HO CHI MINH CITY
Royal Saigon Restaurant – Really good food here and very cheap. In a very busy area but once inside, it’s actually quite peaceful. I had the Vietnamese curry and Paul had the rice noodle dish with pork, spring rolls and veg. The wontons were really good!
Journeys Sandwich Cafe – We cam here twice for brunch and had banh mi with wedges. Banh mi is basically a baguette filled with amazing flavours. The chicken and satay beef were epic. The coffee was also very good here!
Den Long Restaurant – It was lovely here and the staff were wonderful. When our waitress found out we were going to Hanoi, she wrote down a whole list of things for us to do and places to eat and drink at. How lovely! The portion sizes are quite small but it was top notch. The claypot pork was absolutely gorgeous!
NHA TRANG
We didn’t really come to Nha Trang with high hopes for food because it’s a commercialised beach resort and we just wanted to have a rest! We did eat some nice pizzas though 😀
Highlands Coffee – This is a big chain similar to Starbucks so we had to give it a try. With Christmas songs constantly blaring out of the speakers, we decided to opt for one of the Christmas drinks. You could actually taste the coffee which was a pleasant surprise because it was packed full of cream, cornflakes and jelly! Very bizarre but we enjoyed it!
Olivia Restaurant – We enjoyed the pizzas here. One was a vegetarian one with chillis and the other was a ham and mushroom. The staff are lovely and the decor is really nice and relaxing.
Boss Hotel – We were staying here and they had just opened their restaurant downstairs and we’re offering guests a 30% discount. The staff are just lovely even though they don’t really know what they are doing and I had to help to open a bottle of wine! The food was alright though and I hope it takes off for them because they are just so nice! I had the beef lok lak (Vietnamese Shaking Beef) and Paul had spaghetti as he really fancied some!!
La Velvet Restaurant (no website or anything yet) – Stumbled upon this place by chance and what a pleasant surprise!! It’s only been open a month and there is just one chef on his own but the food is gorgeous!!! I had chicken fillet in a creamy mushroom sauce and Paul had ostrich steak in a red wine sauce. We shared the new potatoes and roasted veg after I’d taken the pictures. The chef is only young but he will definitely go far as there was so much flavour in everything!! Best meal in Nha Trang by an absolute mile!!!
HOI AN
The Claypot Restaurant – This place is really good. I had the pork and eggplant claypot and Paul had the pork, sugarcane, pineapple and coconut claypot (a popular dish). Paul’s was really sweet but he enjoyed it and the pork is gorgeous. The spring rolls were also amazing!
We went to The Claypot again and had a local delicacy which is Com Ga (chicken rice). The rice is yellow because of the added turmeric and the chicken is boiled, slightly spiced and shredded. It’s also served with a sauce, onions, mint and carrot (or papaya) and you mix it all together. Amazing!!
Hoi An Roastery – Every coffee lover’s dream place. They have 6 branches in Hoi An and only opened last year! The pour over is amazing!!
Tin Tin Restaurant – A small, cute place not far from our hotel. We had a couple of local delicacies here. First we shared the white rose dumplings which are made from translucent white dough filled with spiced minced shrimp or pork, and bunched up to look like little white roses. I had the chicken pho which is the famous Vietnamese noodle soup and Paul had the Cao Lau which is unique to Hoi An and can only be made using the water from an Ancient Cham well just outside the village. All were amazing.
We went back to Tin Tin and had another local speciality – quang noodles. It’s a rice noodle dish served with shrimp, pork, vegetables and spices. Really tasty. We also had their take on the fried wontons that we’re now obsessed with!
Night Market – The markets here are stunning because they are filled with lanterns. We stopped by a little stall and had a banh xeo which is a crispy rice pancake filled with shrimp, pork, beansprouts, veg, herbs and spices. Delicious!!
Quan an Cuong – Stopped here for a quick cao lau and we also tried the Hoi An fried wonton. Amazing!!! They are fried and have the filling inside but are left flattened then topped with a salsa style dressing.
Roast – This coffee shop is so cute and the staff are really lovely. It must be very new though as they aren’t on Google Maps and they don’t have a website or anything so I’ve just roughly put the marker on the map of where they are. Anyway, we’ve had the espresso there (mega strong) and the coconut coffee which is pictured below. They also have a good selection of pastries and cakes. Paul had the apple and cinnamon pastry and I had the banana cake 😀
HUE
Now, we went on a food tour in Hue and if you get the chance to, I’d highly recommend it as you visit places that you wouldn’t necessarily go to on your own and the guides are really lovely! We booked ours through this website and did the Hue Walking Tour: http://tasteofhue.com/hue-food-tour/hue-walking-tour/
Here are a few other places that we went to in our own time.
Le’s Garden – Quite a big bar/restaurant but that didn’t affect the food in any way. It was fresh and delicious! The first dish is called Nem Lui and is a very popular dish in Hue. The ground pork is grilled on a skewer of a lemongrass stalk (imagine that flavour) and served with a selection of veg, peanut dipping sauce and rice paper to create your own mouth-watering kebabs. Don’t worry if you don’t know where to start though as the waiting staff are lovely and will happily show you what to do. Feeling the love for lemongrass, a flavour we missed deeply from Thailand, we opted for the lemongrass and chilli chicken claypot. There was absolutely tons of flavour and we were happily stuffed by the end of the meal!
Madam Thu – We loved it here. We shared 4 dishes which are all famous in Hue:
1. Banh beo are small rice cakes topped with shrimp, crispy pork and shallots and served with a Vietnamese dipping sauce. You can drizzle some of the sauce then use a small spoon to eat the rice cakes.
2. Goi cuon are steamed Vietnamese spring rolls filled with lots of veg and wrapped up in rice paper.
3. Banh Khoai are pan fried crepes which are yellow due to turmeric. They’re filled with shrimp, pork, beansprouts, veg and served with a delicious hoisin based dipping sauce. Gorgeous but couldn’t eat many of them.
4. I can’t remember what these were called but they are a type of spring roll wrapped in vermicelli noodles and fried. They are so light though and served with a fish dipping sauce.
Neither of us can remember what this place was called but we’re pretty sure is something cheesy like Cheers. It’s on the other side of the side street to Le’s Garden and was always really busy with locals! We walked past one day and they had a barbecue on. The pork was some of the best we’d had and it only cost about 70p each in total. Amazing!
Quan Xuan Trang – We asked Kim our food tour guide where she recommended for a Friday night and she told us to come here as the atmosphere is buzzing filled with locals and the food is a great accompaniment to a beer or 2. We opted for the Vietnamese shaking beef which is basically the same as the Cambodian Beef Lok Lak. It packed a punch and was the perfect way to spend a Friday night on the balcony watching the world go by with NO SCOOTERS because it had turned into a walking street for the weekend. Bliss!!
HANOI
Looking back at photos from Hanoi, it looks like we hardly ate! Obviously, this couldn’t be further from the truth and when I think about it, we spent 3 days trekking through Sa Pa and 2 days on a boat in Halong Bay which means the rest of the time, we clearly forgot to take pictures of our food. Oops! Anyway, I’ll put a couple of places up that we went to but please know that Hanoi is full to the brim of brilliant food and drink so you’ll be spoilt for choice, especially for the speciality of Bun Cha.
There is a tiny place on the street called Lo Su which serves banh mi and we were recommended it so off we toddled. Banh mi is everywhere in Vietnam and we ate quite a lot of them. The best places are the tiny ones where there’s very often just one person running the show with a lot of locals waiting to get their sandwich fix. Due to the language barrier, we just asked for 2 and got the original one which was filled with different variations of pork and packed with veg and a spicy sauce. We really miss banh mis as not only are the amazingly tasty but they only cost about 50p. I’ve put a rough marker on the map and just called it Banh Mi Place.
Giang Cafe – famous for its Ca Phe Trung (egg coffee) this place isn’t the easiest to find but totally worth the hunt down a narrow corridor where it opens up even more if you go up the stairs. When milk was scarce, the original owner used chicken egg yolk, Vietnamese coffee powder, sweetened condensed milk, butter and cheese to create the perfect egg coffee. Please don’t let the ingredients put you off as it is really good and reminds me more of a creme brulee rather than a coffee.
The Gourmet Corner Restaurant – We went all out on Christmas Day and had a fine dining Christmas dinner but don’t forget that being in SE Asia means its luxury that is affordable!! To start we had soup with a huge piece of fish and a light broth. Very nice. For our main, we had venison which was cooked to perfection and is the first and probably last time we’ll ever have venison for Christmas dinner so I’m glad it was so delicious! The dessert was a very pretty display of ice cream, chocolate and fruit. Heavenly for me. Our waitress was just lovely and it was a very special way to spend our first Christmas away from home.
