No vacation is complete without special regional foods. To be honest, I probably missed out some of the best stuff because I played it safe and didn’t eat street foods or uncooked vegetables. But still, there was plenty to enjoy.
Best in Vietnam are the fruits and fruit smoothies. We even had a durian smoothie – don’t recommend.
My first time eating a mangosteen – highly recommend. Custard apple – delicious, surprisingly it does have the creamy texture of custard! Mangoes, lichees, logons, little bananas, guavas, jackfruits, dragon fruits, all kinds of tropical fruits are sold up and down the street and so sweet. I didn’t see any apples or oranges, but I didn’t miss them.
We ate at a restaurant that looked like a treehouse with steps to the second floor as steep as a ladder. It wouldn’t make it through safety inspection in the US. It is the former residence of the architect who designed the house. The fruit drinks were delicious, the food was nothing too spectacular. They were out of sweet potato fries and brown rice that we wanted.
Another restaurant, the Nha Hang Ogon is known for the food cooked at tables all around the restaurant. They were making spring rolls, crepes, escargot (I didn’t try). . . that’s all I can remember. You can walk around and see just about everything they had on the menu being cooked all around you. You can watch them making the food, and you can just point to what they are making and say, “I’ll order one of those.” We had a seafood hotpot, a “omelet” that was a like a crepe, and some other foods that didn’t make a big impression, but nevertheless delicious.
For breakfast one day, we walked half a block from E’s house to a random eating place, and ordered “beefsteek” on the menu. We didn’t know what to expect, but it turned out to be cubes of beef stir fried with onions, served with a french roll. They also charged us 10 cents USD for each wet wipe. Apparently, it’s standard practice for them to leave wet wipes on the table and you are charged if you use them. If you don’t, they don’t charge you.
At a food court at a mall, we ate at Pizza Hut just for the heck of it. They serve pasta – I would not call it Italian pasta, and they had some rice dishes and soup – very Asian. The pizza was about the same as American pizza but with much less cheese (cheese is rare and expensive).
We ate at Al Fresco in District 7 where foreigners live. The menu had everything from fish and chips (I had that) to lasagna to BBQ ribs and steak. I don’t recommend the “Italian” or “Mexican” food. It seems to me that Vietnam is not the place to have foods from other cultures.
A had an avocado smoothie from a street vendor and I got a taste of it. It was good and I survived. Actually, my stomach was fine throughout the trip and now it’s having a harder time adjusting to the food at home.
Ang surprised us with special fried buns at dinner the last night we were there. There is a quail egg inside each bun – very delicious.