Vietnamese Food

Vietnamese food is one of my favourite cuisines in the world. And it can be found everywhere here - in a normal restaurant, on the streets and roadside, busy marketplace, on narrow alleyways and even on the floating markets. There's even mobile kitchens and street cookouts so as a tourist, you'll never go hungry. And the best thing is the food here is really cheap.

They say the most authentic Vietnamese food is found at street side "restaurants". You can easily identify these places by their collection of colourful, tiny plastic outdoor furnitures placed on the footpath. The most popular dish served here is Pho. Pho is a broth soup with beef or chicken and rice noodles served with plates of fresh herbs, cut limes, hot chillis and and bean sprouts which you can add in according to your taste. It is Vietnam's national dish - it's so delicious they eat it all the time for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Vietnamese cuisine is fantastic and really fresh, often chickens and ducks are kept round the back of restaurants and killed to order. I loved eating out in the city, there are so many choices. Some of the food I hade include:

• Bún chả

Grilled pork, spring rolls and vermicelli noodles served with salad

• Cơm tấm

Grilled pork ribs and slices of sausages and fried egg and shredded pork and pork skin served with broken rice and tomatoes and sliced cucumber with dipping sauce made out of  fish sauce, lime and shredded pickled carrots.

• Gỏi cuốn

A popular dish consisting of prawns, rice vermicelli, salad and other ingredients wrapped in rice paper. Served with dipping sauce with peanuts.

• Bánh cuốn

Rice flour roll stuffed with ground pork, prawns and mushrooms, served with salad and sliced pork and fried onions

• Braised caramel pork belly

Throughout my trip wandering around Saigon's and Hanoi's many sights, I had also succumb to the odd street snacks -banh mi (baguette), banh bao (steamed bun dumpling), xeo (sticky rice dessert), pastries, sweets, and cakes.  

At times they do seem to be very unhygienic and unsafe to eat. But even though much of the way food is prepared and sold in Vietnam seems crazy to us, it is probably harmless, as the locals have been eating it forever and they seem to survive.

Generally speaking, I found that eating at the street side restaurants and market stalls tends to be cheaper and taste better than in the normal walk-in restaurants. And if you get tired of Vietnamese food, you can easily find Chinese, Indian, Thai and Western food (in case anyone is wondering, there is no McDonald's in this country). From the few non-Vietnamese food I have tried, it was good but not great. I'd rather stick with the local stuff.