#StreetFood
#TravelTheWorld
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#FoodieTravel
#StreetFoodAdventure
#TravelTheWorld
#FoodTravel
#FoodieTravel
#StreetFoodAdventure
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TravelTranscript
00:00I have a huge announcement to make.
00:02I have decided to stop eating meat for 24 hours.
00:06Let me explain.
00:07Today, I am taking on Vietnamese street food minus the meat.
00:11Surprisingly, here in Vietnam, you can find a vegetarian version of almost every classic
00:15street food, even street foods that center around meat.
00:19So today I'm on a mission to try these street foods and reveal to you whether they're better
00:23than the original or whether they're a complete disaster.
00:26Today, now we are headed to our first location where they are preparing a vegetarian version
00:30of Vietnam's most iconic street food.
00:32The dish known as pho.
00:33To make pho, it's all about the broth.
00:36But to make that pho broth, you need beef bones or pork bones.
00:39You need bones from something that I was walking around mooing or oinking.
00:42Or boinking.
00:43Nice.
00:44I'm doing some boinking with my wife.
00:46Oh!
00:47Damn!
00:48So right here, I have made my way into the kitchen.
00:52Now what's fascinating about this place is that everything you see here is vegetarian.
00:56So even if it looks like meat, it is still not meat.
00:58For example, this.
00:59This looks like roasted pork belly.
01:01Guess what?
01:02It's not.
01:03That is...
01:04I don't know.
01:05It's a bunch of other stuff, but it's not meat.
01:06Nothing cried or bled to make that food.
01:08Except for maybe some vegetables.
01:11Except for maybe some plants.
01:13So this is the front, but next we're going to go back to the pho making station over here.
01:18Xin chào.
01:19Here you see a whole host of different ingredients and all this stuff looks delicious.
01:23This is the beef for the pho.
01:25Except for that beef is vegan beef.
01:28I'm going to find out later what it's made out of and we will find out soon if it really,
01:32truly tastes like beef.
01:33So let's get into it.
01:34Ready?
01:35Okay.
01:36Okay.
01:37Hmm.
01:38It all starts over here with some bun pho.
01:40All of that gets blanched in hot water.
01:42She adds in some bean sprouts and within a matter of seconds, the noodles are ready.
01:45The next ingredient is tofu skin.
01:48From here, we have some of these fake beef balls and then we have some slices of vegetarian
01:53beef.
01:53From there, scallions and some onion too.
01:55Now I've come to the other side where she is scooping up some of that vegetarian beef
01:59broth.
02:00And just like that, our vegetarian pho is ready to consume.
02:03All right, folks, we have our first course right here.
02:05Now, let me tell you, I don't want to be too hard on the food overall today.
02:09So I think there should be two criteria.
02:10The first is, is the food good or not?
02:12And the second is, is the food better or worse than its meaty alternative?
02:16The second thing is, I want to explain quickly why so much of this vegetarian food exists
02:20here in Vietnam.
02:21You see, Vietnam is mostly a Buddhist country.
02:23And for many devout Buddhists, they will abstain from eating meat on the 1st and the 15th of
02:28every month.
02:29But there are also Buddhists who are eating vegetarian every single day of the month.
02:32And since Vietnam is a country that takes so much pride in its food, it should be no surprise
02:36that they put as much care and thought into their vegetarian food as they do in everything else.
02:41Including the pho.
02:41What do we start with?
02:42This is pho, so we should start with the broth.
02:45Now, this broth is made using corn, carrots, and radish.
02:48How does it stack up?
02:49Well, let's try it out.
02:53Oh, oh, that's pretty good.
02:55It's not as complex or as fatty as a typical pho broth, but it has a nice depth of flavor.
03:01Beyond that, they're still using the typical five spice that you would find in any other pho broth.
03:05Let's try some of that broth now mixed with those noodles.
03:12Soft, tender, steamy, and satisfying.
03:15The biggest difference, I would say, is the fat content.
03:17It's hard to get a lot of grease out of a carrot, you know what I mean?
03:20But then there's the meat.
03:21This is their fake beef.
03:23A beef that is made out of soybeans and wheat flour, as well as some other ingredients.
03:29Oh, that texture is pretty good.
03:30Very springy.
03:31I thought it would be softer, just not reminiscent of beef at all.
03:34But I gotta say, if you mix it with some other flavors and ingredients,
03:37it could easily be confused for actual beef.
03:39So let's do that and see if I can fool my big, smooth brain.
03:49Texture-wise, I am 80% of the way there.
03:51Flavor-wise, I mean, the hardest thing to replicate with all this vegetarian stuff is animal fat,
03:56and so we're not getting that nice oil slick on top of the pho.
03:59From there, I love that they have beef balls.
04:01The beef ball is full of soy beans, tofu, tapioca flour, and other ingredients.
04:09Not bad.
04:09It's got a nice bounce to it.
04:10It vaguely reminds me of a beef ball.
04:13Is it good?
04:13Yes.
04:14Is it better than beef ball?
04:15It's getting close, but no.
04:16So that is our first course.
04:18But this location actually has one more course, which is gum tom.
04:21Of course, that revolves around a pork chop.
04:23So how are they able to make a vegetarian version of a pork chop?
04:26Let's go find out.
04:27Mom gum tom.
04:27Everything starts right here with the broken rice.
04:30Ooh, steamy.
04:30Broken rice heads onto the plate, and that will be the foundation for our dish.
04:34Right now, she is heading to our meat section,
04:36and the first thing she's going to put on is our egg loaf.
04:38From there, she puts on the pork chop.
04:40Very meaty.
04:41And then this is our pork skin.
04:43Now, keep in mind, there is no actual pork involved here at all.
04:46From here, the atrocious cucumber gets added in next.
04:49From there, pickled taikon and carrot.
04:51And finally, a classic with gum tom, some scallion oil mixed with scallions.
04:55Come on, Jake.
04:55All right, folks.
04:56Right here, we have our second course.
04:57The iconic condiment of Vietnam is fish sauce.
05:00And it turns out, some people actually have compassion for fish.
05:03And so what they've done is they've made a fish sauce that includes no fish.
05:07Inside this bowl, there is soy sauce, pineapple, mushrooms, and water.
05:11Let's give it a little bit of a taste.
05:12I'm impressed.
05:16It also has chilies in there.
05:17It's very spicy and a lot of sugar, too.
05:19So they're leaning in extra on the sweetness and on the chilies to get you to that fish saucy type flavor.
05:25Now, typically, the fish sauce would go on basically everything on this plate,
05:28from the rice to the pork and everything in between.
05:30We're going to start with our egg loaf.
05:32This is not vegan because they are using real, actual eggs in here.
05:36But usually, it would also have pork.
05:38Now, it doesn't.
05:39I'm told it has little bits of tofu and some woodier mushroom as well.
05:42It looks almost indistinguishable from the typical egg loaf that you will find with gumtang.
05:50It doesn't really taste like anything's missing.
05:51It just tastes like a delicious egg loaf.
05:53It's eggy.
05:53It has mushrooms.
05:54It's covered in that sweet fish sauce.
05:56I love it.
05:56But then we have this.
05:57Something much more difficult to fake.
05:59Vegetarian pork skin.
06:00Now, I believe this is made from toast goo.
06:04Toast goo?
06:05Now, I believe this is made from tofu.
06:07Let's try it out.
06:08It has a pretty distinct taste of toasted rice.
06:13Does it really taste like pork?
06:15No, not so much.
06:16But the texture is almost spot on.
06:17We have the final boss right here.
06:19That is a vegetarian pork chop.
06:21Now, to do it justice, I want to mix it with some of his friends.
06:24Maybe we'll get some rice, some of this pickled carrot and daikon and scallions.
06:32It is very chewy.
06:33Just like a real pork chop that you'll find here on the streets of Vietnam.
06:36It's usually been beaten with a hammer.
06:38It's thin.
06:39It's well done.
06:39And it takes a little bit of jaw power to get through it.
06:44They've even recreated some of that smoky charcoal flavor.
06:47Very impressive.
06:48So in the end, is it good?
06:49It's beyond good.
06:49I would say this is great.
06:50Is it better than the real thing?
06:52I would say this is getting dangerously close.
06:54So far, we are just two vegetarian foods into our day.
06:57And I gotta say, it's going a lot better than I expected.
06:59But we have some mock meats from animals I never expected to see.
07:03And those are coming up soon.
07:04In the USA, we love making mock meats out of popular proteins.
07:07For example, making chicken wings out of soybeans.
07:10Or making burger patties out of God knows what.
07:13In Vietnam, as you can see, it's not much different.
07:16But this next food is a food I cannot believe they have vegetarianified.
07:19Here at this restaurant behind me, you can get a vegetarian version of Balut.
07:24So right now, we are inside the restaurant.
07:26And right here, we have vegetarian Balut.
07:28Balut is a semi-developed duck egg.
07:30An egg just a few days from hatching that is boiled, cracked open, and eaten.
07:34So when you're eating it, you're eating these semi-developed duck body parts.
07:38Like feet, heads, necks, armpits, and so on.
07:41Here, they have the vegetarian version of that.
07:44Made with three main ingredients.
07:45Tofu, black moss, and wheat flour.
07:48As you can see right now, they are inside a piece of plastic
07:51that helps them keep their egg-looking shape.
07:53The next move from here is we're going to prepare these vegetarian Balut to eat.
07:56Fu, the owner of this restaurant, is moving all of those vegetarian Balut into this steamer net.
08:02From here, she moves it to this giant cauldron of boiling water.
08:06And she covers it up.
08:07Two minutes has passed.
08:08It is time to retrieve our fake Balut.
08:11She pops the lid.
08:12And then all of the Balut are dumped onto our plate.
08:15So that is our Balut.
08:16But on the side right here, we have some coriander and a mixture of salt and pepper.
08:20All of these together make a mighty fine snack.
08:22Let's go eat.
08:23All right, folks.
08:23Vegetarian Balut, here it is.
08:25This is incredibly creative and imaginative.
08:27And I love that about this.
08:28The woman, Fu, who we met earlier, she is quite literally a mad food scientist.
08:32Because to make any kind of vegan food, well, you're not using one ingredient.
08:36You're usually using an alchemy of different strange ingredients together to try to copy
08:41what you're looking for.
08:42In this case, a semi-developed duck egg.
08:44Step one, I'm going to squeeze it out.
08:46Oh my gosh, it's like giving birth.
08:49And there we have it.
08:50It's a lot more solid than I expected.
08:52It's a little bouncy.
08:53So far, the texture, fairly similar to what a Balut might feel like.
08:57First, hit it with a little bit of salt and pepper.
09:06That's kind of awesome.
09:07Now, it does taste a little bit like tofu, but it is surprisingly eggy.
09:10Now, you can see right here, we have what looks like the black moss.
09:13There's a lot of bouncy and inconsistent texture on the inside,
09:16which is what you want from a Balut.
09:18Now, why do you want an inconsistent texture?
09:20Well, because when you're eating Balut, it's not some kind of a smooth texture throughout.
09:24You're getting all the different parts of the bird.
09:26Like, it is a chunky food.
09:28And she's managed to capture that chunkiness here.
09:33Wow, this is truly a special and rare find.
09:36Oh, that's so cool.
09:38This is what it would look like if you opened a Balut.
09:40Balut is one of the hardest extreme foods for Americans to try when they first come to Asia.
09:45But here, these are your training wheels right here.
09:47Eating Balut fear-free and guilt-free.
09:51So this one, is it good?
09:52Yes, it's very good.
09:53Is it better than the original?
09:56I think it might be.
09:57I'm just going to say yes.
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10:35Now, back to the show.
10:38Our next location has another one of Vietnam's most iconic street foods, the banh mi.
10:43Now, usually the banh mi would be stuffed full of eggs, cold cuts,
10:46or delicious roasted pork belly.
10:48But here, oh no, here they're putting anything inside but meat.
10:51Can you still create a delicious banh mi experience without meat?
10:54Let's go find out.
10:55It all starts with the banh mi bread.
10:56Ooh, looking toasty.
10:57Right here, this is our professional vegetarian banh mi maker.
11:00After the bread is toasted, it heads to the banh mi maker.
11:03Oh, it gets stabbed first.
11:04Here, they have all sorts of fun vegetarian ingredients.
11:07Ingredient one, mayonnaise.
11:09From here, cucumber.
11:10Oh dear God.
11:11I would usually say no cucumber, but if they take out the cucumber,
11:14aren't they going to have anything left to put in there?
11:16Right here, we have oyster mushrooms.
11:18I guess that is like the main meat of our banh mi.
11:21Right here, we have pickled carrots and daikon, and then coriander coming up next.
11:25From here, we have what I'm told is a vegan meat made from oats.
11:29It looks crunchy.
11:30Next, a nice scoop of peanuts, and then a homemade tomato sauce.
11:34From here, Vietnam's second favorite condiment, chili sauce.
11:37And that right there is how you make a vegetarian banh mi.
11:39All right, folks, here it is, our vegetarian banh mi in its final form.
11:43First of all, this is a sandwich with some nuts.
11:46Get it?
11:47Nice.
11:48Secondly, inside they put something that they're calling vegan meat.
11:51When I asked what type of meat they're trying to replicate, they said roasted pork.
11:54Let's try it out.
11:57More like a crouton.
11:58That is the farthest away from any meat substitute we've had so far today.
12:02But that is not the only meat substitute in here.
12:04The mushroom is said to give a little bit of a meaty texture.
12:06Let's see how it works.
12:07The flavors that I'm tasting in my mouth right now are not bad.
12:15I'm getting that chili sauce.
12:16I'm getting a lot of that coriander.
12:17Very fresh.
12:18Some snappy cucumber.
12:19Beyond that, I'm getting a ton of crunch from that fake pork.
12:22And then a little bit of meatiness from those mushrooms.
12:31The banh mi is okay.
12:34Visually, my brain is telling me that's a banh mi.
12:36I see the bread.
12:37I see stuff inside.
12:38But as I chew it, it just feels like something's missing.
12:40Like there should be more to it on the inside.
12:43I feel like I'm eating a bread sandwich.
12:45In the end, is it good?
12:46It's okay.
12:46But is this better than the original?
12:48Also no.
12:49Moving on to our next food.
12:50So far today, we've tried the vegetarian version of some of Vietnam's most iconic street foods.
12:55But coming up next, we're going to be trying Vietnam's favorite meat vegetarian style.
12:59If I had to pick one meat that Vietnamese folks embrace and love with all their heart,
13:03it would be AOA.
13:05That is roasted pork belly.
13:06But how do you make roasted pork belly without a pig?
13:09We're going to find out.
13:10Let's head inside and find out.
13:13So right now, we are in the kitchen.
13:14We are about to assemble our next dish.
13:16And I want to show you the star ingredient right here.
13:19I would think that at first glance, looking at that, it kind of looks like meat.
13:22First of all, a pork belly, it's going to have three different layers.
13:25First of all, the skin, then the fat, and then a protein section after that.
13:28And here, they have to mimic all three in different ways.
13:31It all starts with the skin, which is made from a wheat flour baking into a type of crispy bread.
13:36But then comes to the fat.
13:37The fat is made from coconut milk mixed with tapioca flour.
13:40After that, the protein, which is made from taro flour and wheat flour mixed together.
13:45Perhaps food coloring is part of this too.
13:46But at the end of it, you have these like perfect cubes or rectangles
13:50that do quite closely mimic actual pork belly.
13:53It's very impressive.
13:54So now that we've met the star of the show, let's put this dish together.
13:57It all starts with this steamed rice blanket, known as banhoi.
14:00One by one, those blankets are ripped and then rolled into little yoga mats.
14:04From here, we are putting on the greens, then pickled carrot and daikon.
14:08After that, we have some fake pork skin and some scallions and scallion oil.
14:12Now it is time for the star of the show, our fake pork belly.
14:16On the side, she puts a little bit of sauce and our dish is complete.
14:19Right here, we have one of the most high level, complex,
14:22intricate attempts at making a meat substitute so far today.
14:25On the top, we have skin, then we have fat, and then we have the protein.
14:29Time to find out if it actually tastes like pork.
14:35Whoa, that is awesome.
14:36The thick, sweet sauce that they've coated all of this fake pork in, it's delicious.
14:41But then you've got the pork, which together, all these elements are definitely working.
14:45Let's break it down one by one.
14:46First of all, the skin.
14:47The skin is actually crunchy.
14:52And the best part is that they've fried.
14:53Flip, darn.
14:55And the best part is that they've fried this whole thing right here, so it's making it even crunchier.
14:59Then we have the fat portion.
15:02It's so gummy and soft and rich.
15:05And then we have the protein right here.
15:10Crunchy, meaty, a nice dense bite.
15:13I cannot believe how far the innovation has gone in Vietnam with vegetarian food.
15:17Meanwhile, in the USA, we're stuck with plant burgers.
15:20The way you're actually supposed to eat it is by pairing that yummy fried pork with this rice
15:24sheet called banh hoi.
15:25I'm going to give it a little bit of a dip in the soy sauce.
15:27That looks like a sweet, thick soy sauce.
15:34Is it delicious?
15:35Is it good?
15:35It's very good.
15:36When it comes to the fake Vietnamese pork belly versus the real thing,
15:39I gotta say, it's a tie.
15:41I'd be happy to eat either one.
15:42And that's coming from somebody who doesn't even care if pigs die.
15:46I don't, maybe we don't need that last part.
15:48So that is food number five.
15:49But we still have two more foods remaining,
15:51including one that you wouldn't expect to find here in Vietnam.
15:53Let's keep moving.
15:54Our next restaurant is not a restaurant at all.
15:57In fact, this man right here has quite literally brought a recipe from the Mekong Delta here to the
16:02city of Saigon.
16:03In the back of his bike right here, he has steaming a special vegetarian treat.
16:07Let's go take a look inside.
16:08This is Wung.
16:10This is Wung's bike.
16:11And right now, Wung is going to make a special dish.
16:13Inside, for a vegetarian, this is like a gold mine.
16:16It is a steamer full of tofu.
16:18Wung starts by picking out the perfect piece of tofu.
16:21The first step right here is to cut the tofu in half.
16:24And then he puts in a combination of salt and pepper.
16:26Right here, he has a homemade chili sauce that he smears on top, looking very spicy.
16:31From there, he's got a lime.
16:33Then he hits the whole thing with a dose of coriander.
16:35And that, my friend, is complete.
16:37To call this dish a sandwich would be an insult to Wung, but also an insult to sandwiches.
16:42What is it actually?
16:43It's kind of like a jazzed piece of tofu.
16:45Hey, how you doing?
16:46Hungry?
16:47No?
16:47Okay, bye.
16:48Um, what's famous about this place is the tofu.
16:51It is made from soy beans.
16:52But the way they steam the tofu, they steam it with soy milk.
16:56It's soy on soy crime.
16:57If you thought you were a soy boy before, now you're a double-legged soy boy.
17:00That's a lot of soy and a lot of boy.
17:02And I'm a man who loves to play with boys.
17:06No, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.
17:08Right now, let's give it a shot.
17:09I'm going to try to be open-minded.
17:14The main flavor, tofu.
17:16The skin is the best because it's a little bit more chewy.
17:18It's got some nice bite to it, like the skin of a sausage.
17:24But then when you get on the inside, it is full of flavor.
17:26You're getting a little bit of kick from those chilies, some salt, some pepper, fresh coriander.
17:30I mean, it has flavor.
17:32So what are my true feelings?
17:33Is it good?
17:34Is it bad?
17:34I think it's okay.
17:35This is not something I would go out of my way to try.
17:37Is this better than the real thing?
17:38Well, this is kind of the real thing.
17:40This is the only food today that's not really a vegetarian version of a different dish.
17:44So look, this is a nice little vegetarian appetizer for our big finale, which is coming up next.
17:49One of the most satisfying street foods you'll find in all in Vietnam done the vegetarian way.
17:53We have arrived at our final location.
17:55Here, they're serving up a vegetarian version of one of Anthony Bourdain's favorite Vietnamese street foods.
18:01It's called panseo.
18:02This is a thin pancake.
18:04And typically, inside, they would put shrimp and some steamed pork belly.
18:07But today, well, they're not putting that stuff.
18:09Let's find out how they make it veggie style inside.
18:11We have arrived in the panseo making station.
18:14It all starts right here with my guy pouring in a batter, a combination of rice flour, turmeric, and scallion.
18:20What's more impressive than anything is right now, this guy is manning four different panseo stations.
18:25Step two, each of these skillets receives a line of bean sprouts.
18:28Step three, he's got to lube it up with a little bit of oil.
18:31Next, he adds a ton of volume to the panseo with four different ingredients.
18:34A blend of tofu, oyster mushrooms, jicama, and pork pie without any pork.
18:39So these are the main guts, the real fillings of our panseo.
18:42It's actually a lot more full than almost any other panseo I've seen before.
18:46After sizzling away in the oil for a few minutes, it is finally time to give the panseo a little bit of a flip.
18:51This is its final form.
18:52It looks like a gigantic Vietnamese taco, and that is where the magic begins.
18:56The magic finishes at the table. Let's move.
18:58All right, folks, here we have our vegetarian panseo, but let's talk about what goes with it.
19:03You also get a garden, greens, lettuce, herbs.
19:06Beside that, we have fish sauce with no fish, and here we have rice paper with no rice.
19:10Wait, hold on a second.
19:11No, there's rice. Definitely rice.
19:13So let's get into this.
19:14I want to pop the top and show you what's inside.
19:17Boom. There is no shortage of ingredients here.
19:19A little bit of everything, including a piece of carrot, but a lot of jicama,
19:23what they're calling pork pie, and tofu, and...
19:28And oyster mushrooms as well. Thank you.
19:34Let's get into it.
19:34I want to break off a corner, and I want to fold it like this,
19:37and then sometimes I might just give that a little bit of a dip and let it drip dry and toss it back.
19:44It's very good.
19:45What I love about eating it that way is you get the pure crunch of the panseo pancake,
19:49and to me, that's my favorite part, but it's also excellent to mix it with all these other ingredients.
19:52Right here, we have the rice paper.
19:54From here, I want to put on a little bit of lettuce,
19:56and I really want to rub the lettuce on there to get some of that lettuce-y moisture
19:59onto the rice paper.
20:00From here, I want to break the panseo a little bit.
20:02Next, I want to take all that and put that into here.
20:05Yes.
20:05This is going to be our roll.
20:07Now, I slowly and carefully take all this and roll it up.
20:10Here, the last step is to give it a bit of a dip inside of this faux fish sauce
20:14and toss back that crunchy goodness.
20:16Let's go.
20:19That's nice.
20:22Oh, yeah.
20:22I forgot herbs.
20:24First of all, I love the rice paper, how it binds everything together.
20:27I love that over here, you get a little bit of freshness.
20:29Over here, you're getting a lot of crunch.
20:30And with everything they put inside, you're getting a lot of body.
20:33The fish sauce is similar to the fish sauce we tried earlier.
20:35It is absolutely delicious and is what ties everything together.
20:42So, is this good?
20:43Yes.
20:43It's fantastic.
20:44I love it.
20:45But is this better than the meat alternative?
20:46I cannot say it's better, but it's certainly not worse.
20:50I think we have another tie on our hands.
20:52I would not be disappointed to get this at a restaurant.
20:54But if I also happen to get some meat in there too, that would only sweeten the deal.
20:58Oh, I guess that puts you slightly behind meat, huh?
21:01This morning when I started this very important journalistic endeavor, I didn't know which
21:04way things would go.
21:05I knew that Saigon had a ton of vegetarian options.
21:07But I also knew that Vietnam, they make amazing food, no matter what the limitations are.
21:11So in the end, I am very impressed with the vegetarian street food options that you will
21:14find here in this city.
21:16And if I had to choose a winner from today, it would probably be a tie between that fried
21:19pork belly and the balut.
21:20I love the idea that anyone thinks balut is so delicious that it must have a vegetarian version.
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