Prague Off the Beaten Path – Authentic Vietnamese Food at Sapa Vietnamese Market

Prague Off the Beaten Path – Authentic Vietnamese Food at Sapa Vietnamese Market

Prague might not be the place you come to find good food. However, if you crave exceptional Vietnamese food in Prague and love to go off the tourist map, then you should visit Sapa, the largest Vietnamese market Prague.

Be prepared for a culture shock. Once you enter Sapa, you feel that you’re no longer in an EU country. Sapa’s rundown and unkempt appearance might make some of you feel unsafe, but there’s more to the market than the crappy environment that will be yours for the next hours.

You can’t get off the beaten path in Prague than this, and you will not find any other place in Prague to have better Vietnamese food than this market.

But first, you need to know what to eat and where to find it.

Nobody ever leaves Sapa without trying the ridiculously delicious grilled pork or grilled duck served with rice noodles, or Pho, the most famous Vietnamese dish outside Vietnam. However, if you think grilled pork, grilled duck or Pho is the only food worth trying in Sapa, you’re wrong. Save your stomach for fish soup, crab soup, snail soup, rice pancakes and much more.

Vietnamese food in Sapa from A to Z

Most dishes, sold at an ordinary shack, cost from 100 to 120 czk. You pay more if you prefer to eat in a proper “restaurant” that has a proper menu and photos of the food. But nobody comes to Sapa to be normal and proper. You don’t find best Vietnamese food in a restaurant that serves a dozen kinds of food. The best one is found at a shack that serves just that food and some variation.

The food court where you find most of the place listed here. (credit: sapamap.cz)

Bánh cuốn and Phở cuốn (Rolled pancake)

Banh cuon and Pho cuon originated from northern Vietnam, so there is no better place to eat these delicacies than Sapa market, a place run by northern Vietnamese. You don’t find these dishes in the majority of Vietnamese restaurants outside Sapa because preparing this dish is very time-consuming. You have to make the rice sheet one by one by spreading rice batter mixture on a special piece of cloth that covers a hot pot of water. After a couple of minutes, you use a long bamboo stick to get the rice sheet out of the cloth into a preparation table where you fill it with wood ear mushroom, cooked ground pork, and fried shallots. You fold the rice sheet using a pair of cooking chopsticks. A portion of Banh cuon consists at least seven rolls, so you can imagine the time it takes to prepare a dish. That’s why they don’t sell this in a typical restaurant outside Sapa because timing alone, Banh Cuon is not as popular and won’t sell as much as the more known Pho soup, Bun cha, or Bun Bo Nam Bo. Banh cuon is served with Cha lua, a type of Vietnamese ham, vegetable, and fish sauce.

Banh cuon

Pho cuon is almost similar to Banh cuon in the preparation process. The rice sheet in Pho cuon is thicker and filled with cooked beef, onion, basil and other vegetables. Instead of a thin sheet like Banh cuon, a Pho cuon looks similar to a spring roll. A portion has six rolls, served with fish sauce. The only restaurant that sells Pho cuon outside Sapa is Miss Saigon, near Karlovo Namesti. However, it costs more with fewer rolls.

Banh cuon and Pho cuon are lighter than other meals, so you might not be full after one portion.  But this even better because then you can try other dishes and snacks.

Pho cuon Hung Yen

Where to eat: Banh cuon Hung Yen – The lady owner is super friendly.

Bún chả (Grilled pork and noodles)

Another northern delicacy originated from Hanoi; Bun cha is catching up to Pho as the second most known Vietnamese dish in the Czech Republic. Bun cha is served with grilled fatty pork (cha), white rice noodle (bun), herbs, and fish sauce. With Vietnamese restaurants opening like mushrooms in every street corner, you will find Bun cha along Pho in the menu. However, the best Bun cha is still in Sapa, especially in a shack called Hai Ha where they grill the pork over charcoal, which is the proper way to do it.

It’s rare to find a restaurant outside of Sapa that makes proper bun cha. They bake or fry the pork, not grill. It’s hit and miss. In some place, the bun cha is still ok, but in some place, the pork is pretty bad.

Where to eat: Hai Ha

Grilled pork at Hai Ha

Bún ngan nướng (Grilled duck and noodles)

Again, the best grilled duck can only be found in Sapa. The place that has the best duck is Dung Lien, confirmed by a many local Vietnamese who work in the market. Here they also serve boiled duck and grilled pork. I finally tried their Bun Cha (grilled pork), and it was pretty good. I normally wouldn’t eat Bun Cha in a place known for duck, but my boyfriend doesn’t like soup and eats Bun Cha almost everywhere he goes, so as a compromise we eat at Dung Lien so he can eat a dried dish and I a soup dish.

Similar to the grilled pork dish, the duck was grilled over charcoal and served with the same white rice noodle and herbs. However, this dish comes with soy sauce (mixed with garlic, sugar and lime), instead of fish sauce, and a small bowl of broth with bamboo, green and purple onions.

Where to eat: Dung Lien

Grilled duck at Dung Lien

Bún bò Nam Bộ / Bún gà Nam Bộ (Stir-fried beef/chicken noodles)

What you get is a bowl of white rice noodles, stir-fried beef (bò) or chicken (gà), mixed with crushed peanuts and sesame seeds on the top, followed by sliced cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, bean sprouts, coriander, mint, fried shallots and other herbs, and fish sauce at the bottom. Mix it up before eating.

It’s interesting that although the word “Nam Bo” mean “southern,” I don’t recall eating this dish while living in Saigon, the commercial capital city in southern Vietnam nor in the US where habituated many southern Vietnamese. I rediscovered this southern dish in a place known for everything Northern.

I don’t have a clear favorite place for this dish in Sapa. My favorite place to eat Bun bo/ga Nam Bo is no longer there. The couple, who are also my friends, moved out of Sapa and opened a restaurant in Prague 9 – Kobylisy. I introduced them to the company I used to work, and since then they brought Vietnamese dishes during lunch hours and gave me free Bun bo/ga Nam Bo, so I stopped eating this dish elsewhere.

Also, I don’t recommend Bun bo/ga Nam Bo here because this is a southern dish. The culture in Sapa is dominantly northern, so I recommend to try other northern dishes instead. You can find this dish in most Vietnamese restaurants outside Sapa anyway.

Phở

Everybody know Pho, so I don’t need to write more. Nowadays, there are too many Vietnamese restaurants in Prague, and some of them have good Pho. You don’t need to come all the way to Sapa to eat Pho. In fact, I recommend you not to eat Pho when you’re in Sapa, eat something else you won’t find outside this market.

I’ve heard that the best places for pho are Pho Quynh Anh, Pho Tung. 

Bún bò Huế or Bún bò giò heo (Spicy beef noodle soup)

Bun bo Hue, a spicy lemongrass-based noodle soup comes from central Vietnam, served with white rice noodles (thicker than the one used in Bun cha and Bun bo Nam Bo), sliced boiled beef, shrimp ball (optional), a pig’s knuckle (it’s optional, they will probably ask you, or you ask them to include it in the soup) and a plate of vegetables and herbs (coriander, bean sprouts, mint, basil, banana blossom). The Central Vietnamese cuisine is known for its spiciness, and so does Bun bo Hue. Chilly oil is added to the broth during the cooking process, and when the soup is ready, you suppose to add additional oily chilly paste to the soup which gives the soup the red color.

Where to eat: Hue xua

Bún cá rô đồng (Freshwater Fish soup)

Bun ca ro dong is a fish soup originated from northern Vietnam. It’s a typical noodle soup that consists of fried perch (a kind of fish that live in the fields), cooked water dropwort, water spinach, pineapple, tomatoes, salad, and perilla.

Where to eat: Bun ca ro dong (or Bun ca Hai Duong)

Bún cá Hải Phòng (Hai Phong Fish soup)

Another kind of fish soup that comes from Hai Phong, a harbor city near Ha Noi. The two soup look similar because they have almost the same ingredients. However, unlike Bun ca ro dong which uses only ca ro dong, a freshwater fish, the original Bun ca Hai Phong has saltwater fish or both saltwater and freshwater fish. Saltwater fish is rare and expensive in landlocked Czech Republic, so here in Sapa they use carp, a freshwater fish, instead. A bowl of Bun ca Hai Phong comprises of a few slices of fried fish, fish cakes, white rice noodles topped with green onion, dill, water dropwort (or Chinese celery) and perilla.

Where to eat: Bun ca Hai Phong

Bun ca Hai Phong

Bún ốc (Snail noodle soup)

Bun oc is not as popular as other soup probably because people are a bit afraid of eating snails. Also, the snails here can be chewy. The place known for the best Bun oc in Sapa closed shop a couple of years ago when the owners retired. However, there is a new place in Sapa, Nam Tuyet, that sells this dish together with other noodle soups.

Where to eat: Nam Tuyet, right next to Dung Lien

Bun oc

Bún thang (Northern combo noodle soup)

Nam Tuyet, the same restaurant that servers Bun oc (snail soup) has another northern dish called Bun thang. I have no idea how to translate the word “thang.” This word means soup or broth in Chinese. The word “thang” is commonly used in “thang thuoc Bac” which refers to a portion of herb prescription following a traditional Chinese medicine recipe. Thang means portion; thuoc means medicine, and Bac means north. It takes a lot of labor and effort to prepare a small traditional Chinese medicine prescription. My mother needed to take a lot of this Chinese herb when I was a kid. A basic “thang thuoc Bac” consists of many different herbs and plants. You bring them home, slow boil the mixture in a clay kettle for a few hours and use only the liquid that comes out of this process.

Therefore, the word “thang” implies the importance of the slow cook process and careful preparation of the broth. The rest doesn’t matter as much. A proper bun thang needs up to 20 different ingredients.

In a bun thang bowl, you see a lot more toppings than in Pho and other soup. There are chicken, thin sliced fried eggs, Vietnamese ham, pork sausage (optional), coriander, green onion.

Where to eat: Nam Tuyet, right next to Dung Lien, the duck place.

Miến (Cellophane/glass noodle soup)

Mien is probably the only noodles that look different than all the other noodles that we use in our food. Cellophane noodles are made from starch, not rice or egg.

Mien is served with a sliced boiled chicken, cat-ear mushroom, bamboo, and herbs.

Where to eat: Thang Long Quan

Gỏi cuốn (Spring roll)

CNN once ranked Goi cuon in the world’s top 50. There are restaurants in Sapa that sell Goi cuon, but if you eat Goi cuon, we know you’re tourists. Local Vietnamese don’t eat them because they can make these rolls at home. A traditional roll consists of white rice noodle, sliced or shredded pork, prawn, Vietnamese ham, salad, sliced cucumber, bean sprouts, mint, garlic chive all wrapped in a slightly wet Vietnamese rice paper. Different chefs have their recipes and change the ingredients a bit.

A friend of mine introduced baked fish and fried eggs into the mix. I added paprika and onion. I showed a group of Slovaks how to make these rolls, and they added salmon to the rolls assuming they are just like sushi.

You eat spring rolls with either fish sauce or peanut butter sauce.

Where to eat: Phuong Lien

Cháo (Rice porridge or Congee)

You know that Vietnamese eat rice and soup ever single day in every meal right? So when we are sick, we eat something else, of course. Instead of just rice, we eat watery rice 😉 because it’s like a soupy rice, and it’s hot and easy to digest.

I haven’t eaten Chao for a long time after leaving Vietnam that I started to miss it. I didn’t find any place that sold Chao until I discovered Nam Tuyet, a restaurant that opened just less than a year ago.

Where to eat: Nam Tuyet

Photo credit: Wikipedia

How to get to Sapa

Address: Libušská 319/126, 142 00 Praha-Libuš-Písnice

• Metro stop Kačerov (Red C line) then bus no. 113 or 333 to Sídliště Písnice stop.
• Or metro stop Chodov, Haje (Red C line),  or Smíchovské (Yellow B line) then bus no. 197 to Sídliště Písnice stop.

Resources:

• Sapa map – www.sapamapa.cz

Please use the form below to let me know when you want to do the tour and how many people in your group. I do this tour for fun mostly on the weekend and to connect with other travelers and foodies when I’m not hopping around the world and joining other cool tours myself.

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