What do people eat in Vietnam?
Many Vietnamese eat breakfast out, a bowl of pho or a banh mi between 6:00 and 8:00, have rice or noodles at lunch, and share rice, soup and several dishes at a family dinner.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is often eaten at a street stall between 6:00 and 8:00 and finished in about ten minutes. A bowl of pho, around 450 kcal, is the classic in Hanoi, along with banh cuon rice rolls or sticky rice called xoi. In Ho Chi Minh City it is more often a banh mi or com tam, broken rice with grilled pork.
Lunch
Lunch is around 11:00 to 13:00, and many people take a short nap after it. In Hanoi the lunch dish is bun cha: grilled pork patties in a sweet and sour broth with rice noodles and herbs, about 550 kcal. Office workers often eat com binh dan, a plate of rice with two or three dishes picked from a counter.
Dinner
Dinner is the family meal, usually from about 18:00 to 19:00. Everyone gets a bowl of rice and shares the dishes in the middle: a clear soup, a plate of greens such as morning glory, and meat or fish braised in fish sauce. A small dish of nuoc mam, fish sauce, sits on the table for dipping.
Starters
Meals are not served in courses, so most dishes arrive together. Fresh rolls, goi cuon, wrap shrimp, pork, herbs and noodles in rice paper. Fried rolls are called cha gio in the south and nem ran in the north, two make about 250 kcal. Banh xeo, a crisp rice flour pancake, is wrapped in lettuce and herbs and dipped in fish sauce.
Desserts
After a meal there is usually fruit, such as mango, dragon fruit or rambutan. Sweets are a snack rather than a last course: che is a sweet soup or drink of beans, jelly, fruit and coconut milk, served warm or over ice. Banh flan, a caramel custard from the French era, is sold at many stalls.
Drinks
Ca phe sua da is strong robusta coffee dripped through a small metal filter, the phin, onto sweetened condensed milk and poured over ice, about 160 kcal a glass. Green tea comes with many meals, often free. Beer is drunk over ice, and in Hanoi bia hoi is fresh draught beer sold cheaply on street corners.
Street food
Much of the eating happens on the pavement, on low plastic stools. Besides pho and banh mi there is bun bo Hue, a spicy beef noodle soup from Hue, cao lau noodles in Hoi An and banh trang nuong, grilled rice paper with egg, sold in the evening. A street dish often costs 15,000 to 50,000 dong.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Noodle soup is breakfast, and many locals say pho is best before 8:00, when the broth is freshest. Hanoi drinks egg coffee, coffee under egg yolk whisked with sugar and condensed milk, first made in 1946 when milk was scarce. Hot vit lon, a fertilised duck egg boiled and eaten with salt, pepper and herbs, is an everyday evening snack.