Heading out to Vietnam again this month and spurred on by Rick Steins recent Far Eastern Odyssey series and cookery book, I decided that this time I would pay more attention to the food and try and learn how to cook a few dishes for myself. With a bit of help from the locals, I discovered that Vietnam really is the perfect destination for food lovers and that as you travel North to South the fabulous diversity of delicious, fresh, healthy and exquisite dishes on offer is a million miles away from what you get presented in your average Vietnamese restaurant in the UK.

Things didn’t get off to a great start as on our first day we stopped at a local restaurant to pick up supplies for the overnight train trip to Sapa and I ended up ordering what turned out to be half a dry baguette and a single foil wrapped DairlyLea cheese triangle. But this was low point in my culinary experience of Vietnam and things got much better as the trip progressed! Up in Sapa I got my first taste of Vietnams infamous beef noodle soup ‘Pho’, pronounced ‘Far’. (more…)