What to eat in Hue: divided by meal, because in Hue each dish has its own time

This question is usually answered with a list of ten dishes. But in Huế, knowing what to eat isn't enough — you also have to know when to eat, because many stalls only sell during a single time of day, and once they're sold out, they close up.

Short answer: for breakfast eat bún bò or cơm hến. In the afternoon eat bánh bèo, bánh nậm, bánh lọc. At night eat chè. Follow that exact rhythm and you'll get the best food; go off schedule and you'll arrive to find the doors closed.

Morning

Bún bò — in Huế, people just call it "bún bò" for short; no one adds the word "Huế" after it. And it's quite different from the bowl of bún bò Huế you eat elsewhere.

General characteristic: the bowl in Huế is smaller, the broth tends to be salty rather than sweet, the aroma of lemongrass and shrimp paste is more pronounced, and the chili paste portion is usually left separate for customers to add themselves. The further south you go, the bigger the bún bò bowl gets, the sweeter it becomes, and the more ingredients it has in it. Neither side is wrong — but if you're used to bowls with a fuller, sweeter broth, the bowl in Hue might taste a bit sharp/spicy at first.

Bun bo is a breakfast dish. Good shops usually sell it from early morning until around noon, then close. The story of why bún bò in Central Vietnam is so spicy is discussed separately in the article bún bò in Đà Nẵng is spicier than you think — and it's intentional.

Cơm hến — the most surprising dish for first-time visitors, because it's cold.

It's not cold from being left for a long time — being chilled is the correct formula. White rice left to cool, clams stir-fried separately, clam broth kept separately in a small bowl, then sprinkled on top with a whole array of things: shredded dried pork, pork cracklings, puffed pork skin, roasted peanuts, banana blossom, fresh herbs, star fruit, chili. Customers mix it themselves. If you're expecting a piping hot bowl, you'll be a bit surprised.

Two more things you should know: it's very spicy and very salty — the saltiness comes from the fermented shrimp paste, and the spiciness is the default, not an option. Also, the bowls are small, so it's completely normal for people to eat two or three bowls. For what's in a bowl of com hen, there's a detailed breakdown in this article a bowl of cooled com hen rice has over ten things in it.

In the same family as "hến" (baby clams) dishes there's also hến trộn (mixed clams, no rice, eaten with rice paper) and bún hến (clam noodle soup). If you find cold rice hard to get into, try hến trộn first — it's easier to warm up to.

AFTERNOON

Noon is the easiest time to eat because every shop is open. This is a fitting time of year to try cơm âm phủ ("underworld rice") — a plate of white rice with grilled meat, egg, Vietnamese sausage, shrimp, vegetables, and more, arranged in separate portions around the plate before being mixed together. The name sounds creepy, but the dish itself is mild, and it's a specialty unique to Huế, not something common elsewhere.

Also there's bánh canh, fig salad, and budget rice meals — Hue has many small rice-meal stalls where you pick dishes from a tray, great for solo diners.

Afternoon

This is the time for Hue cakes: banh beo (each small dish, one piece per dish), banh nam (thin, wrapped in leaves), banh loc (clear dough, with the shrimp visible inside), banh ram it (half crispy, half chewy). Most cake stalls open in the afternoon and don't sell in the morning.

How to eat: order several kinds in one go instead of just one dish. Each dish is only one or two bites, so if you order too little you'll still be hungry when you're done. And everything depends on the bowl of dipping sauce — if the dipping sauce is bad, the whole tray is ruined.

Why do people from Central Vietnam make such tiny cakes? There's a separate article about this at why people from Central Vietnam make small cakes.

EVENING

Evenings in Hue are for chè. Not just one kind — a proper chè cart has two or three dozen pots, each pot a different kind, and people order by pointing at the pot they want.

The strangest and also most famous dish is chè bột lọc heo quay (roasted pork tapioca sweet soup): a clear tapioca dumpling with a piece of roasted pork inside, topped with ginger syrup. Sweet and salty together in a single dumpling. Those who like it love it right away, those who don't will never order it again — but since you're in Huế, you should try one to see.

Sweet soup here is sold at night, many stalls are located in small alleys, and the prices are so cheap that ordering four or five kinds still feels light on the wallet. There's a dedicated post about chè — a dessert that people in Da Nang eat all year round.

One thing needs to be said plainly

Hue's food is noticeably saltier and spicier than Da Nang or Hoi An. This isn't restaurants overdoing it — it's the taste of the whole region, tied to the heavy use of shrimp paste and fish sauce. If you can't eat spicy food, let us know right when you order — don't wait until the food arrives to pick out the chili peppers, since the chili is usually already mixed into the broth beforehand.

For takeaway, there's sesame candy, sour shrimp, and shredded pork floss. Sesame candy is easiest to carry; sour shrimp and pork floss are liquid-ish items, so they must be checked in as luggage and wrapped up really tightly.

And if your trip still has room for something besides eating, then which royal tomb to choose in Huế has its own article posted yesterday.

Image: Chainwit. (CC BY 4.0); Phương Huy, Christophe95 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Lucas Jans, Thang Nguyen (CC BY-SA 2.0) — Wikimedia Commons