Beginner's Guide to Vietnamese Restaurants

​I was asked to share tips on how to find Vietnamese food in the community and what to order, so I decided to put together a quick beginner’s guide to give you tips on dining at a Viet restaurant and what popular dishes to order. This was a fun blog to write and, being Vietnamese, I would love for everyone to try Viet food. It always has a nice balance of sweet, acid, salty, and spicy with all textures accounted for and tends to be heavy on vegetables and herbs with lemongrass-marinated proteins.

Trying out different cuisines is fun! If you find something you love, start searching for recipes online and try to recreate them at home. Before you know it, your cooking will be influenced by the different foods you try. Pho can be easily cooked in an Instant Pot and, if you have a skillet, you can definitely make vermicelli bowls , rice dishes, and spring rolls .

Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash

General Tips

• Finding a Restaurant
  Search for Vietnamese restaurants in your city or town on Yelp.com. Then go through Yelp reviews to find out which dishes are popular. I've also experienced Vietnamese food trucks, so try searching for those on Google.
• Customer Service
  ​Don’t expect it. If you get great customer service, embrace it. If you don’t, shrug it off. They will take your order, bring your food, and will most likely not check on you again. If you would like to order additional food or get a drink refill, flag down a waiter.
• Ordering from the Menu
  The menu will label dishes in Vietnamese with an English description underneath. The dishes will also be numbered so you can just give them the number when you order. Worst case, just point at it on the menu. The dishes are usually separated into the following categories: appetizers, rice dishes, vermicelli bowls, noodle soup dishes, and drinks. More authentic restaurants will also have sandwiches and special seafood, beef, and chicken dishes served with white rice.
• Vegetarian Options
  Most Vietnamese restaurants will have Vegetarian options. Pho can be served with steamed vegetables and rice dishes and vermicelli bowls have tofu options.
• Chopsticks
  Your table will have a utensil holder with chopsticks, forks, soup spoons, and small sauce bowls. It will also have a number on it, which is your table number. IF your waiter manually brings you utensils, you will get chopsticks. Request a fork when you’re ordering your food if you’re not comfortable using chopsticks.
• Don’t Wait for the Check
  Look for a counter with a cash register. This is where you pay! Some places are more Americanized and will bring a bill to you but, most of the time, you will just go to the counter and give the cashier your table number so they can find your bill. If you want to order takeout, go straight to the cashier to order.
• Bring Cash
  Whether or not you need cash will vary. Some restaurants will be cash only, some will accept debit and credit cards, and others will require cash if your bill is under $10 or $15 dollars. Check Yelp reviews beforehand to see what the payment requirements are.

What to Order

Appetizers

Spring Rolls (Gỏi cuốn)​

• Spring rolls are wrapped with chewy rice paper filled with rice vermicelli, vegetables, herbs, and protein. Fillings will vary from place to place. Protein can be boiled shrimp, boiled pork, or grilled chicken. For vegetables and herbs, you'll find lettuce, bean sprouts, cilantro, mint leaves, and chives. You will get either fish sauce or peanut sauce for dipping.

Eggrolls (​​Chả Giò)

• ​Eggrolls usually contains pork, shrimp, mushrooms, and noodles, then deep fried. Cheap eggrolls ranging from $1-4 are served plain while more expensive ones are served with noodles, lettuce, and veggies.
  • PRO TIP: ​ Make a lettuce wrap! Wrap eggrolls with lettuce, noodles, and veggies, then dip in fish sauce.

Main Dishes

Noodle Soups (Phở)

• Pho (pronounced FUH, NOT FOE) is a crowd favorite! It's a bowl of pho noodles in a beef or chicken broth, topped with cilantro and scallions and slices of beef or chicken. They're served with a plate of bean sprouts, lime wedges, jalapenos, basil, and cilantro. You will add the vegetables, herbs, and lime juice to the bowl, then add a squeeze of hoisin sauce and Sriracha. Hoisin will sweeten the broth and Sriracha will, of course, add some heat!
  • PRO TIP: Grab a small sauce bowl from the utensil holder, then squirt equal parts hoisin and Sriracha. Use it as a dip for your meats.
  • EXTRA PRO TIP: Have a hangover? The carbs and the hot broth filled with electrolytes will bring you back to life after a night of fun!
  • ADVANCE BROTH TIPS: Before you add anything to your pho bowl, taste the broth! It should be either very meaty (due to the restaurant cooking the broth with bones for HOURS) or it will be very herby with notes of basil. The reason it can taste meaty or herby really depends on whether or not you are eating a regional Northern Vietnamese pho or a Southern Vietnamese pho.
    • Northern Vietnamese pho have clear, herb-forward broths, and they usually eat their pho plain with no sauces.
    • Southern Vietnamese pho has an umami-forward broth and is eaten with hoisin and Sriracha sauces. My family is from Southern Vietnam, therefore I'm very bias towards a Southern broth.

Rice Dishes (Cơm Tấm)

• ​If you want to ease yourself into Vietnamese flavors, a rice dish is the PERFECT gateway dish. They come with a grilled lemongrass protein served over soft, pillowy jasmine rice, pickled carrots, and a lettuce/cucumber salad. Popular proteins are pork chops, chicken, and shrimp.
  • PRO TIP: Order like a true Viet by requesting a fried egg and a small bowl of soup on the side. This is usually off-the-menu, but true Viets know these are essential to a rice dish. The soup will usually be a large spoon of pho broth which is a great way to test if their pho broth is good or not. Hence, will you return next time for a bowl of pho?

Grilled Shrimp Over Vermicelli Noodles (Bún T ôm Nướng)

• ​Now if you liked the rice dish, let it be a gateway to a vermicelli bowl. Basically, the rice is replaced with the noodles. It's served with either grilled shrimp, pork, or chicken, tons of vegetables and herbs, sometimes chopped eggrolls, and a fish sauce to pour over your noodles. It's basically a giant noodle salad. Very fresh and delicious!

Vietnamese Sandwich (​​ Bánh Mì )

• There is a lot of French influence in Vietnamese food, and banh mi is an obvious one. This Vietnamese sandwich is served on a French baguette. The traditional banh mi is the bánh mì thịt nguội. Inside is a spread of pate, hams, cold cuts, cucumbers, pickled carrots and daikon, jalapenos, and cilantro.
  • PRO TIP: ​ Have a Vietnamese coffee with it (see below). It's DIVINE.

Vietnamese Coffee ( ​​ Cà Phê Sữa Dá )

• ​If you never had a Vietnamese coffee, prepare to be hooked. I'm very picky with my Viet coffee and absolutely cannot stand restaurants that water down their coffees or uses the wrong coffee ground. At a sit-down restaurant, the Vietnamese coffee NEEDS to come out with a Vietnamese French press, which is the gray press you see over the cup. The grounds HAS to be Cafe Du Monde or the difference will be noticeable. The grounds are pressed over sweetened condensed milk. Once the coffee is done pressing, remove the press, stir the coffee and condensed milk together, then pour it over a cup of ice.
  • PRO TIP: It's VERY strong. I do not advise drinking it past 12pm. The earlier the better!

Have other tips or dish suggestions from Vietnamese restaurants? Comment below to share the knowledge!

​Happy eating!

Jane Pelcher, RDN
​ www.janethedietitian.com

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