Vegan Pho in Vietnam

If there’s one thing that people associate with Vietnamese food it’s ‘pho’ and quite rightly so in our book. This noodle soup, eaten everywhere throughout the country, can easily be made vegan and believe us when we say that there aren’t many things as satisfying as a good bowl of vegan pho. Beware that ‘pho with vegetables’ may well not be vegan or even vegetarian for that matter as meat stock would normally be used. Therefore, eating in a vegetarian or vegan restaurant is preferable unless you manage to master the language!

First things first, you have to learn to pronounce it properly – we tried asking for vegan pho with an ‘f’ sound (like “faux”) and at best we got polite looks from people who thought we were clearly idiots and at worst we got mystified or blank stares. The correct pronunciation should have you asking for “furh” (only the ‘rh’ is very short at the end).

Vegan pho at The Nam Hai

Once you’ve nailed the pronunciation (with an added “an chay” – meaning vegetarian / vegan) at the end, you should be well on your way to receiving one of the nicest noodle soups you’ll ever eat. You can eat vegan pho at any time of the day, there are no rules here and it’s a very common dish to be offered at breakfast (fine by us!)

Vegan pho in Saigon

A light broth, filled with rice noodles and delicious vegetables like amazing mushrooms, asian greens, beansprouts, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower. Sometimes you might get tofu – fried or just cubed and floating around in the yummy soup. There’s always herbs (lots of them) like Vietnamese basil, Chinese corriander and mint, and you can spice up your vegan pho with chilli, soy sauce and lime.

Vegan pho at An Lam Villas

Now to develop our own vegan pho recipe so we can continue our love affair with this noodly vegan goodness once we have left Vietnam…