Vietnam has abundant food supply and elaborate food preparation techniques. As food preparation has become an art of the Vietnamese people, some Vietnamese dishes are world famous. People can find countless restaurants throughout the country.

In Vietnam, you will have an opportunity to enjoy some surprisingly good dishes, some of which can be found nowhere else in the world. On the table of a traditional banquet, you can find dozens of such specialty dishes pleasingly and elaborately presented. Some dishes are prepared from sea foods such as lobsters, fish, crabs and squids... which are relatively rare and expensive in some Western countries but abundant and cheap in Vietnam. Besides enjoying traditional foods such as beef noodle soups (pho), pork sausages (gio lua), spring rolls (nem ran), fish balls (cha ca), etc..., Vietnamese also adopt a number of dishes from countries that are well-known for their food preparation and cooking techniques.

Banh cuon is made of rice flour. Rice, which is thoroughly selected, is soaked for a night, then ground with a stone mortar. A relevant percentage of secret formula put into the flour will make banh cuon softer and smooth.
 

A village in Thanh Tri District, a suburb of Hanoi is famous for banh cuon. For convenience, today banh cuon with dressing is made. The dressing comprises lean meat, deshelled shrimp, thin-top mushroom, dried fungus, onion, fish sauce, pepper. The mixture is stir-fried. We put stir-fried dressing into banh cuon then roll it up. Banh cuon with dressing is put in a dish, and we sprinkle it with stir-fried onion. Banh cuon is a popular dish. both cheap and delicious.

How to cook a pot of Hue beef noodle is the period to learn seriously for years. The noodles should be soft, tough, wet and sweet. Besides the rice noodles, the secret is inside the water processed from boiling bone and meat. Put it in a separate pot, boil and watch out the suds, keep till cool and take the upper water line to cook, to ensure the tasteful smelling of shredded meat.

The special thing of Hue beef noodles is that a lot of condiments are required: sprouts, banana spayte, coriander which make us feel fresher in summer. In the winter, Hue is very wet with continuous rain, the cook has to put some more salt in the pot, adding there some branches of vervain made from good sauce and red chilli slices. The eater when enjoys noodles with chilli can feel the warmth of the dish, specially the warmth of Hue, the ancient royal city of Vietnam.

The Hue natives who live away from Hue, when visiting home usually take with them some flavors of their land, one of them is Sour Shrimp. The tourist before leaving Hue, also buy some jars for their relatives as present. They can make this dish with the same formula but only real sour shrimp in Hue is delicious, like Hue Mussel Rice.

In the shop, with the order of customers, some more galingale is added to make the food more delicious. During the meal we can put in some more condiment. We will find a very tasty dish with sour shrimp.

It is a popular kind of dish which we can find it every where in banquets or in common meals of the grass roots. Materials for "Cha Gio" include pulverized lean meat, sea-crab or shucked shrimp, thin-top mushroom, wood's ear, dried onion, fachyrrhizus, (or beansprouts), egg, pepper, salt, seasoning, etc... All are mixed well then the mixture is packed with rice paper and dipped into a pan of boiling lard, and fried until it becomes yellow.

It is necessary to make a delicious dip which comprises sugar, vinegar, water, pepper, chili etc.. and has a good taste and smell of garlic. Vegetable pickles can be made of papaw or turnip cabbage and carrot. A dish of hot fried meat roll accompanied by a dish of vegetable pickles, a dish of fresh vegetable (salad, sage, basil, sweet marjoram, beansprout), a bowl of dip with chili, and soft noodles makes you appetizing.

Pho is a wonderful dish for all Vietnamese people. Research shows that Pho have existed in Vietnam for about 100 years. Statistics from books and dictionaries show that there are about 17 kind of Pho from the South to the North, but in fact the number is larger, some kind of Pho are mentioned unofficially but they still attract the eater so much like "Moc" Noodles (Bun Moc), Ten-ingredient Noodles (Pho thap cam)....

Pho is basically made with beef. There may have some kinds of other meat with better taste, but Pho always goes with beef. If you want to change the taste of beef, the chicken or seafood as crab or shrimp can be a good substitute. Beef may be well-done or a bit rare.

One foreigner after enjoy this food say "This is an unusual food making from unusual source". Shrimp is clean up the cover, the black line on back, pitching in salt, putting in water of coconut. Shrimp will have a special smell by the garlic, salt, peppers. The sweet of sugarcane and shrimp makes the pure sweet. Grilled shrimp paste should be used with good fish sauces. Grind the white bean soup, the tamarind, the bean sauces mixed up with a little of boiled sugar water, pouring the flour of roast peanuts, and some garlic and chili. The disk of grilled shrimp paste is ready for you.

The dish is good with green color of herb, the red of chili; the white color of bitle banana, yellow color of peanut. Eating a piece of grilled shrimp paste, we fell all tastes: sour, spicy, salty, sweet.

Gio lua (Lean meat pie)Lean meat pie is a special, keen dish in Vietnam only. It is called differently in the South. And the foreigners enjoy Vietnamese lean meat pie very much. The most delicious part of lean meat pie is the top. It is delicious because it absorbs all aromas from banana leaves. Outside is old leave, inside is younger leave. Lean meat pie is delicious because of the smell from boiled meat adding the smell of boiled banana leaves.

My Tho seafood noodles soup is different from Chinese one, Nam Vang, beef noodles and Hue style beef noodles soup... because it is used without herb or salad but with bean-sprouts, lemon, chili and soya sauce. The most important thing makes the fame of My Tho seafood noodles soup that so many people liked from 1960s is the rice flour for the noodles and the pot of boiled water with secret preparation of famous shop in My Tho: Phanh Ky, Nam Son, Tuyen Ky and generation recently. It is said that the most delicious noodles soup should be made by Go Cat rice (special food like Tau Huong from Dao market rice), this is the most famous rice growing area of My Phong village, a suburb of My Tho. And the rice in Go Cat can make the noodles, roll paper, luck cake with the fame for over 40 years. But the My Tho noodles soup is really delicious with dried noodles, put in boiled water, sour with onion-fried, cleaned water for look good.

The noodle soup better in boiled water, of course each shop has each secret. Basically, the sweet in water is from grilled cracked bone, meat and dried squid (cuticle fish) and some particular condiments and it was cooked for the taste of customers. People can not ignore the food while the cook open the pot of soup with rememberable smelling. My Tho noodles soup is a special food with traditional color of domestic people who love My Tho or love the friendly, sincere manner of people in the South Vietnam.

Up to 22nd highway from Tay Ninh, 4-km from Saigon, that is Trang Bang town, the country of special food: fresh rice paper in fog and soup cake. You can find both of them anywhere, but nowhere make them better than Trang Bang because it is make from special local rice. They roasted flour into cake, a little thick. The specialty is that it is roasted at 4-5 hour, then bring to dry under fog until it is soft, they put it in a sealed bag. We can eat anytime without water dripping it is still flanked and soft. Trang Bang people use this cake to eat with shrimp, meat, salad, coriander, gill, blit, and drong.

In the Tet holidays, they can use with roasted salty meat, egg and sour mustard. The flavor of the cake with shrimp, meat, sauce, herb, chili, condiment make you never forget. Flour for soup cake of Trang Bang is made of rice flour, not other flour. The fiber's size is larger than noodles. In the bowl, we put in some meat, garlic, shallot, condiment and fish sauce. It is very cool to eat and drink this soup, and also flavor. Over hundred years, this dish is in Trang Bang and famous so far.