Traditional Vietnamese Food
Vietnam is a long coastal country with a rich history of food and a large population of 100 million people. With various environments, different ingredients grow in the various areas of the country leading to a lot of regional variations on classic dishes. Vietnamese cuisine emphasizes the use of fresh, seasonal, ingredients with food and eating being intimately integrated into Vietnamese culture. Continue reading to find out a little more about traditional Vietnamese food and some famous dishes that you’ll want to try!
What is Vietnamese Cuisine?
Vietnamese food varies by region, as with any other country, but the fundamental basis of any Vietnamese meal is rice. In fact, apparently the words rice and meal are synonymous in Vietnamese and people are often greeted with, “did you eat rice yet?”. This is generally in the form of steamed rice or rice-based noodles.
Fresh vegetables and herbs are also of huge importance, with common herbs including Chinese cilantro, Vietnamese cilantro, culantro, Thai basil, perilla, lemongrass, peppermint, etc. Herbs are referred to as “fragrant vegetables” which perhaps highlights just how important they are to Vietnamese cooking. In terms of protein sources, seafood is very popular due to its local availability but meat products like pork, chicken, and beef have massively increased in popularity. This is likely due to large decreases in poverty around the country, whereas historically meat would usually only be consumed on special occasions or by the wealthy.
For seasoning, the most essential ingredient is fish sauce or other fermented seafood products. This adds umami flavor to dishes and if you don’t have some at home and plan on cooking Vietnamese food this is an absolute must! An interesting aspect of Vietnamese cooking is also the balance of yin and yang in dishes by balancing “hot” and “cold” ingredients. These ingredients don’t need to literally be hot or cold but it is rather a concept of which ingredients pair with others in that “hot” ingredients should be balanced with “cold” ingredients.
What ingredients fall into each category can be found online but in Vietnam this information is passed down from parents/grandparents so people generally just know, assuming the information was passed onto them. Regionally, Northern Vietnam is most famous for fragrant/aromatic food, Central Vietnam is most famous for spicy food, and Southern Vietnam is most well known for incorporating sweetness like fruits and tamarind to their food.
I only had the pleasure of traveling through Northern Vietnam (Hanoi, Hai Phong, and Ha Long) and I can personally attest to the fact that Norther Vietnam has some seriously aromatic dishes! While I am personally a spice lover the food in Northern Vietnam was done perfectly for what it is and although it is not the kind of food I usually eat I have a much greater appreciation for Vietnamese food after having tried the amazingly fragrant dishes and abundance of herbs in Northern Vietnamese cooking!
Famous Vietnamese Dishes
Pho
Pho is famous worldwide and is considered Vietnam’s national dish. If you aren’t familiar with pho, it is a soup that is served with noodles, herbs/vegetables, and often meat. This is a relatively recently developed Vietnamese dish, with its creation dating back to the early-mid 20th. This is because beef consumption wasn’t commonplace in Vietnam prior to French colonial occupation but when the French came, they had a demand for beef which left behind beef bones that could be used. As such, the pho broth is made using beef bones with a variety of spices like anise and cloves, among others, to create a clear and fragrant broth.
There are many varieties of beef or other protein that may be found in pho but the most iconic preparation is when thin slices of raw beef are placed in the pho bowl and then the boiling broth is poured over the raw beef, perfectly cooking it. Noodles are then added and the pho is served with a side of fresh herbs, commonly coriander and Vietnamese basil, as well as vegetables like bean sprouts. I love this because it maintains the freshness of the herbs and the textures of the vegetables!
If you haven’t tried pho yet it is probably the Vietnamese dish that you are most likely to find wherever you live, so make sure to seek it out and get a taste of what Vietnamese food has to offer! I personally loved the pho in Vietnam and thought it was unparalleled to what I have tried in Canada, especially in terms of how aromatic the broth was, but I am sure there are some outstanding placed in Canada as well!
Banh Mi
Perhaps almost equally as popular as pho, at least here in Canada, is banh mi. Banh mi literally refers to bread, meaning wheat flour, but colloquially it has become the name of the most famous Vietnamese sandwich. While bread referred to as banh mi existed in Vietnam prior to French colonial occupation the banh mi sandwich was developed during the colonial period and originally catered to French tastes. This is why the banh mi resembles a baguette, although it is distinctly crispier on the outside and soft on the inside.
After the end of French colonialism, banh mi underwent changes to suit Vietnamese tastes and today there are a bunch of different banh mi options. The original banh mi is usually with pate and pork sausage with the most common toppings being cilantro, cucumber, pickled vegetables, and sauce. Other protein though like chicken and beef are common nowadays so there is definitely a banh mi for everyone!
I also discovered during my time in Vietnam that there is interesting rationality to banh mi. What we get here in Canada apparently resembles Saigon-style banh mi so the banh mi I had in Hanoi was actually quite different! I found that typically spicy sauce was not added in Hanoi, meat was often grilled, and there was more use of herbs and fresh vegetables than pickled vegetables! This being said I personally enjoy the supposed Saigon-style banh mi more but if you are a fan of grilled meat and fresher veggies/herbs you may enjoy the Hanoi/Norther style more!
Bun Bo Hue
Bun bo Hue, or simply bun bo (Hue is the city from which this dish originates), is a bun (noodle) dish. I enjoy pho but I have been told by many Vietnamese people that they actually prefer bun bo and that it is super popular in Vietnam. The bun bo broth also uses beef bones and meat but is different from pho broth in that the main spice/herb added is lemongrass and there is of course the addition of chili / chili oil to the broth which makes it distinctly spicy. Pork bones may also be used alongside beef bones when making the broth.
Similar to pho, a bunch of vegetables/herbs like cilantro, lime, raw onion, holy basil, mint, perilla etc., are offered on the side of the bun bo as well as sauces like chili sauce or chili oil infused with lemongrass. If you thought that Vietnamese soups couldn’t get any better after trying pho then make sure to try bun bo! While not super common in Hanoi compared to in other parts of the country, I got a chance to try some on a food tour in Hanoi (which I highly recommend) and it was so good! The lemongrass flavor was very strong and it was distinctly spicier than pho!
Com Tam
As I mentioned in the background on Vietnamese food, rice is the most essential component of a Vietnamese meal and is called com. One version of com that has grown in popularity from humble beginnings is com tam. Com tam is broken rice which is the product of the handling/processing of rice. Historically, broken rice was seen as undesirable for sale by rice farmers, so they would often eat the broken rice themselves to save money and sell the more desirable rice.
This dish increased in popularity around Vietnam though, but the most in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), with pork most often being served atop the broken rice. This dish is also accompanied by other toppings like green onion and sauces. Apparently, there is a saying that, "Saigon people eat cơm tấm like Hanoi people eat phở", which if true must mean this dish is very popular in Ho Chi Minh City today!
I did not get the opportunity to try this dish during my time in Vietnam but I will make sure to do so next time I visit, especially considering next time I visit I definitely want to go to Ho Chi Minh City!
Cà phê sữa đá
With all the craze around Taiwanese milk tea in Canada I am absolutely SHOCKED that cà phê sữa đá, or Vietnamese iced coffee, doesn’t receive more recognition. If you have never tried Vietnamese iced coffee you are definitely missing out and I feel like I haven’t heard a lot of people talk about it so I had to include it on this list.
Cà phê sữa đá is made by first adding condensed milk to a cup to which coffee is then added. This coffee is added to the cup via a Vietnamese drip method through a Vietnamese coffee filter (called a phin filter) but to me this most closely resembles the pour over method of making coffee (although admittedly I don’t know too much about coffee so correct me if I’m wrong). Once the coffee is finished brewing ice is added and the cup is given a mix. This produces a sweet, cold and milky coffee that still maintains a strong coffee flavor. It is especially strong because in Vietnam robusta coffee beans are grown which are apparently stronger than arabica beans but again, I am not coffee expert.
The Vietnamese iced coffee in Vietnam was so unbelievably good I cannot put it into words. The coffee flavor, sweetness, and milkiness was pretty much perfect everywhere I went, it was genuinely insane. I thought I liked Vietnamese iced coffee prior to visiting Vietnam but after visiting it is something I dream about. I am actually planning on ordering my own phin coffee filter to try and make it at home! If you are a coffee purist that only enjoys black coffee this may not be your absolute favorite but as someone who mostly drinks chai, I am used to milk based tea/coffee beverages and in my opinion, Vietnamese iced coffee is an absolute must try!
Traditional Vietnamese Food
I hope you all enjoyed this post and wish to try some of these Vietnamese dishes if you haven’t already! I personally loved all of these dishes when I tried them in Vietnam and cannot wait to go back to try more!
A book I got most of the extra information from for this post that I didn't already know and which I wanted to quickly shout out is the book, Lemongrass, Ginger and Mint Vietnamese Cookbook: Classic Vietnamese Street Food Made at Home, by Linh Nguyen. This is one of the best recipe books I have read and I absolutely love the way it is structured and the information it provides.
I adapted most of the information for this post (especially the background) from this book so make sure to check it out if you are interested in how to cook these famous dishes and many more. This is not a sponsored message by the way, (I will always specify if something is anyways) I was just very impressed by the quality of this cookbook. The cookbook doesn’t have many pictures though which I thought I should mention because I know some people like cookbooks with a lot of pictures.
Make sure to check out my other blog posts, especially my Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine posts if you want to learn more about Southeast Asian cuisine, and follow my social media to keep up with all the amazing food I try and places I visit!
