and how a grill table works.
Vietnamese dessert is a bowl of beans, jelly and coconut milk, served cold and eaten in the afternoon. What che is, what to order, and where to find it.
Com tam is broken rice under a grilled pork chop, and Saigon eats it all day. What arrives on the plate, what it costs, and why the cutlery is a spoon.
Banh cuon is rice batter steamed on stretched cloth and rolled around pork and mushroom in seconds. What arrives, the regional versions, and what it costs.
Rice paper grilled over charcoal with egg, spring onion, dried shrimp and sauce, folded and eaten hot. What goes on it, where to find it, and what it costs.
Bo kho is a southern beef stew of lemongrass, star anise and annatto, eaten at breakfast with a baguette. What is in it, what it costs, where to order it.
Thit kho is pork belly and eggs braised in coconut water and caramel, the pot a southern family cooks for Tet. What is in it and how the north differs.
Canh chua is a tamarind soup of fish, pineapple and elephant-ear stem, shared over rice rather than eaten from a bowl. What is in it and what it comes with.
Bo la lot is minced beef rolled in wild betel leaf and grilled over charcoal, eaten as wraps with herbs. What the leaf is, how to eat it, what it costs.
Turmeric fish finished in a pan at your table under a heap of dill. What is in the marinade, how to build the bowl, and whether the famous address is the one.
Noodle bowls
Pho is one of about a dozen. Each of these is a named bowl with its own noodle, its own broth or sauce and its own city, and each says how it is eaten, when it is sold and what it costs on a pavement.
Pho is two dishes with one name. The northern bowl is clear and bare, the southern one sweet and buried in herbs. What to order, where, and when to eat it.
Pho is one soup among many, and rarely the best one in the street. Bun bo Hue, bun cha, cao lau, mi Quang and hu tieu — what each is and which city owns it.
Bun cha is grilled pork in a bowl of warm fish sauce, with cold noodles and herbs alongside. What arrives, how to assemble it, and why it is a lunch dish.
Cao lau is a thick chewy noodle with pork, crisp squares and almost no broth, sold in one town. What is in the bowl, what it costs, and why it stays put.
Fried tofu, pressed noodles, pork and herbs on a bamboo tray, with shrimp paste whipped at the table. What arrives, how to eat it, and what to ask for instead.
Grilled lemongrass pork on cold rice noodles, with herbs, pickles, peanuts and fish sauce poured over. What is in the bowl, how to eat it, and what it costs.
Bun mam is the Mekong's strongest noodle soup: a broth of fermented fish with prawn, squid, pork and aubergine. What it tastes like and where to order it.
Mien luon is eel with glass noodles, wet or dry, eaten at breakfast in Hanoi and Nghe An. What is in it, how the two versions differ, what a bowl costs.
A clear chicken broth under shredded chicken, egg, pork sausage and dried shrimp, all cut to matchstick width. What is in it, what it costs, where it came from.
Ingredients and drinks
The plate of herbs nobody explains, the fish sauce the whole kitchen is built on, and what is in the glass. Vietnamese cooking is assembled at the table, so knowing the parts changes what you order.
Every bowl arrives with a pile of leaves nobody explains. What the six common Vietnamese herbs are, which dish each belongs to, and whether to eat them raw.
Sixteen fruits, what each costs a kilo in season and out, how to pick one at a stall, and what is left on the stalls in the months when nothing ripens.
Vietnam grows robusta and built a whole drinking culture on it. What the phin is for, what to order first, and where egg coffee and salt coffee came from.
Vietnam runs on iced tea nobody charges for, and also grows some of Asia's oldest tea trees. What to drink, what to buy, and what the good stuff costs.
The cheapest beer on earth exists because it has to be drunk today. What bia hoi is, why the iced tea is free, and which bottled beers are worth knowing.
Between the coffee and the beer sits a whole cold-drinks culture nobody writes about. What sinh to is, what a glass costs, and which ones are worth queuing for.
Bubble tea is the Vietnamese teenager's coffee shop, on every corner since the late 2010s. What the chains are, what to order, and what a cup costs.
How eating works
Where to eat, what it costs, and how to eat around an allergy or without meat. The mechanics of the meal rather than the menu: the market, the stall, the plastic stool and the bill.
A wet market is finished by mid-morning and a night market has not started. Which markets are worth the trip, when each one works, and how to buy at them.
Street food is rarely what makes travellers ill in Vietnam. What the evidence blames instead: raw herbs, cut fruit, unwashed hands — and ice more than expected.
A full day of eating in Vietnam costs less than one restaurant main at home. What each meal actually costs, where the prices double, and what to order.
Fish sauce is in almost everything and peanuts are on top of it. What hides where, the phrases that work, and why a rice-noodle country is not gluten-free.
Vietnam has a Buddhist vegetarian tradition with its own word and its own restaurants, and fish sauce in almost everything else. How to use both facts.
A Vietnamese menu runs on about thirty words. What nuong, xao, kho and chay mean, how to ask for no meat or no fish sauce, and what the price column says.
