Hoi An, Vietnam: Exploring East Asian taste in the ancient town

There are ample vegan options available in Vietnamese cuisine. (Photo: Kyler Boone via Unsplash)

The hallmark of South Asian food has always been in the way it flaunts its local spices. Rich and flavourful, every South Asian country provides a creative twist to its curries and its soups as well as to its breads and its noodles.

But local Vietnamese cuisine is as unique as it is traditional; it shares many common links with other cultures as much as it has become an independent source of influence that has its very own identity.

The ancient town of Hoi An, Vietnam. (Photo: Hieu Tran via Unsplash)

Whether it is in the bitterness of Vietnamese coffee that’s brewed in sweetened condensed milk, or in the way it makes rice items the base of its cuisine and uses coconut milk in almost everything, this coastal land of Southeast Asia has a cuisine — like that from its Thai neighbour, too — can remind you of our “God’s own Kerala”.

Yet, Vietnamese cuisine is spoilt by natural ingredients — tropically grown fruits such as the dragon fruit and passion fruit, a routine element on the breakfast table to mushrooms is what makes for its favourite elements.

And from the uncanny taste of food served in banana leafs to that of the rice items that make up for its community’s staple diet, Vietnamese cuisine, like that of many south Indian ones, too, is light, healthy, and a haven for the new-age, vegan, environmentally-conscious millennial looking for purity and healing.

Unlike the melting cosmopolitan pots that are the big old churning Vietnamese cities, the quaint heritage town of Hoi An in the heart of central Vietnam holds on to age-old traditions that are rooted in many East Asian cultures.

Once the main port of Vietnam through which trade flourished into the city, Hoi An has retained many of the older rural values of the country that it now curates through its arts and culture traditions. Because, it is here that you can learn many culinary skills at many of its local cooking schools that are located right in the midst of paddy fields of rice while you understand the historical and cultural influences from Japan and China on the town’s architecture.

Vietnamese food. (Photo: Hieu Tran via Unsplash)

Or you can get a custom dress stitched for yourself here from some of its local tailors — such as that in the tradition of the long gown that women wear with the signature triangular bamboo hats on their heads to beat the sun and rain alike. And you can take a boat ride down the riverside in a bamboo boat strewn with colourful lanterns that are decorated by Japanese scripts painted on them. Or you can cycle around the old town, take a ride in the local electric taxi, or take a break at one of its pristine beaches.

But most importantly, when in the ancient town of Hoi An, remember to leave your craving for gluten back home, and instead savour the local subtlety of the green, herbal food that’ll kill some of those toxic and lusty hunger pangs inside you.

Here are a few dishes that you can’t leave Hoi An without giving a try.

Rice paper

Vietnamese-style rice paper spring rolls. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

This popular East Asian staple food is is thin, light, and appetizing, and almost looks like a tissue paper on your dinner table. It’s a thin sheet of rice that’s made out of rice flour, potato starch, water, and salt, all whisked together and then bound tight in a plastic wrap or a cheesecloth and then spread out into sheets that are baked or microwaved. Rice paper is typically filled with vegetables and fried or served fresh as spring rolls, used as a dessert base, or eaten as a slice with all kinds of salads and pickles.

Hoi An crispy pancake

Banh xeo, or crispy pancake, in Hoi An. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Fruit and rice pancakes are popular breakfast items in Vietnam, what with banana pancakes served at almost every morning breakfast table and available at every two steps in the ancient town of Hoi An. But the Hoi An Crispy Pancake goes a step ahead in innovation. Unlike the large and mushy traditional stuffed pancakes, this variety of the brittle little pancake is made out of a batter of rice, salt, and turmeric — fried to crispness and served with fresh and even more crispier bean sprouts and onions as well as other vegetarian or non-vegetarian ingredients. What makes the Hoi An Crispy Pancake even more special is a spicy dip next to it, an intoxicating concoction of chilli, garlic,  sugar, ginger, and fresh lime juice. Cheap, light, healthy, and appetizing, you can gobble down a couple of these every morning with tea before you set out for the day.

Banh Mi

Vegan banh mi, or hot-dog-style sandwich, with avocados and other vegetables.

“Banh” literally means rice, and it is that rice that is once again central to this Vietnamese bread. A typical “banh mi” looks just like a hot dog sandwich — but this baguette bread manages to break away from its colonial French influence by using the typical Vietnamese choice of rice flour instead of wheat flour to bake it. Going by the rice tradition of the region, this banh mi sandwich comes filled with a wide range of customisable veggies or ingredients as well as pickles stuffed in it and can be once again picked up at every corner of the street.

Vietnamese curries

Each South Asian region has its own version of the “curry” — from the herbal and soothing lemongrass-induced green, yellow and red Thai curries, to the tangier Indonesian-Malaysian style Curry Rendang that you find around Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Like all Southeast Asian cultures, Vietnam’s curries also use coconut milk as their base, but they are lighter, thinner, yet creamier and sweeter with chunkier ingredients, and come much closer to the Indian version of our typical gravy-wala sabzis.

The banana leaf

Eating a rice bowl meal served in a banana leaf has a taste of its own. As per reports, banana leaf has some of the same antioxidants as the green teas and leafy vegetables that are so popular around Vietnam. In Hoi An, you’ll find all kinds of grilled gravies — from that of mushroom to garlic rice — served in restaurants on the leaf.

Soup

Vietnamese food in Hoi An. (Photo; Jennifer Schmidt)

Hoi An follows Southeast Asia’s tradition in creatively using many fruits, noodles, as well as unconventional vegetables to flavour up their local soups. From potato to cauliflower and mushroom as well as noodles, the local Hoi An soups are all grated into a perfect paste.

Cao lầu, veggie bowl, in Hoi An, Vietnam. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

But if the Burmese Khow Seuy is full of spice, then there’s a whole range of creative deviation in the way noodles are tossed in a Vietnamese bowl of cao lầu as well. Tossed with green vegetables, salads, and any other ingredients that you can customise it with, the colourful cau lầu is a signature Vietnamese noodle-soup bowl. Vietnam’s popular noodle variation called pho also follows a similar tradition of sweetened noodles-in-a-broth.