I haven’t managed to find a restaurant in the city centre that serves Bánh cuốn, but a Google search showed me that a restaurant at SAPA specialises in this delicate dish of gently steamed rice flour and tapioca starch rolls.
So I visited them yesterday and I was not disappointed. A real small family-run business with a simple decor and friendly people.
My Bánh cuốn rolls, filled with minced pork and mushrooms, were of course cooked to order and served with fresh greens and a sweet and sour dipping sauce with some fish sauce in the background. There were slices of fresh hot chillies that could be used to spice up the sauce.
Just as the dish was placed on the table on a relatively small plate, I was a little unsure if there was enough. I needn’t have worried about that, I could only just finish it.
The dish was served with Giò chả (a kind of pork sausage) on the side.
Everything was really delicious, but I was especially excited about the Bánh cuốn rolls.
As you can see from the picture of the menu, the restaurant specialises in this particular dish. It couldn’t be more original – except that the tables and chairs were full height and size and not little plastic tables that look like something someone stole from a child’s bedroom. But it was all OK 😀
I paid Czk. 190,-, a price that is not on the menu. Actually, I think I got a 10 Czk discount, maybe because I didn’t need a take-away box. It was good value for money.
Just around the corner in the same building is a small café that serves Cà phê sữa đá, Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk, and Bac xiu (‘white’ Vietnamese coffee, here served with coconut milk and condensed milk). I tried the former and it was OK, but that was about it. For my taste, they had been a little too generous with the condensed milk and too stingy with the coffee beans, but it was better than nothing. 60,- Czk.
It was served very authentically, in plastic cups with plastic lids and plastic straws, something that annoys me enormously, especially when it was not ‘to-go’.
Bánh cuốn Phương Phượng restaurant is located in the same street as Tamda Foods, but a little further down and in a separate building opposite the car parks. You can also find it on Google Maps: https://g.co/kgs/XPGoLiZ