Some Notes on Vietnamese Cooking

Appears in
Far Flung Floyd
Far Flung Floyd

By Keith Floyd

Published 1994

  • About
▪ Vietnamese cooking has been influenced for two thousand years by the Chinese, and since the nineteenth century by the French.

▪ Mongolian invasions of Vietnam in the thirteenth century made a big impression on their food too, in the form of steamboats or Mongolian hotpots. A lasting example of this is the classic and wonderful breakfast dish called Pho (pronounced fir), a beef and noodle soup.

▪ Other influences – Laos, Cambodia and Thailand – have added a spiciness to Vietnamese cooking because these countries have all been under the cultural influence of India at some time or another. Hence curry dishes and Indian spices have rubbed off into Vietnamese cooking.