#01 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Phở (bò)

Whenever you ask people what they know or like about Vietnamese cuisine, you will certainly get the answer: Phở - our national dish. My favorite variety is the Southern version with rare beef, although this soup is supposed to originate from the North.

It's basically a Vietnamese soup dish consisting of broth, rice noodles, herbs, and meat. Phở is a uniquitous and popular dish in Vietnam where it is served in households, street-stalls, and restaurants country-wide. 

The Southern phở is served with fresh herbs, lemon etc. (aside in a separate dish), whereas the Northern version comes with less/all herbs already in the bowl. You can have the soup with meatballs, chicken or tofu, but I always stay with the classic where thin slices of tender beef are uncooked and have to be submerged in the hot juicy broth where the beef gets "cooked" in it.

You can't actually eat it without the herbs and the right sauce (fish sauce). The herbs and the sauce(s) make up at least 50% of taste in Vietnamese dishes.

Enough words, go there and try it yourself!

#02 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Bánh mì

Strangely, the second-best known Vietnamese dish among Europeans (and my personal no. 2 on the list) is something very un-Vietnamese: a baguette sandwich - "thanks" to the colonial legacy the French left behind. It's popular, tasty, cheap (about 25cts. from a street food-stall) and so good you want to have another one after the first.

There is crispy white bread that is sliced and stuffed with layers of flavors and textures. There's a layer of sweet and salty due to the pickled vegetables, another layer of hearty meat to make your stomach full.

My favorite variety is with crispy roasted pork (bánh mì heo quay), wonderful herbs, hot chili, pickled vegetables, etc. 

Bánh mì can and do come with sour pickled daikon and carrot, crisp cilantro, spicy chilis, and a cool sliver of cucumber surrounding any number of protein options, from sweet minced pork to fatty pate to sardines.

#03 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Ốc

We Vietnamese people love to eat snails (ốc) because it's a great social food to share with friends and family - and of course they taste great!

In big cities like Saigon or Hanoi you'll never find it hard to stumble upon a Quán Ốc, or a snail restaurant, where snails are displayed and people sit outside eating snails and drinking beer.

Plates filled with chewy and salty snails grace the tables accompanied by icy beer. The snails are relished with various techniques - sucking, forking, scooping, and slurping. The delicious little animals can come boiled, fried, with a noodle soup, in springrolls... every form you can imagine.

An absolutely necessary ingredient of of course a nice, spicy, flavorful sauce. I prefer the classic variety with fish sauce, chilis, garlic, lemon, lemongrass and a little bit sweetened.

 

#04 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Lẩu (Hot pot)

Lẩu (Hot pot) refers to several East Asian varieties of stew, consisting of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, tofu and seafood - all things imaginable. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce. (Wikipedia)

The cool thing about this dish is that it is something like a social event which has to be enjoyed with many people. You add your ingredients and in the end, the broth is best, having taken all the flavors of what you've put in it. 

#05 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Bún bò (Huế)

Bún bò Huế (beef noodle soup from Huế) is a rice vermicelli soup with beef, associated with the royal cooking of the imperial city of Huế (around where my Dad originated). It offers the balance of spicy, sour, salty and sweet flavors and the predominant flavor is that lemon grass - usually including thin slices of marinated and boiled beef shank, chunks of oxtail, and pig's knuckles. It can also include cubes of congealed pig blood, which has a color between dark brown and maroon, and a texture resembling firm tofu.

You serve it with lime wedges, cilantro sprigs, diced green onions, raw sliced onions, chili sauce, thinly sliced banana blossom, red cabbage, mint, basil, perilla, persicaria odorata or Vietnamese coriander (rau răm), saw tooth herb (ngò gai) and sometimes mung bean sprouts.(Wikipedia)

My Dad loved this dish, and once you've tried this soup, you'll come back for more. Unforgettable!

#06 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Cháo lòng

The heart of cháo lòng (pork organ/innards rice soup) consists of rice softened in a flavorful broth with cubes of congealed blood (huyết) and innards (cut in slices) thrown in for good measure. Cháo lòng turns piggy odds and ends that most butchers would toss out with the garbage into hearty and soothing rice porridge - nothing goes waste! This dish is one of the rare offerings in Saigon that is served from morning until evening and also served with stacks of golden fried dough (giò cháo quẩy).

Whe we were kids, our Mum sometimes used to give us some money in the morning and we rushed off to some streetfood place to have a hearty breakfast (sic!) of cháo lòng - with congealed blood cubes and slices of pork innards! Yummy.

Do try this rice soup if you should be in Vietnam.

#07 of my top ten favorite Vietnamese dishes: Bánh xèo

Bánh xèo (sizzling pancake), the word xèo onomatopoeically being the sound it makes when the rice batter is poured into the hot pan, contains coconut milk in the Southern variety and is believed to derive from crêpes brought from France during the colonial occupation.

The savory rice pancake is stuffed with pork, shrimp, diced green onion, bean sprouts. mint leaves, basil, fish leaf and/or other herbs, and dipped in a sweet and sour diluted fish sauce.

Again, without the sauce and the herbs, it is only half as good.

And again, my Mum's bánh xèo has been, rightly, forever imprinted in my sensory memory, and that's the reason why Julie, my wife, always asks for some when we are in Munich.