We didn’t arrive into Vietnam until late afternoon and by the time we dropped our bags off at the hotel, we were desperate for some food. We walked towards Ben Thanh Market and found a frozen yoghurt shop. I had seem many of these frozen yoghurt places in Korea, but I didn’t know of any in China, so when we came across this place, close to the Ben Thanh Market, we decided to give it a try. The ironic thing is that we didn’t actually try any frozen yoghurt but instead had actual food instead, as we were both really hungry from a full day of travelling. Our first meal in Vietnam wasn’t very Vietnamese at all, but it was good enough to give us some energy to start exploring Ho Chi Minh City.
We were walking around on our second day and was in desperate need of a snack, and found a little corner restaurant on our way back to the hotel. There were quite a few of these little snack shacks around our hotel and we chose one that had lots of pictures on the walls. We ended up ordering crab spring rolls and some sweet potato with shrimp. The spring rolls were delicious, but the sweet potato things were just a bit too “fried” for me. We weren’t really sure how to eat it, as they also served us lettuce and rice vermicelli, so we were just winging it and wrapping everything into the lettuce.
We kept seeing broken rice on many of the menus and I finally decided to substitute regular rice for broken rice during supper on our second night in Vietnam. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize they would charge me 9000₫ extra for broken rice, which turned out to just be crispy rice. I actually think I would have preferred regular rice more with this meal, but in the end, it didn’t really matter as it turned out to be a very good meal choice.
On our second morning in Ho Chi Minh, we were in the downtown area visiting the Cathedral, Post office and War Remnants Museum. We didn’t realize it at the time, but tourist attractions in Vietnam tend to close for a couple of hours over the lunch hour. So although this put a little dent in our plans, we decided to just grab some lunch at a local café before we continued sightseeing. I’m not usually a huge fan of Vietnamese soups, but seeing as I was in Vietnam, I felt that it was absolutely necessary to try it. I ordered rice noodles with beef brisket and it turned out to be quite delicious. The flavours were rich and savoury, which I thought was necessary, to counter the normally tasteless rice noodles. It turned out to be much better than I had anticipated.
We had reached Hanoi and I still had yet to try Vietnamese bread, so I made it a mission to find a place to have a Vietnamese sub on our first night in Hanoi. I ordered a beef satay sub, expecting it to be similar to the ones I’ve had in Canada. In reality, nothing about it was the same. The sauce was strong and the bread wasn’t as fresh as I had hoped. I guess that’s what happens when I decide to have a sub at 8 o’clock at night.
We also ordered this coconut sticky rice dessert which I expected to be similar to a dessert I’d had before in Thailand. It was light, flavourful and just sweet enough to curb my cravings for dessert.
On our last full day in Vietnam, we decided to splurge and have lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the Hoàn Kiếm Lake. We ordered several different things to try and they were all delicious. Again, we still hadn’t completely figured out how to eat our meals yet and one of the waiters came over to try and give us some tips – which foods required dipping, which foods were supposed to be eaten with which. It really didn’t matter as we enjoyed trying everything out our own way!
0 comments on “Simple Vietnamese Food Adventures” Add yours →