How to Eat Vegetarian Food in Vietnam

Last updated on May 23, 2025 by Shannon

How to eat vegetarian in Vietnam

Traveling as a vegetarian in Vietnam isn’t easy, but it’s absolutely possible—and often tasty. While meat dominates most menus across the country, there’s a surprising variety of flavorful, veg-friendly dishes once you know what to look for.

After three months backpacking the country, here’s what I learned, what I ate, and how I navigated it all without compromising my diet.

In this guide:

  • ✅ Must-try vegetarian Vietnamese dishes
  • 📍 Veg-friendly restaurants (updated)
  • 💬 Essential phrases to order meat-free
  • 🚫 What to avoid—hidden meat traps

What It’s Really Like Traveling Vietnam as a Vegetarian

Before I landed in Vietnam, I was warned that vegetarians might struggle. But even so, many vegetarian and vegan guides leave out pivotal information. They are wildly optimistic and lead you astray if you travel off of the banana pancake trail. In fact, these guides did lead me astray during my three months backpacking south to north across Vietnam.

But after three months of street food, sleeper buses, and sidewalk cafés, I found a way to eat. It took flexibility, research, and a few awkward translation moments—but it was worth every bite.

This is what I wish I had read before backpacking both through the tourist hubs and the country’s rural, local communities.

How to Communicate Vegetarianism in Vietnam

Understand the cultural context

The Vietnamese word for vegetarian is “chay” (pronounced like chai). You’ll find restaurants with “chay” in the name throughout the country—often catering to Buddhist diners. Most Buddhists in Vietnam eat vegetarian only two days per month, so while chay food is understood culturally, it’s not always readily available in everyday street stalls.

🔍 Big cities like Hanoi and Saigon have dozens of chay restaurants, but in rural areas or small towns (especially around the Mekong Delta), options are limited to a few—or none.

Learn the key phrase

To say “I’m vegetarian,” use:

Tôi ăn chay
(toy ahn chai)

Pronounce chay like “chai” (rhyming with high)—but without upspeak. In tonal Vietnamese, raising your pitch turns it into a different word, so say it flatly and firmly, like a statement.

Write it down

Because Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet, you can write the phrase “tôi ăn chay” and show it to vendors. It’s often more effective than speaking—especially in rural areas or noisy food stalls.

Pro tip: Make a cheat sheet

In Can Tho, my guesthouse owner made me a little laminated menu helper. It had:

  • “I am vegetarian” in Vietnamese at the top
  • Icons or words for rice, noodles, vegetables, soup, fresh spring rolls, fried spring rolls

It was gold. When I was deep in rural areas with no English menus or chay restaurants in sight, I just pointed and smiled—and got delicious, meat-free meals almost every time.

Strategy & Challenges for Vegetarians in Vietnam

One of the things I find overlooked in online information about Vietnamese food for vegetarians is the fact that the sole strategy offered is to find a chay or Western restaurant. But outside of the cities, neither of these are guaranteed. And sometimes, the only chay vegetarian restaurant is far from your accommodation.

🍜 Vietnamese food isn’t naturally veg-friendly

Unlike Thailand or Laos, where it’s easy to swap tofu for meat in most dishes, Vietnam doesn’t work like that. Many of Vietnam’s iconic foods—especially the soups—are based on meat broths, and substitutions aren’t the norm.

In rural areas, I often ate simple plates of rice with stir-fried or boiled vegetables. It got repetitive fast—especially knowing how flavorful Vietnamese cuisine can be when you’re not limited by meat broths.

🛵 Motorbiking or going rural? It gets trickier

If you’re traveling off the beaten path—like motorbiking through the countryside or visiting towns in the Mekong Delta—you’ll hit food deserts for vegetarians. Some towns may have a single chay restaurant, but it could be far from your guesthouse, or closed during off-hours.

🇹🇭 It’s not like Thailand

In Thailand, you can walk up to any stall and get a curry or noodle dish with tofu. Not so in Vietnam.

Even restaurants that cater to locals often can’t make a vegetarian version — their prep revolves around meat, fish sauce, and bone broths.

🏙️ Big cities? Much easier.

If you’re sticking to major tourist hubs like Hanoi, Hoi An, or Ho Chi Minh City, eating veg is a breeze.

Chay restaurants are common, and Western-style or vegan cafés are often near backpacker zones (like Phạm Ngũ Lão in Saigon).

✋ While I didn’t stay in backpacker districts, I’d often walk there for dinner — they had more variety than the boiled veg meals offered at typical chay restaurants elsewhere in the city.

If you’re motorbiking across the country, you will surely struggle at times. And when you do find it, you won’t have the variety of dishes at your beck and call. Vietnamese food is not inherently vegetarian, nor is it easy to substitute an ingredient and make it vegetarian. For that reason, when I was in rural areas the restaurants often served me rice with stir-fried or boiled veggies. Tasty, but wearisome to eat every day when the local foods are so much more flavorful.

In comparison, if you’re backpacked other parts of Southeast Asia, it’s just not the same. In Thailand, the curries and noodle dishes are easily prepared vegetarian. Sit down at a restaurant or street stall in Thailand, and they can serve any red or green curry with tofu/vegetables instead of meat. Or most restaurants in the country can prepare simple egg salad dishes like yum kai dao. But in Vietnam, with so many of the signature dishes being soup, vegetarians cannot just plop down at a street stall and find food. Those soups have meat broths and the local restaurants and street stalls will not have a vegetarian soup base.

If you’re on a quick tour of Vietnam and hitting the main tourist spots like Hanoi, Hoi An, and Saigon, you won’t struggle much. In fact, visiting the backpacker areas is a solid eating strategy in the touristy cities. Although I avoided staying in the backpacker sections of big cities (Phạm Ngũ Lão in Saigon, in Hanoi), I would often walk to that side of town for dinner if I needed a change of pace from the veg-and-rice or vegetable soup meals served at most chay restaurants.

If you’re travels take you into smaller towns, you need a strategy for finding food. Here are a few thoughts:

  • Happy Cow is your friend; research each town ahead of time and bookmark the recommendations on Google Maps.
  • Once you’re in a new spot, open your Google map and just search for the word “chay” — Google will then show all of the restaurants in the area with chay in the title. Most vegetarian restaurants include the words “com chay” or “quan chay.” Save these ones and download the offline map for that area. Then, they will appear with a star when you are out and about around town and looking at your map.
  • Stock snacks. When I was in the Mekong Delta, the vegetarian restaurants are fewer and further between than in more touristy areas like Hoi An. For that reason, don’t count on easy access to food. Either pack a banh mi, or ensure you are well stocked on nuts and fruit. I also carried a tiny jar of peanut butter for instances when even a banh mi vendor was scarce.

Foods to Eat & Potential Obstacles

If you’re eating outside of the chay restaurants then you need to be vigilant about watching them prepare your food unless it’s an inherently vegetarian street food snack, and there are a couple of them.

Bánh Mì

Although even vegan blogs mention banh mi as an easy street food snack, the vendors were fast and sneaky about adding liver pâté or a scoop of meat, even when I had double confirmed that they would make it “chay.” The pâté is just a light smear of brown on the bread, so keep watch to ensure it’s not added to your sandwich—if they add chili and hot sauce then it’s hard to identify the pâté flavor (true story).

In some shops, they serve a vegetarian banh mi made with fake meat. Otherwise, nearly every vendor offers bánh mì ốp la, which is two eggs fried or served slightly omelette-style. It’s prepared on a pan right there in the street stall or shop. Sometimes the eggs are very runny, so pay attention and ask for well-done if you don’t like gooey eggs. It’s delicious and well-seasoned and I ate eggs many times a week throughout my entire trip (although it’s more popular in the south). It’s an easy breakfast or lunch, and packs away well if you have a bus ride or train journey.

Bột Chiên

This is a tasty fried egg and potato dish that is served from street stalls in Saigon (and to a lesser extent other cities). The dish comes with shredded papaya and it’s very tasty. Some non-veg restaurants across the country offer bột chiên on the menu too, making it an easy dish to order if the chay restaurants are scarce.

Other Resources for Vegetarians