Vegan Chicken Rice in Vietnam

Twice a month our favourite Buddhist vegan restaurant in Hoi An serves a 100% plant-based, cruelty free version of the local favourite Com Ga or Chicken Rice. Vegan Chicken Rice, is not just rice as some might think, it’s a wonderful collection of herbs, yellow rice and shredded fake chicken.

It’s so popular with the locals, that the restaurant is overrun with people for the two days in which Miss Lien and her family serve their vegan version. We were in Hoi An on the 1st day of the lunar calendar (they also make it on the 15th day of the lunar calendar) but we had made other plans and so we missed it.

We were so disappointed to have missed out on this popular local vegan event so imagine our delight when we popped by the restaurant for dinner the other night to discover it full of excited 10 years olds who were happily celebrating a family birthday, all fuelled by their favourite party food: vegan Chicken Rice.

Vegan Chicken Rice for two

We joined in the party fun and were so grateful to enjoy two plates of the house special, not only because we were sad that we missed out on it, but because it was awesome! so simple, yet so amazingly awesome that we wish you could taste it from the photographs.

It tasted so good!

We don’t know what Miss Lien does with her fake chicken but it’s really good, sort of chewy and textured and served shredded in small pieces so it was scattered over the top of the soft yellow rice. The addition of Vietnamese herbs, which we have now come to expect in all delicious Vietnamese food we eat, and a slightly pickled slaw on the side added another bit of interest to the dish.

We cautiously added a small dollop of her fresh chilli condiment which was lucky because it turns out that this is epically hot and spicy (but oh so very good).

Hot, Hot, Hot – but delicious

We love Miss Lien and her amazing vegan food and we thought about our meat eating friends whilst polishing off our dinner and would have loved for them to try this dish.

Honestly, the  sunshine filled days haven’t gone to our heads; this is the dish that might you happy to have a meat free day twice a month, vegan friends will have to join us in our sadness that she only makes it twice a month…

Our local vegan restaurant is called ‘Quan Chay An Nhu’ and can be found at 516 Hai Ba Trung in Hoi An.