Vegan Food In Hoi An

Having completed our very long train ride to get to Hoi An, we are now settled into our homestay with the loveliest Vietnamese family. It’s great staying with a local family because (even though they aren’t vegan) they have the local knowledge about where we can get great vegan food in Hoi An…

Our host showed us to the nearest local vegan restaurant so we could get some lunch; it was quite late in the day by the time we got there and they said that they didn’t have much left, so we suggested that we could eat anything they could throw together for us, without too much bother.

‘An Nhu’, our new local vegan restaurant

Our ‘just thrown together’ vegan lunch they served us consisted of a lovely braised zucchini dish, tofu that was cooked in a chilli and sweet tomato sauce, and some fresh green beans with carrot and slithers of braised tofu.

Pretty impressive ‘just thrown together’ vegan food in Hoi An

The tofu was sweet, spicy and rich with a tomato and chili paste on the outside; the zucchini was soft and comforting to eat and the beans were tender and fresh.

These are the things that vegan travel happiness is made of

As we were eating all these yummy treats, more vegan food started to arrive. First a bitter gourd soup that consisted of a bitter broth with medallions of bitter gourd that had been stuffed with tofu and vegetables. For those of you who haven’t eaten bitter gourd it has the texture of zucchini with a knobbly skin on the outside and it tastes, as the name would suggest, bitter. It supposedly has great health benefits (being good for digestion, skin and hair among other things) but its just a little too bitter for our tender palates.

Super healthy but just a bit too bitter for us…

The tofu stuffing was lovely & we really wanted to love that bitter gourd but we’re just too soft

Then they added this little plate of Vietnamese spring rolls that were filled with vegetables and then lightly fried, and wedges of smoked compressed tofu skin.

The vegan food in Hoi An just kept arriving

At this stage we had to tell them to stop ‘throwing together’ food for us because our quick lunch was turning into a vegan banquet. This was an unusual but nice vegan problem to have.

Deliciously light spring rolls

Check out the texture; there are so many different types of tofu in Asia

Mrs Liên, the owner and creator of our fabulous vegan Vietnamese lunch, is lovely, as is her daughter and we stayed chatting with them for ages.

Our entire meal (including a beer and a fresh lemon juice) cost 80,000 VND which is £2.31 or $3.77.

So to recap, finding vegan food in Hoi An is easy – our local, 100% vegan restaurant is very close to us, it serves amazingly tasty authentic Vietnamese food and the people who run it are lovely and friendly. It’s also ridiculously cheap.

Needless to say we are very happy here so far…