I recently travelled to Hanoi (Vietnam) with my family for Holidays.
Naturally, we were excited to check out the various local attractions.
Through the various YouTube videos, I also learned about the famous local food of Vietnam — Bun cha, Banh mi, Egg coffee.
Most Indians are vegetarian; many also eat Egg, Chicken and Fish, but most don’t eat Pork and Beef.
That usually limits our eating options when travelling abroad, but we still wanted to try out the local dishes.
“Would we love Vietnam’s food as much as the travel vlogs promised?”
First Encounters with Vietnamese Food
Banh Mi
Banh Mi looked like an Indian-style sandwich so I was looking forward to eating it, and I thought an Egg and chicken Banh Mi would taste familiar to what we get back home.
However, the taste of the fillings/sauce felt unfamiliar; it had some ingredient which we could not relate to.
Perhaps, if I had tried it at a few more places, maybe it could have tasted more familiar because the Banh Mi really looks like a Subway sandwich.
By then we had found another food item (mentioned below) that we really liked and could have on the go (it was sweeter and less healthier though).
Sometimes familiar looking dishes may taste completely different abroad.
Bun Cha
By now, we had found a Vietnamese restaurant where we found a couple of dishes that tasted like Chinese food you get back in India, and we really liked those dishes (fried chicken with rice/noodles, fried Shrimp with rice/noodles).
Bun cha is a classic Vietnamese dish, consisting of pork, rice noodles, variety of herbs and vegetables.
I was hoping that the restaurant would offer a version that had chicken, instead of pork.
However, the waiter told us that since Bun cha is a traditional dish, it comes only with pork and they don’t offer one with chicken.
So unfortunately we could not try the pork-based Bun cha.
Egg Coffee
My family was really eager to try the egg coffee since we love coffee.
So we tried one (we shared one to get a feel for it).
Again, we really couldn’t acquire the taste.
I think it was because of the taste of raw egg, which we are not used to.
But if you are used to having dishes that use raw eggs as an ingredient, perhaps you may like it.
The famous Pho 10 Ly Quoc Su restaurant in Hanoi
(Pho 10 is a popular (and crowded) restaurant in Hanoi’s Old Quarter area. Image by author)
Finding Comfort Food Abroad
For the remaining part of the trip, we didn’t experiment and stuck to Dominos (Pizza), Indian restaurant, and a Vietnamese restaurant where we found a couple of dishes that tasted like Chinese food in India.
Roti Buns
This is what we relished and ate whenever we could.
The King Roti outlet in Hanoi has some of the best buns. These buns come with different fillings such as chocolate, vanilla.
It’s sweeter, less healthier, but we were on Holidays.
