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Follow food bloggers, celebrity chefs and cooking competitions on TV shows or social media. You have imagined a wonderful food panorama of Vietnam. But only when enjoying it directly, you can understand why Vietnamese cuisine appears in famous transcontinental newspapers. Together with Indochinago – a travel tour guide service provider, a food tour will showcase immediately about the unique cuisine of Vietnam. It will turn out to be the most memorable food trip you’ve ever had.

Find yourself a local tour guide and discover Vietnamese cuisine right away!

1. Street food

Each region has its own signature dishes which you cannot taste through books or newspapers. You must go to the place, sit down on the roadside and enjoy a hot delicious dish, to fully understand and absorb the unique tastes of Vietnamese food. Here outstanding representatives in Vietnam:

Hanoi

Hanoi cuisine is considered to conclude the quintessence of Kinh Ky, containing the cultural length, ingenuity and sophistication of Hanoi people. Coming to Hanoi during your Vietnam tours to discover the nation’s cuisine, ice cream is a common dish that you definitely should not miss. 

• Trang Tien ice-cream: the childhood gift of many generations, a familiar dish associated with the memory color array of many old Hanoians.

Money cream – a childhood gift of Hanoians

• Sticky rice ice cream: As a familiar snack for many Vietnamese people, sticky rice ice cream is considered a great “gift” for hot summer days. In Hanoi, you can find sticky rice ice cream almost everywhere.

Ha Long Bay

Located by the sea, the street specialties of Ha Long Bay are also associated with seafood like shrimp, crab, squid,… from sea waves. Here are the lists dishes that you cannot miss:

• Squid Sausage: The best street food worth trying when coming to Ha Long Bay, made from fresh squid caught from the bay.

• Gật Gù Cake: Although having a strange name, this dish has a special taste of Quang Ninh land and makes everyone ‘nod head’ when tasting it. Do you want to try this one?

Ha Long’s top specialties that you must try

• Horseshoe Crab: Called Sam in Vietnamese, living mainly in shallow sea environments, can be processed into many different dishes with extremely delicious taste.

Hue

If you are curious about the dishes  served to past emperors and royal families of the Nguyen Dynasty, Hue cuisine is the best choice. Tourists nowadays can find lots of roadside stalls and restaurants serving these specialities. 

• Banh Hue (Hue cakes): Hue has many delicious cakes, which are popular in many other regions. Several Hue cakes you should try once include: banh khot, banh beo, banh bot loc,…

Travelling to Hue, must try Hue cakes

• Nem Lui (Hue Lemongrass Skewer): a kebab-like dish using lemongrass stalks, served with lettuce and cucumber slices, rice paper, fresh herbs and rice vermicelli – then make a roll and dip it into a local sauce.

Hoi an

Coming to Hoi An, you will be surprised at the line waiting for eating banh mi or tasting a traditional drink named Ngot. In addition, you can try some attractive cuisines such as:

• Clam salad: a traditional food from Cam Nam island, made of fresh clams, vegetables and some ingredients like ginger, chili, peper, onion, fish sauce and peanuts – served with crispy crackers.

Hoi An dishes are heavily influenced by Chinese cuisin

• Banh Bao Banh Vac (White Rose Dumpling): a simple steamed dumpling made with rice flour, pork, minced shrimp, and served with deep fried shallots. The special thing is that all around Hoi An, there is only one family that makes this kind of dish.

Saigon

Saigon should definitely be put in your South East Asia holiday packages. The city has a great cuisine and culture for you to explore. 

• Banh mi: along with pho, banh mi is one of Vietnam’s best specialties. This food appears in every corner of Saigon so it’s not hard to find one.

• Oc (Vietnamese Shellfish): if you come to Saigon, snails are the food you must try once. Saigon is considered a snail paradise with a variety of dishes prepared from boiled, steamed, fried, grilled,…

Saigon has various types of snails that you must try once

• Banh trang tron (rice paper mix): Snacks are addictive and especially loved by young people, basically consisting of thinly sliced rice paper, quail eggs, beef jerky, laksa leaves, mango, and some other toppings if you want.

2. Local food

Hanoi

Hanoi cuisine is sweet and light, with specialties often including vermicelli, pho,…

• Pho: a classic and must-try dish when coming to Hanoi – made with aromatic soup, filled with slices of rice noodles, beef, and plateful of fresh herbs, chili, and lemon.

Pho is one of the best dishes in the world voted by culinary experts

• Bun cha: one of the most flavorful and outstanding dishes of Vietnamese cuisine. You can find this dish in other major cities in Vietnam, but only in Hanoi can you find a dish with an authentic taste.

Ha Long Bay

• Drunken Prawn and Lobster/lobster hotpot: Fresh seafood is the specialty of any coastal city, and also the same with Ha Long. Lobster is steamed with lemongrass and beer or vodka, which both eliminates the fishy smell and helps retain seafood’s natural delicious flavor.

Lobster is usually steamed with lemongrass, beer or cooked in hot pot

• Ngan (Austriella Corrugata): a kind of fresh seafood that can be processed through many ways: grilled, fried, steamed,… Especially, if possible, you should try Ngan wine with its unique and indescribable taste.

• Sa Sung (Sipunculus Nudu): A rather strange name, but is a specialty that many tourists enjoy when visiting Ha Long. Locally, Sa Sung is considered a type of seafood reserved for the rich.

Hue

Hue cuisine is predominantly spicy and sweet in flavour. It’s a combination of fresh herbs like lemongrass, red chilies, basil and mint – mixed with the quintessential fermented fish sauce.

• Bun bo hue (Vietnamese spicy soup with beef in Hue style): the signature of Hue, favored by most Vietnamese and foreign travellers – a combination of sweet, spicy and sour, flavoured with boiled bones and shank, lemongrass, annatto seeds, ginger, chilli oil, sugar, and fermented shrimp paste.

Bun Bo Hue – specialty voted to be one of the best dishes of the world

• Clam Rice: a dish of rice topped with baby basket clams, shrimp paste, roasted peanuts, crispy pork skins, and fresh green herbs. In Dong Ba market, you can find this specialty for only 1$.

Hoi an

• Hoi An chicken rice: Like pho in Hanoi and banh mi in Saigon, you can find chicken rice almost anywhere in Hoi An. It only costs about 2$ for a plate of hot and filling chicken rice.

• Quang noodles: you can try a delicious bowl of hot noodles with different fillings such as pork, boiled egg, seafood,… The dish is served with raw vegetables, rice paper, chili and pickled onions.

Quang noodle is definitely on your food list to discover when coming to Hoi An

• Cao lau noodles: one of the famous dishes of Quang, made from local ingredients and can only be found in Hoi An.

Saigon

• Com Tam (Broken Rice): Famous dish of the magnificent land of Saigon, is a familiar dish of all people here. Saigon people eat broken rice in the morning, noon, evening and even at night. Therefore, if you have come here, you should also try once to understand the local culinary culture.

Saigon people eat broken rice at all meals of the day

• Hu Tieu (Rice Noodles): Saigon has many types of noodle soup, however, two of them that you should try are Hu tieu Nam Vang and Hu tieu Go. Hu tieu Nam Vang is somewhat in “higher-class” restaurants, while hu tieu go is a familiar roadside dish for everyone.

• Bun mam: a dish with a bold culinary flavor of the southern region with the base of fermented fish sauce. This dish is served with vermicelli and seafood toppings.

If you are hesitant to choose Vietnam in your travel plan, Vietnamese cuisine is the perfect leverage for you to make that quick decision. Come and go now, and don’t forget to book this culinary tour within 2 weeks (13 days 12 nights). By booking our tour and joining with our travel tour guide, you will have the chance to explore Vietnamese cuisine – one of the oldest and most attractive cuisines in the world.