Vietnamese cuisine is world-famous, but
few visitors to the Southeast Asian country think about what they'll be sipping
on the streets of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. That's a mistake: the country's
drinks are as delicious and diverse as its cuisine.
Vietnamese people don't usually drink
while they dine, perhaps because most meals are either soup-based or include
soup at the end, to fill up any "last holes." Enjoying a drink is a
separate event, whether it's meeting friends for a coffee or stopping at a
streetside stand for a refreshing juice. The exception, of course, is a boozy
drinking session, where the focus is on the alcohol and the food is considered
an accompaniment.
With each drink you try in Vietnam, you
experience the influence of one hundred years of French and a thousand years of
Chinese rule—the Chinese contributed the concept of food and drink as medicine,
and the French introduced coffee in the 1800s. You'll also be privy to
Vietnamese ingenuity and the country's incredible bounty: drinks here make the
most of ripe tropical fruit, fresh herbs, and rice.
Headed to Vietnam? Here are nine drinks
you should seek out during your visit.
DỪA TƯƠI (FRESH COCONUT)
Coconut water may have just shown up on
your grocery store shelves a few years ago, but it's been a popular drink in
Vietnam for centuries. You won't see the packaged stuff, though: here, it's
drunk straight out of the coconut—and this coconut water is grassier, sweeter,
and more full-flavored than anything you'll find in a package—trying it is like
drinking raw milk for the first time. Generally, the smaller coconuts are
sweeter than the larger ones.
Whole coconuts are unwieldy to store, so
vendors will chop off the outer green husk and keep the small white inner
shell, cut into a shape that won't fall over when put on a flat surface. These
white globes are usually kept on ice until you order one, then a giant machete
is used to chop a hole in the top.
Coconuts are usually harvested when
they're about seven weeks old—any earlier and the juice is gassy, any later and
it tastes too salty. To judge the readiness of a coconut, the harvester will
chop one open to inspect the flesh, which should be jelly-ish but not
completely translucent. Hard white coconut flesh is a sign that the fruit is
too old for drinking.
Locals will advise you not to drink
coconut water after 5 p.m. if you want to sleep well, because they believe it
has diuretic properties if you drink too much of it; before 5 p.m., however,
it's the go-to drink for rehydrating.
SINH TỐ (FRUIT SMOOTHIE)
Smoothies are everywhere in Vietnam, and
we're not just talking strawberry-banana. You'll find smoothies with fresh
dragonfruit, custard apple, and jackfruit, along with ice and condensed milk or
yogurt. My husband always orders a sinh tố bơ (avocado smoothie). My favorite
is the sinh tố mãng cầu (soursop smoothie), a refreshing sweet-and-tart treat
made from a fruit that's native to South and Central America and popular in
Southeast Asia for a creamy flavor reminiscent of both strawberries and
pineapples.
NƯỚC SÂM (HERBAL TEA)
This sweet and nutty Vietnamese herbal tea
is usually served over ice, making it perfect to sip in the chaos and noise of
a Vietnamese wet market on a steamy day. Believed to have "cooling"
properties according to Chinese medicine, the most basic nước sâm recipe
contains sugar cane, nettle leaves, grass roots and corn silk—an illustration
of the Vietnamese aversion to wasting anything. Variations of this drink can
also include dried longan, the flower of the sawtooth herb (also known as spiky
coriander/cilantro), and roasted water chestnuts.
NƯỚC MÍA (SUGAR CANE JUICE)
Not as sickly sweet as you'd expect, sugar
cane juice is another drink that's considered "cooling". It's usually
sold by street vendors, who use electric squashing machines, not unlike an
old-fashioned wringer, to squeeze the juice from stalks of sugar cane. It's
usually then mixed with juice from the calamansi, a tiny sour citrus fruit that
smells like a mandarin. The finished product has a crisp grassy flavor that's
very refreshing on a sweltering hot day. Sugar cane vendors advertise their
wares openly, with a bucket of sugar cane stalks in front of their stall. They
can also be identified by what looks like a ship's wheel on the side of the
stall, part of the electric wringer mechanism that juices the cane before your
eyes
TRÀ ATISÔ (ARTICHOKE TEA)
The go-to drink for hungover Vietnamese
men, trà atisô is believed to have liver-cleansing and detoxifying properties.
There are two versions of the tea, which is usually served with ice—the
sweetened yellowish version made from the artichoke flower and the intensely
bitter black version made from the artichoke stems. My advice is to avoid the
black tea and go for the sweetened version, which has a delicate nutty flavor.
Artichokes are grown in Dalat in Vietnam's cool Central Highlands but packets
of artichoke tea are available in supermarkets throughout the country.
SODA CHANH (LIME SODA)
Soda chanh
BIA (BEER)
Beer is one of the exceptions to the rule
that drinks aren't served with food in Vietnam. In Vietnamese, the phrase
"di nhau" means "to go drinking." But the term refers to
much more than just the drinks; there's a whole range of tapas-style dishes
that accompany a Vietnamese drinking session, such as prawns barbecued with
chili and salt, clams steamed with lemongrass, green mango with a
prawn-chili-salt dip, or coconut snails sauteed with butter and fish sauce.
Many Vietnamese beers are only available
in their home region, so your options will vary depending where you travel. In
the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon, the local beers
are Saigon Red, Saigon Special and 333, all lightly hopped and slightly sweeter
than beers from other parts of the country. In the central region of Vietnam,
the local beers are Huda (the name combines the words Hue, Vietnam's former
Imperial capital, and Denmark), and Bia La Rue, a slightly more bitter beer
believed to have originated from a French recipe. A visit to Hanoi is not
considered complete without a pilgrimage to Bia Hoi Corner (at the junction of
Luong Ngoc Quyen, Ta Hien and Dinh Liet) to try bia hơi (fresh beer), a
low-alcohol draft beer with a clean, crisp taste.
Of course, the locals don't always choose
the local brew. Holland's Heineken, Singapore's Tiger Beer, and Japan's Sapporo
are also popular, and there's an increasing number of microbreweries producing
a range of craft beers. Brewpubs in Vietnam usually serve Eastern European
fare, such as sausages and sauerkraut, which is eaten local-style: with
chopsticks.
RƯỢU NẾP CẨM (STICKY RICE WINE)
Drinking the hard stuff in Vietnam is for
the most part considered a man's domain. Rice wine, which clocks in at around
29.5% alcohol, is the traditional masculine tipple and drinking it is a social
activity (a very social activity). Groups of friends will gather to drink rice
wine out of a communal shot glass or two.
A range of wonderful snacks such as spicy
squid jerky and barbecued meat or seafood usually accompanies this type of
drinking session. Sticky rice wine (rượu nếp cẩm) is smoother and sweeter than
the regular rice wine, which can be quite fiery. Neither should be confused
with rượu thuốc, "medicine wine," which is rice wine bottled with
medicinal items which run the gamut from whole cobras, cuckoos, and seahorses
to vegetarian options containing only herbs.
CÀ PHÊ (COFFEE)
Vietnam is the world's biggest producer of
Robusta coffee, a variety of bean that most coffee experts consider inferior to
the Arabica type, thanks to its bitter and acrid tendencies. But the Vietnamese
people know how to make the most of what they have. Local coffee beans are
roasted with butter and fish sauce to bring out chocolate notes in the final
brew. Vietnamese coffee is prepared using a small metal drip filter, and is
most commonly served over ice. You can't walk a block of any street in the
country and not see someone enjoying a coffee in one form or another.
The two most popular ways to drink local
coffee are cà phê sữa đá (iced coffee with condensed milk) or cà phê đá (iced
black coffee). Note that unless you specifically request "không
đường" (no sugar) or "ít đường" (a little sugar), the black
version will come with four or five teaspoons.
You can also get your caffeine fix with a
yogurt coffee or the Hanoian specialty, egg coffee, made with whipped egg yolk.
These caffeinated wonders are so delicious it's easy to suck them down in three
quick slurps. Yet the locals will spend an hour or more enjoying a coffee and
the free iced tea that's often served alongside it. Having a coffee is an
excuse to sit and watch the world go by, either from a small chair at a
streetside stall or from the window of a blessedly air-conditioned cafe.