Vegan Friends in Hoi An

Yesterday’s post was all about bread, coffee and beer (some of the staples of our vegan Vietnamese travels so far). Today’s post brings us some real food again which was so tasty that it made us fall in even more love with Hoi An in Vietnam.

We love vegan food but we also love vegan friends too; sadly we don’t get to meet too many on the road (still waiting for the rest of the world to go animal-free!) so we have a new habit of temporarily veganizing new friends we meet so we can go out on the town and eat vegan food.

Today we adopted some super cool people from Dublin as our new vegan friends in Hoi An and headed out to enjoy some plant-based, cruelty free, vegan dinner together.

Off we went to prove that vegan travellers in Vietnam don’t have to live off bread, coffee and beer (unless that is actually what you want to do as it does taste really good).

Here’s a run down of our dinner from a great vegetarian restaurant in Hoi An called ‘Minh Hiên Quan Chay’:

Some spring rolls filled with tofu, mushrooms and other vegtables – we really love the rice flour pancakes that are the wrappers as it makes them so much lighter than the wheat flour versions we have eaten.

Fried vegan spring rolls with their crispy rice four pancake wrapping

A vegetable and tofu curry that was loaded with luminous turmeric; simple yet delicious.

Packed with fresh vegetables and stir-fried, this curry was loaded with turmeric, chilli, garlic…

A rice noodle salad that was covered in chopped peanuts and full of lime, mint, chilli and garlic flavours. So fresh and light and noodley.

Noodle salad lovers would definitely approve of this wonderful Vietnamese salad

Eggplant braised in sweet soy with heaps of fresh garlic and garnished with peanuts. This was vegan food to die for; so rich with soy, so luxurious with the soft squishy eggplant and then a crunchy, toasty peanut garnish. Vegan travellers have never had it so good.

Another amazing vegan eggplant dish; never have we loved this humble vegetable so much

Stuffed tofu, crammed full of herbs and chillies and vegetables and loaded with that luminous turmeric again. This little pocket of vegan tastiness was then baked in a banana leaf, which is a sure fire way to remind you that you aren’t at home now and that you’re having an amazing vegan tropical travel adventure.

Unwrap you’re banana leaf to discover a tasty, tofu treat inside

And the finale; some ‘bánh xèo’, crispy turmeric laced pancakes that have been sizzled in hot oil to make them deliciously crunchy and then stuffed with crunchy vegetables like beansprouts.

They are eaten by taking the crispy pancake and wrapping it in a rice flour pancake with sprigs of fresh herbs and lettuce leaves, rolling it up and dipping them in a sauce made from chillies and peanuts among other things (too much bia hoi again by this stage to recognise any more ingredients we’re afraid). So yes, that it a pancake, wrapped in a pancake. A perfect food combination in our vegan book.

Pancakes wrapped in pancakes? A big yes please from us..

All this delicious vegan food was served with some absolutely fearsome chilli paste. This little pot of minced chillies was so hot, but oh so good too – our vegan friends in Hoi An really loved this chilli paste.

Spicing it up with fearsome vegan chilli paste

Thanks Gwen and Kevin (our temporarily veganised friends) for your help on this leg of our Vegan Food Quest, we hope our paths cross again some time soon…

Vegan Friends in Hoi An (we think they’d make pretty good vegan friends in other places too)

Everyone enjoyed eating a vegan dinner, which is always a good sign that not only is the restaurant dishing up some excellent food, but that there is hope for our planet, and all of us that live on it (animal and human). The more delicious vegan meals being consumed, by vegans and non-vegans alike, the better.