Reading a Vietnamese menu, word by word

A Vietnamese menu runs on about 30 words, and most of them describe how the thing was cooked rather than what it is. Learn the cooking verbs and the noodle nouns and a board you could not read becomes a list you can order from.

The street makes it easier still. Most stalls sell one dish, so the sign above the pavement is the whole menu. What you choose is the size rather than the item.

How was it cooked?

The cooking word sits at the end of the dish name, and it is the most useful half of the menu. Bun thit nuong is noodles with grilled pork; com ga luoc is rice with poached chicken; the pattern almost never breaks.

Two of those matter more than the rest. Nuong means charcoal, which the grilled food guide covers in full. Kho is the dark caramel braise behind half the home cooking in the country.

What is the first word?

The first word is almost always the carbohydrate, and it tells you what arrives under everything else. Bun, pho, mien, mi and hu tieu are five different noodles, not five dishes, and a kitchen that sells one rarely sells another.

Banh is the one that catches people. It covers banh mi the sandwich, banh xeo the crepe, banh cuon the steamed sheet and banh chung the Tet cake. The word tells you almost nothing on its own, so banh always needs the second word. The noodle soups guide sorts the bowls out.

What is xoi, and what is chao?

Xoi is sticky rice sold by weight for breakfast, and chao is rice porridge eaten when somebody is ill or hungover. Both are cheap, both are everywhere before nine in the morning, and neither appears on a restaurant menu aimed at visitors.

A portion of xoi runs 15,000 to 30,000 dong from a basket or a glass cabinet. Mung bean, fried shallots, pork floss or a quail egg goes on top. The sticky rice page covers the versions; the breakfast guide covers the hour.

How do you ask for no meat or no fish sauce?

Chay is the word to learn first: it means vegetarian in the Buddhist sense, with no meat, no fish and no fish sauce. A sign reading com chay is a vegetarian rice shop, and the food there never contained any of it.

• An chay — I eat vegetarian.
• Khong thit — no meat.
• Khong nuoc mam, or khong mam — no fish sauce.
• Khong cay — not spicy.
• Khong duong — no sugar, which matters most in drinks.

Fish sauce is the hard one, because it is in the dipping bowl, the marinade and the broth rather than on the plate. Eating vegetarian in Vietnam sets out where that goes wrong. Eating with an allergy covers the same problem when it is medical rather than chosen.

Which words tell you what will arrive?

Six words on a Vietnamese menu decide the shape of the meal rather than its ingredients, and they are the ones visitors misread most often: whether it arrives wet or dry, rolled, cold, or cooked at your own table.

Goi and cuon travel together on menus and mean different things. Goi cuon is a fresh rice-paper roll, and goi alone is the shredded salad the salads page is about. Nhau marks a place built for a long evening rather than a quick lunch.

What do the prices mean?

Prices are written in thousands of dong, and the thousands are usually dropped. A board reading 40 means 40,000 dong, about 1.50 US dollars at roughly 26,000 dong to the dollar. A board reading 40.000 means the same number.

Two conventions follow from that. A price written as 40k is the same number again. A stall with no prices at all is not hiding anything: it sells one dish at one price, which the person beside you is paying.

What is on the glass? Drinks, in five words

The drinks list is shorter than the food and the words repeat. Tra da is iced green tea, it arrives unasked at most rice shops and it is usually free.

Da is the one to remember, because it turns a hot drink into an iced one in a country where that is the default. The coffee guide covers what arrives when you order each of those, and the drinks guide covers the evening half.

When is there no menu at all?

A stall with one dish has no menu, and the sign above it is the whole list. A board reading Bun Cha sells bun cha. The only questions are the portion and the drink, and pointing at what the next table is eating works everywhere.

One dish per stall is the normal case on a Vietnamese pavement rather than the exception. The shop signs guide covers the words on the sign itself: quan, tiem, com binh dan, nha hang. Between that page and this one, an ordinary street stops being unreadable.