We have been enjoying the noodle soup so much in Vietnam! Since I proclaimed before arriving that I wasn’t much of a “noodle soup person,” I decided to write a post all about noodle soup and maybe also why I have come to love it.
If you’re like me, you probably thought that Vietnamese noodle soup consisted almost entirely of phở. It may be one of Vietnam’s most well-known cultural exports, but it’s also just one of many different types of soup. But the first thing to know is that the name “phở” is only referring to the type of noodle in the dish. It’s common for there to be five different noodles used in soups:
- Phở – medium width rice noodle
- Bún – rice vermicelli noodle
- Miền – glass or cellophane noodle, which can be made from many different starches
- Mì – yellow wheat noodle, or egg noodle
- Hủ tiếu – thin, chewy tapioca noodles
We have also encountered two more types of noodle in various soups which don’t neatly fit into these four categories. The first is bánh đa which is a wide rice noodle that is brownish in color (it’s sort of like phở; the use of the word bánh here, which means cake, makes more sense when you learn that phở’s full name is bánh phở). The second is the bánh noodle in bánh canh, which is usually made of tapioca flour and is thicker and translucent, almost like what is used for a crystal dumpling (also confusing that bánh is used here for something so different, but I believe it is because the noodle is produced by cutting strips from a larger sheet, making it somewhat “cake” like). And a last note: mì is the word used for the noodle in the popular mì Quảng dish, but it is a wide rice noodle that is thicker than phở. So much for rules!
The signs on the food booths start to make a lot more sense after you know what all the noodle types are, but you can’t quite know what is on offer because almost all of these noodles (and words, like bánh) are also used in dishes that aren’t soup. Some things we have figured out:
- If phở is listed (with a type of meat, like phở gà for chicken), then it is always a soup. But if trộn is added to the end then it is all the ingredients in a slightly wet noodle bowl with the soup on the side; another variation of this is xào, which is all the ingredients stir-fried with the soup on the side. Incidentally, phở noodles seem to be best in xàos because they crisp up really nicely.
- Bún is one of the most popular types of noodles and is used in so many dishes that it is actually impossible to know if the food stand is serving a soup without looking. Also, confusingly, very popular dishes that use bún are sometimes always soups (like bún bò Huế), or sometimes have options and can be made into trộns or xàos; we haven’t come across it much, but it seems that bún noodles are never stir-fried, so in a xào it’s just the other ingredients that are fried and placed on the bún.
- Miền noodles seem to be pretty flexible in use and we have seen them applied to soups, trộns, and xàos with relative equality; I think the miền works best in trộns and worst in xàos.
The other thing that has been surprising to me is the sheer amount of choice for each dish. Back home if I want chicken phở I only have one option: chicken phở. But here it is common for a restaurant to offer anywhere between 4 and 14 different ways to prepare the soup. The choice usually centers on the cuts of meat that you want (dark or light chicken meat) or the extras (meatballs, blood cube, pork knuckle, etc.). This is fun once you figure out what all the extras are. Some shops will offer the basic soup and then a đặc biệt version, which means “special.” The đặc biệt usually has all of the extras, and usually costs twice as much. Fun fact: if the menu isn’t clear or if the prices aren’t shown, you will almost always be given a đặc biệt instead of a basic soup as a tourist, since it costs more; based on Google Maps reviews, domestic and international tourists seem to be up sold in this situation with the same frequency, leaving me to doubt that it is just my horrible pronunciation to blame.
Now here’s a list of all the noodle soups that we have tried in Vietnam, in order of trying them, and a short description of each:
- Phở: Originated in the north but now a national dish (and clearly exported by southern Vietnamese to the USA). Almost always made with either beef or chicken, and consisting of phở noodles, beef or chicken broth, and often spring onion. In the south it is eaten with hoisin sauce. We had it numerous times throughout the country.
- Bánh đa cua: From Hải Phòng outside of Hà Nội, it’s served with the brown bánh đa noodle and various meatballs or meat cakes, like crab balls or ground meat wrapped in betel leaves, and some other seafood, like shrimp, in a pork-based broth. We ate it in Cát Bà town.
- Bún riêu: A tomato broth soup with bún noodle, often served with various sausage and crab meatballs and a pile of greens. In some places other things are added like minced crab or fish. We ate it in Hà Nội, Hội An, and Ho Chi Minh City.
- Bún cá: This dish changes throughout the country. In Hà Nội it is more of a “deconstructed” noodle soup, where the bún comes on a plate and you add it to the soup; fried fish is also served on the side and can be dipped in sauce and added to the soup. In Đà Nẵng, the soup had everything added to it, with cabbage, pumpkin, and other root vegetables present; we had it with fish cakes instead of fried fish. The broth is usually fish-based, with tomato and pineapple to make it sweet and sour.
- Cháo canh – It means porridge soup, but it’s not a porridge! It’s from Nghệ An province and we tried it in Đồng Hới (two provinces to the south), where the broth was peppery and we were asked if we wanted the more traditional udon-esque noodles or thinner bún noodles. Our version also had snakehead fish in it.
- Bún bò Huế – Beef bún soup from the town of Huế, where the broth is slightly spicy and tomatoey, and the options for add-ons are myriad. We liked the cua chả best, which was a crab meatball that could be added to the base cuts of beef. Always served with a pile of greens, lime, and peppers. This was best in Huế, but we also had it in Hà Nội, Đà Nẵng, and Đà Lạt.
- Bánh canh – A broth that is similar to bún bò Huế, but seemingly more often served with seafood (we had it with crab); the tapioca flour noodles are chewy, thick, and semi-translucent, making this quite different from other soups. We had this in Huế first, and then Ho Chi Minh City where the broth was sweeter and thicker and a pineapple dipping sauce was served on the side.
- Bún rạm – Fiddler crab noodle soup, where the sweet broth is made from minced crab. The broth is served over bún noodles and any other extras you might want to add; a pile of greens and lime are also provided. We had this in Quy Nhơn, where it’s from.
- Hủ tiếu – There are several versions of this noodle soup, the main one called hủ tiếu Nam Vang, which means “Phnom Penh”; as you might guess, this is a Vietnamese version of the Cambodian soup kuyteav. It’s a pork based lightly sweet broth, with hủ tiếu noodle, and various toppings, like ground pork, sliced lean pork, shrimp, quail egg, and greens; in this case, the greens are usually bean sprouts, celery, and chrysanthemum greens. We had this in Ho Chi Minh City.
Putting together this list I had to decide what was a noodle soup and what wasn’t. That seems relatively simple, but most lists that you find online include both cao lau and mì Quảng, which is something that I can’t abide; it’s true that both have some liquid in the bowl… but they are hardly soups. I also decided that bò kho didn’t count as a noodle soup (it’s more of a stew), despite it frequently being offered with noodles in it instead of a baguette on the side. Additionally, and a little sadly, there were several (many?) noodle soups that we didn’t get to try, or that we never had it their soup form. That I know of, these include bún tháng, bún mọc, and miền lươn.
I forced Sheena to give me her top 3 noodle soups, and she tried her hardest to say hủ tiếu was her number three pick, despite not ever eating it as a soup; she had it as a dry version, which does come with broth on the side, but as we have found with many dishes, the dry version is frequently so different an experience that it’s not equivalent. Sheena didn’t want to have hủ tiếu as a soup because she felt like it was too hot in Ho Chi Minh to eat soup, even for dinner. This actually brings up another challenge we had trying all of these soups: most all of them are traditionally served for breakfast, or in some cases, breakfast and dinner. This was especially annoying in Huế because it seemed that almost all of the bún bò Huế restaurants had hours between 6am and 11am, so we couldn’t even have it for lunch without adjusting our meal time.. The coldest part of the day is usually the morning, so it makes sense that this is when a hot soup would be best enjoyed, but despite traveling in the country for 8 weeks, we rarely could bring ourselves to have noodle soup for breakfast.
| Sheena | Craig | |
| 1 | Bún bò Huế | Bún riêu |
| 2 | Phở | Bún bò Huế |
| 3 | Bún riêu | Hủ tiếu |
I was quite surprised and taken with noodle soup in Vietnam. My top three include two soups that I had never heard of before coming here, and one that I would never order (bún bò Huế) because it was always served with a broth that was too spicy for me. The fact that each of these soups could be customized, from the extra protein I wanted, to the types of greens I added, to the amount of lime and/or sauces I put in, helped me learn to love them. I even started to like phở, although you’ll see it didn’t make my list.
The Wongenbergs 