| 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.
Characteristics of Vietnamese food include heavy use of fish sauce (nước mắm), which smells notoriously bad if you sniff it straight from the bottle, but blends into food very well. Vegetables, herbs and spices, notably Vietnamese coriander (rau răm), accompany almost every dish and help make Vietnamese food much lighter than the cuisine of its neighboring countries. |
