Vietnam Food Guide

What do you get if you combine Chinese food with French? Indian with Malay? And finally added a touch of American to it all? Vietnamese. One of the most interesting and distinctive cuisines of South East Asia, Vietnamese is a style of cooking which seems to combine the best of all worlds. You’ll find Chinese noodles and Chinese herbs here, alongside curry powder and ground rice pancakes- typically Indian foods. You can savour French bread, butter, excellent patés and coffee. And now it’s all uniquely Vietnamese.

The staple cereal of the country is rice, and with it is eaten a huge amount of seafood, meats and vegetables- all flavoured with a mind-boggling range of ingredients. Limes, tamarind, lemon grass, herbs, ginger, fish sauce (`nuoc mam’) and a variety of spices that go into making Vietnamese food a very highly flavoured cuisine. What is perhaps most distinctive is the range of fresh herbs used- basil, mint, coriander, dill, lemon grass…the list is endless. You’ll also find some rather unusual fruits in the country- pomelo, mangosteen, green dragon fruit, jujube, and three-seed cherry. May sound strange, but they’re worth a try.