Vietnam by the plate, ten days
Four cities, four separate cooking traditions, and an itinerary written in dishes rather than in sights. Two market mornings, two cooking sessions that begin where the cooks buy, and a guide who eats with you rather than waiting outside.
At a glance
- Duration
- 10 days, 9 nights
- Party size
- 2 to 8, private
- Starts
- Hanoi, Noi Bai airport
- Ends
- Ho Chi Minh City, Tan Son Nhat
- Effort
- Easy — 5 to 7 km on foot on the eating days
- From
- USD 2,690 per person
Who this is for
Vietnamese food is not one cuisine. The north seasons with salt, black pepper, dill and fermented shrimp paste and keeps its broths clear. The old imperial city of Hue cooks small, salty, chilli-hot and, on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, entirely without meat. Hoi An makes three or four dishes that exist nowhere else and are not served correctly fifty kilometres away. The south sweetens everything with palm sugar and coconut milk, sours it with tamarind, and buries the whole thing in herbs. Ten days is what it takes to eat those four things in the places where they make sense.
This trip is written in dishes. Every eating stop on the itinerary is named, so you can read it in advance and tell us what you will not eat before we book the table rather than while it is arriving. Two mornings begin in a market at first light with the cooks who are buying; two cooking sessions start at those stalls and end at a stove. The rest is walking, sitting on small plastic stools, and a guide who orders in Vietnamese and then eats what was ordered.
It is not a restaurant tour. Perhaps four meals in ten days are in places with tablecloths, and two of those are in Hue for the court repertoire, which needs a kitchen that can make twelve small things at once.
If you want the same four cities but weighted towards sights, take the ten-day highlights trip, which covers the bay and My Son and eats well without organising the days around it. This one goes the other way: no cruise, no ruins, and an extra night in Hanoi to use it properly. Our pages on Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City describe what else those cities are, beyond what is on the table.
Day by day
Arrive in Hanoi, and eat within the hour
Met inside the arrivals hall at Noi Bai and driven 25 km and 45 minutes into the Old Quarter. Rooms are held from midday. When you are ready — and if you have landed in the morning that means the same afternoon — your guide takes you out for the two things that establish the northern palate before anything else.
The first is bun cha: pork belly and minced patties grilled over charcoal on the pavement, dropped into a bowl of warm, thin, sweet-sour fish sauce with green papaya and eaten with cold rice noodles and a plate of herbs. The second is ca phe trung, egg coffee, which is a yolk beaten with condensed milk into a thick foam over black coffee and served in a bath of hot water. Both are Hanoi inventions, both are eaten sitting on a stool at knee height, and between them they say most of what needs saying about how this city eats.
A market at 05:30, and a class that starts there
The alarm is early and the reason is simple: a Hanoi wet market does its serious business between five and seven, and by nine it is a different and much duller place. You go with the cook who will teach you later, and you buy what the class will use — live freshwater fish, morning glory, the dill and turmeric that mark northern cooking out from every other region, a bundle of rice paper, and the fermented shrimp paste that most visitors decide about within one sniff.
Breakfast is bought in the market itself: banh cuon, rice batter steamed in a thin sheet over cloth, rolled around minced pork and wood-ear mushroom and eaten with fried shallot. The class runs from mid-morning to early afternoon and is private to your party. What you cook is the northern set — cha ca, the turmeric and dill fish that gave its name to a whole street; bun rieu with its crab-and-tomato broth; nem cua be, the crab spring rolls; and a proper pho bo broth explained from the bones up, even though it takes longer to make than you have. The afternoon is free and you will not want dinner.
The Old Quarter on foot, dish by dish
A walking day of about six kilometres and, deliberately, seven small meals rather than two large ones. Morning: pho bo at a place that opens at six and sells out by ten, then xoi xeo — sticky rice with mung bean paste and fried shallot, sold from a basket. Mid-morning: banh goi and a glass of tra da on a corner. Lunch: bun cha again if you liked it, or bun oc, the snail noodle soup, which is more of a Hanoi taste than a visitor one and which we will say so about.
The afternoon covers the guild streets that still sell what they were named for, the produce lanes, and a shop that has been making one kind of sweet for four generations. Late afternoon is bia hoi — fresh beer, brewed that morning, no preservative, drunk at a junction from a plastic crate — with nem chua ran and grilled things. Dinner, if there is room, is cha ca la vong at the table where it is cooked. The pace is set by appetite, not by the clock, and skipping two of the seven is normal.
Fly to Hue, and the food of a court that no longer exists
A morning flight of 1 hour 15 to Hue, in the city by early afternoon. Hue cooked for an emperor for a hundred and forty-three years and the habit survived the dynasty: the food is served small, in many dishes, arranged with a formality you find nowhere else in the country, and seasoned considerably saltier and hotter than Hanoi.
The afternoon starts with the everyday version of that tradition — the banh: banh beo, steamed rice discs in small dishes topped with dried shrimp and pork crackling; banh nam, flattened in banana leaf; banh loc, translucent tapioca parcels holding a shrimp and a piece of pork belly; and banh khoai, a small crisp yellow pancake eaten with a fermented soybean and peanut sauce that is Hue’s own and is not the same sauce as the one in the south. Dinner is the court repertoire proper, twelve to fifteen small courses in one sitting, in a kitchen that can actually do it. We will tell you plainly that some of the carved-vegetable presentation is theatre; the cooking underneath it is not.
Bun bo Hue at dawn, and a vegetarian city
Out at 06:30 for bun bo Hue, which is the dish the city is known for and which is almost always wrong outside it — thick round noodles, a beef and pork bone broth built on lemongrass and fermented shrimp paste, chilli oil floating on top, and a slice of congealed pig blood that you may leave or eat as you prefer. After that, com hen: cold broken rice with the tiny clams of the Perfume River, roasted peanuts, sesame crackers, herbs and a bowl of clam broth on the side. It is a poor person’s dish and one of the best things in Vietnam.
The rest of the day belongs to the other Hue, which almost no itinerary covers. This is a Buddhist city with dozens of working pagodas, and on the first and fifteenth of each lunar month a large part of the population eats no meat at all. The vegetarian cooking that grew out of that is not an imitation of meat dishes — it is its own repertoire, built on jackfruit, banana flower, tofu skin, fermented soybean and mushroom, and it is sold from com chay stalls all over the city. We eat in a pagoda kitchen or at a family stall depending on the day of the lunar month, which we check against your dates when we quote. Late afternoon is free, and the Perfume River in the hour before dark is worth the walk. Sweet things to finish: che hat sen boc nhan, a lotus seed inside a longan in clear syrup, which was a palace dish and is now sold on the street.
Over the Hai Van pass, and into Hoi An
Hue to Da Nang is 120 km and two and a half hours over the Hai Van pass rather than through the tunnel, with a stop at Lang Co lagoon where the oysters and the blood cockles come from. In Da Nang we stop for one dish and one only: mi quang, a wide turmeric-yellow noodle in a very small amount of intensely reduced broth, with a rice cracker snapped over the top. It is the regional dish of the old Quang Nam province — territory that has been part of Da Nang city since the July 2025 mergers — and it is not a soup, whatever it looks like.
Another 30 km and 45 minutes to Hoi An. The afternoon is the market on the riverbank, walked slowly with your guide before you cook anything: the herb sellers, the fish landed that morning, the woman who makes only white rose dumplings, the stall selling the eight or nine kinds of rice flour that separate one dish from another. Dinner is com ga Hoi An — poached chicken shredded over turmeric rice cooked in the poaching broth, with raw onion, Vietnamese coriander and a chilli sauce.
Tra Que, a stove, and three dishes that live only here
Tra Que is a village of about forty families three kilometres from Hoi An that has grown herbs on the same sandy ground for four hundred years, fertilised with lake weed dragged out of the lagoon beside it rather than with anything bought. You go at 07:30, work a bed for half an hour so the smell gets into your hands, and pick what the class needs: rau ram, la lot, perilla, fish mint, and the small-leaf basil that goes into everything here.
The cooking session runs to early afternoon and is built around what Hoi An makes and nowhere else does properly. Cao lau — thick chewy noodles, char siu pork, greens and almost no liquid — is the famous one; local cooks will tell you the noodles need water from one particular well in the town and lye made from ash brought from the Cham islands, and whether or not that is chemistry or folklore, the version made elsewhere is different. Then banh bao banh vac, the white rose dumplings, which in Hoi An are made by a small number of families and supplied to everyone else. Then banh xeo the central way — small, crisp, cooked in a clay pan over coals, not the large soft southern version you will meet on Day 9. The evening is yours; the old town after dark is best walked without commentary, and banh mi is a street away.
South to Ho Chi Minh City, and dinner in Cho Lon
A late-morning flight from Da Nang, 1 hour 20 to Tan Son Nhat, and 45 minutes into the city. The heat is different, the language on the street is different, and so is the food: the southern palate sweetens with palm sugar and coconut milk, sours with tamarind, and puts three times as many raw herbs on the table.
The evening is Cho Lon, the Chinese quarter, which is a city inside the city and has been since the eighteenth century. The cooking there is Cantonese and Teochew that has been in Vietnam long enough to have become something else: mi vit tiem, egg noodles with a duck leg braised in a medicinal broth of star anise and dried tangerine peel; sui cao, the dumpling soup sold on one particular street where six shops compete on the same corner; hu tieu Nam Vang, the clear pork and prawn noodle that arrived by way of Phnom Penh and is now more Saigonese than anything. We eat three of them across the evening, standing and sitting, and finish with che — sweet soups of bean, tapioca and coconut, eaten from a glass.
The southern palate, from a market to a back street
Morning in a District 1 or Binh Thanh market, which is the mirror image of the Hanoi one you saw on Day 2 — the same trade, an entirely different inventory. Tamarind, palm sugar in blocks, coconut cream pressed while you wait, elephant-ear stalk and okra for canh chua ca, the sour fish soup that is the household dish of the delta. Breakfast is banh mi, which is Saigon’s dish more than anywhere else: a light rice-flour baguette, pate, cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon, coriander and chilli.
Lunch is com tam — broken rice with a grilled pork chop, shredded pork skin and a steamed egg-and-pork cake, with sweet fish sauce poured over the lot — eaten at a shop front with a fan pointed at you. The afternoon is free, and it is the right afternoon to do nothing. In the evening we go into the alleys behind the main streets, where most of this city actually eats: banh xeo in the southern manner, the size of a plate, yellow with turmeric, wrapped in mustard leaf and herbs and dipped; oc, the sea snails and clams sold by the dozen and cooked six ways to order; goi cuon rolled at the table; and ca phe sua da to finish, which is strong enough to be a problem at that hour and is drunk anyway.
One last bowl, and the airport
Breakfast is your choice and by now you will have one: hu tieu from a cart, pho in the southern style with its sweeter broth and its pile of raw bean sprouts and saw-leaf herb, or banh mi op la with two fried eggs in the pan. Your guide will take you to whichever, and will buy the coffee.
If your flight is late in the day there is time for a last market run for things worth carrying home — Phu Quoc fish sauce in a sealed bottle for the hold, Da Lat arabica, dried shrimp, palm sugar, and the pepper from Phu Quoc that is worth more than the space it takes. We tell you honestly what customs in your country will and will not let through, and what will leak. Transfer to Tan Son Nhat is 45 minutes and we allow three hours before an international departure.
What it costs
| Party size | Comfortable | Excellent | Exceptional |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 travellers | USD 3,500 | USD 4,480 | USD 5,080 |
| 3 – 4 | USD 3,050 | USD 3,900 | USD 4,420 |
| 5 – 6 | USD 2,790 | USD 3,570 | USD 4,050 |
| 7 – 8 | USD 2,690 | USD 3,440 | USD 3,900 |
The three columns change the hotel and nothing else. The guide, the vehicle, the market mornings, the cooking sessions and every meal on the itinerary are identical across all three, which on a food trip matters more than usual: the best thing you eat in ten days will cost about 60,000 VND and will be the same bowl whichever room you slept in. What the upper columns buy is a garden property in Hue instead of a good business hotel, and a pool in Hoi An within walking distance of the old town rather than a shuttle ride from it.
Party size moves the number much further than class does, because a private guide and a private vehicle cost the same whether two people or eight are using them. The cooking sessions are also private to your party and priced per session up to six people, which is why the drop between the two-traveller row and the larger rows is steeper here than on our sightseeing trips. See what a Vietnam trip costs for the breakdown, and how to book for deposits and dates.
Included and not included
What the price includes
- Nine nights: three in Hanoi, two in Hue, two in Hoi An, two in Ho Chi Minh City
- Two domestic flights: Hanoi to Hue and Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City
- Two private cooking sessions, each beginning at the market or the herb village
- Two guided market mornings, the Hanoi one starting at 05:30
- Every meal named in the day-by-day — 9 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 6 dinners, plus the street stops between them
- Private vehicle and driver throughout, and a private guide who eats with you
- One laundry service in Hoi An, and drinking water in the vehicle daily
- A 24-hour phone number answered by a person in Vietnam, not a call centre
What it does not include
- International flights, quoted separately at cost if you want us to book them
- Vietnam e-visa, USD 25 single entry, applied for at evisa.gov.vn
- Travel insurance, which we require you to hold and will ask to see
- Alcohol beyond the bia hoi stop on Day 3, and drinks with dinner
- The handful of meals left free, chiefly the free afternoons and two dinners
- Tips for guide and driver, which are customary, never included and never invoiced
Shellfish, pork, beef, peanuts, fish sauce, coriander, chilli heat, or nothing at all — all of it is workable, and all of it needs to be known in advance rather than at the table. Fish sauce and dried shrimp are in more dishes than most visitors expect, including several that look vegetarian, so a strict vegetarian or vegan trip has to be built rather than adapted. Hue is the easiest city in Vietnam for that and Hanoi is the hardest. We pass every restriction to each kitchen in Vietnamese, in writing, and confirm it back to you before you travel.
Pictures from this route
Who this trip is not for
Ten days built around eating suits fewer people than it sounds like it should.
- Anyone who will not eat at a street stall. A good part of the best food in this country is cooked on a pavement by a person who makes one dish. If plastic stools, shared tables and a rinse bucket are a problem, this trip is the wrong purchase and we will say so before taking a deposit.
- Strict vegans, unless we build the trip from scratch for it. Fish sauce and dried shrimp are structural in northern and southern cooking, not a garnish that can be left off. It can be done — Hue makes it genuinely enjoyable — but it needs six weeks of notice and a different set of kitchens.
- Travellers who want the sights as well. There is no bay cruise, no My Son and no citadel tour in these ten days; Hue and Hoi An are visited as places that cook rather than as monuments. The highlights trip is the one that covers both.
- Anyone with a severe airborne or cross-contamination allergy, particularly to peanut or shellfish. Street kitchens work in one wok with one set of tongs, and we cannot guarantee separation. We will build a restaurant-only version instead if you ask, and it is a noticeably lesser trip.
- People travelling in October or November who cannot lose the central section. The 2025 floods ran from mid-October into December and hit Hue and Da Nang hardest of all. Hue and Hoi An are four of these nine nights, and that risk is real rather than nominal.
How the days actually run
Two rules shape the timetable more than anything else. Markets are finished by nine, and the best stalls sell out. Everything else bends around those two facts.
The early starts are not for the view
The Hanoi market on Day 2 and the herb picking at Tra Que on Day 7 both start before the heat. A wet market at nine has sold its fish and put away its stools; a herb bed at eleven has been watered and is closed to walking. The two afternoons after those mornings are deliberately free.
Seven small meals beat two big ones
On the walking days we plan around appetite. Nobody finishes every dish, everything is shared, and skipping two stops of seven is normal rather than a failure. Your guide orders in small quantities on purpose so that you can taste eleven things in a day instead of defeating four.
The best bowl is rarely the dearest
Most of what you eat on this trip costs between 40,000 and 90,000 VND — a couple of dollars. We do not choose stalls by price, and we do not take a commission from any of them. A handful of meals are in proper restaurants because the cooking needs a kitchen, and those are named in the day-by-day.
On hygiene, the honest position. Almost nobody gets ill from busy street food, because high turnover is the best preservative there is; what causes trouble is a lukewarm buffet, ice of unknown origin, and salad rinsed in tap water. Your guide chooses stalls that are full of local customers at the hour they are full, drinks come sealed or with factory-made tube ice, and raw herbs on this trip are washed where we control the water. Carry rehydration salts anyway. Two of ten travellers will have a bad twelve hours somewhere on a food-focused trip, and the itinerary has enough free afternoons to absorb it without losing a day.
On timing, March, April and December are the months that work best for a route running from Hanoi to the delta, for the same reasons they work on every trip we sell that crosses all three regions: the north is dry, the centre is out of flood season, and the south is at its driest. When to go sets out the month by month position. Lunar dates matter here in a way they do not elsewhere — the first and the fifteenth of each lunar month change what Hue cooks, and Tet closes most family stalls in every city for the better part of a week. We check both against your dates before quoting.
Tell us what you eat and what you will not
Send your dates, party size and any restriction, however small. We come back with the two cooking sessions we would book, what the lunar calendar does to your Hue days, and a firm price, usually inside one working day.
Questions travellers ask most
How different is the food really, from one city to the next?
Different enough that a northern cook and a southern cook disagree about what a dish is. A Hanoi pho broth is clear, restrained and served with little more than spring onion; the same soup in Ho Chi Minh City is sweeter, richer, and arrives with a plate of bean sprouts, saw-leaf herb, lime and hoisin. Banh xeo is small, crisp and charcoal-cooked in Hue and Hoi An, and the size of a dinner plate and soft in the middle in the south.
Hue is the outlier: small dishes, more of them, saltier and hotter, plus a vegetarian tradition that has no equivalent elsewhere. Hoi An makes three or four dishes — cao lau, white rose dumplings, com ga — that are genuinely local and are made differently thirty kilometres away in Da Nang.
Can you handle allergies, vegetarians and children who will not touch herbs?
Vegetarians, yes, easily, and Hue in particular is one of the best cities in Asia for it. Vegans need the trip built rather than adapted, because fish sauce and dried shrimp are load-bearing in northern and southern cooking; give us six weeks and it is a good trip rather than a compromised one.
Serious cross-contamination allergies are the honest limit. A street kitchen has one wok, one board and one set of tongs, and we will not pretend otherwise. Where the allergy is severe we build a restaurant-only version, and we tell you upfront that it is a lesser trip. Children are straightforward — com tam, com ga, banh mi, spring rolls and rice with grilled pork will carry a fussy eater through ten days without anyone making a scene about it.
Is a cooking class worth two half-days out of ten?
These two are, because neither of them starts at a stove. The Hanoi session begins in a market at 05:30 with the cook buying, and roughly half of what you learn is how to choose — which fish, which rice paper, which of the eight rice flours. The Hoi An session begins in a herb bed at Tra Que and half of it is about the herbs, which is the part that actually travels home with you.
What you cook is chosen so that it is reproducible: dishes that need a charcoal grill, a clay pan or a twelve-hour bone broth are demonstrated and explained rather than set as your task. Both sessions are private to your party and both end in a meal you sit down to properly rather than tasting standing up.
Do we need to be fit, and how much walking is there?
Five to seven kilometres on the eating days, all of it flat, spread across a morning and an evening with long sitting-down gaps in between. There are no steps of consequence, no trekking, and no early flights except the one to Hue.
The genuine physical demand is heat and volume. Ho Chi Minh City runs above 32°C for most of the year, market floors are wet and uneven, and the honest constraint on a day like Day 3 is your appetite rather than your legs. Both cooking days end by early afternoon, and there are three free afternoons in ten days for exactly that reason.
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Tell us about the trip you have in mind
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