The dishes, what is in them and where they come from

Pho is a soup of flat rice noodles in a broth simmered from bones with star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander seed, cloves and charred ginger and onion, finished with fish sauce. Beef pho (pho bo) is the usual version; chicken pho (pho ga) uses the same spices, often without the ginger. The origin is debated: theories point to French beef stew, to a Chinese beef noodle dish sold in Hanoi, and to a Vietnamese buffalo dish.

What is agreed is that pho grew up in Hanoi and Nam Dinh in the early twentieth century, sold by vendors who carried pots of broth through the streets. The Hanoi government portal dates street sales across the city to 1907 to 1910. Hanoi-style pho was listed as national intangible cultural heritage on 9 August 2024 and the recognition was announced at a city food festival on 29 November 2024. Nam Dinh, the other home of pho, became part of Ninh Binh province in the 2025 reorganisation.

The northern bowl has a clear, savoury broth, little on the side, and is eaten with pickled garlic, chilli sauce and sticks of fried dough. After 1954, when over a million people moved south, pho changed in Saigon: the broth became sweeter and cloudier, and lime, bean sprouts, Thai basil, culantro and hoisin became standard. Neither is the correct one. They are two dishes with one name.

A light, crisp roll inspired by the French baguette, split and filled with some combination of pork pate, Vietnamese cold cuts such as gio lua, meatballs, pickled radish and carrot, coriander, mayonnaise or margarine, soy sauce and chilli. Some accounts place its beginnings at Saigon street stalls in the late 1950s, though no origin story has been verified. The word entered the Oxford English Dictionary on 24 March 2011, and Merriam-Webster added it for its 2022 edition.

For allergies and diets, banh mi is the one common street food that is built on wheat. The fillings also bring egg (mayonnaise), soy (soy sauce) and pork liver (pate). Egg-only and vegetarian versions exist at some carts; ask, and ask again about the pate and the sauce.

Broken rice: the fractured grains left after milling, once sold cheaply and eaten by farmers, workers and students, now the signature plate of Ho Chi Minh City. A standard plate has a grilled pork chop (suon) marinated with fish sauce, garlic, sugar and sometimes honey and sesame oil; shredded pork skin (bi); and a steamed loaf of egg, minced pork, glass noodles and wood-ear mushroom (cha trung). Scallion oil, pickled carrot and daikon, cucumber and a bowl of fish sauce with chilli finish it.

One widely told story puts its start in the 1930s with a vendor who used broken rice to bring the price of a plate down. Whatever the truth, the dish is still eaten at every hour in the south, and plates are often built to order: point at what you want added.

Hoi An's own noodle. According to the Da Nang tourism authority, the rice is soaked in lye water made from the ash of trees from the Cham Islands, which turns it pale yellow, and the dough is kneaded with water from the old Ba Le well, steamed and cut into thick strands. The result is chewy, closer to udon than to rice vermicelli.

A bowl has slices of char siu pork marinated in fish sauce and five-spice, two or three spoonfuls of sauce rather than a broth, crisp fried noodle pieces roasted with peanuts, herbs, and grilled rice crackers on the side. The dish is said to date from the seventeenth century, when Chinese and Japanese merchants settled at the port. The tourism authority says it is found only in Hoi An; what is sold elsewhere is an imitation.

• Banh beo — Hue's steamed rice cakes, six to ten small saucers per serving, topped with mung bean, dried shrimp floss and fried shallots. Sold in the morning. Ordered with banh nam (flat, banana-leaf-wrapped rice cake with shrimp and pork) and banh bot loc (chewy tapioca dumplings with shrimp and pork).
• Com hen — Hue's rice with baby clams. A shellfish dish.
• Bun rieu — northern rice vermicelli in a tomato and crab broth.
• Bun oc — Hanoi snail noodle soup.
• Che — sweet soups and puddings of beans, jelly, fruit and coconut milk, sold in every city.