Viet "Oven" Food Gems, Banh Cuon and Banh Beo

+ Vietnam travel visa tips + Viet tailgate lunch video

Finding food gems in Little Saigon neighborhoods can be tricky. There’s so much to choose from.

Yelp is helpful when you want the top tier, top vote getters. Even so, you have to read between the lines. (⭐️⭐️⭐️ can be as good, if not better than ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.)

I’m always searching for overlooked gems, and that doesn’t always mean scanning lists and ratings. Sometimes, it means driving around. Or, sometimes, it means keeping your eyes open when you’re deep in a Little Saigon enclave.

What do I mean by deep? When most of the shoppers are Vietnamese. When there are Viet coffee shops with mostly men hanging around outside sipping their beverages in the middle of the day. When the summer heat and torpor evokes Saigon minus the humidity.

Vietnam Travel Visa Tips

That’s what it was like recently when we went to San Jose twice in five days to get travel visas to Vietnam. Yes, many tourists get their visa upon landing in Vietnam or in advance of landing, use the Vietnamese government portal for an e-visa. (🙏 K Ridgway for that link.)

However, as someone who was born in Vietnam, I’m eligible for a 5-year visa exemption (no need for a new visa each time I go!). So is my non-Viet husband. If we had children they’d get an exemption too. You cannot get those visas online or at the airport.

In the past, I sent my passports, paperwork and money to the Viet embassy in D.C. but things have changed since my visa expired. For example, the embassy doesn’t tell you how much money it costs. The San Francisco Consulate keeps oddball “visitation hours” from 9am to noon — despite its webpage saying it closes at 4 o’clock. (One afternoon, I found this out upon arrival at 3 o’clock.)

My family and friends suggested finding a reputable travel agency nearby. Within Little Saigon communities, there are people who handle travel visas. I called someone recommended by a friend. She seemed honest but told me to text her all my documents and she’d handle the rest. After the visa came through, we’d set up a time to exchange money and for me to retrieve the visa. That seemed weird, like a dark alleyway deal of some sort.

Googling, I settled on U.S. Tours, a brick-and-mortar travel agency in San Jose’s Little Saigon. They’ve been in business for decades and were professional. I spoke to them before coming and was instructed to bring our current passports, expired visas, birth and marriage certificates, and cash ($70 each at the time of this post).

This may appear wobbly but it was also very Vietnamese. There are unwritten protocols for negotiating the convoluted entity known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

If you’re going to use a travel agency for a visa, call to verify what you need to bring plus the cost. That call is an opportunity to gauge trustworthiness. I had no issues with U.S. Tours on the phone or in person. Such travel agencies will also legitimately take care of regular visas, book flights and tours.

I dropped off the materials, paid, and three days later, got a call that the visas had arrived. Before handing over the visa, the gal at the agency checked the dates and signatures to make sure they were correct (Vietnam does their dates as day/month/year and sometimes the month/day is erroneously reversed). Always make sure the information is correct before going on your trip.

If you have Viet travel visa experiences or tips, let us know in a comment!

Viet Oven Food Finds

As I was driving to the travel agency I spotted food business signage that included this word: lò (oven).

How to pronounce lò:

Vietnamese ovens turn me on; the term also means kiln. It signals a place that specializes in producing a certain food. Lò conveys expertise and craftsmanship.

📣 I announced our visa celebration lunch destination: Lo Banh Cuon Thanh Tri, a shop focussing on bánh cuốn (steamed rice rolls) from Thanh Tri (an area on the outskirts of Hanoi that’s renowned for rice sheets that are firm tender and gossamer thin). That kind of bánh cuốn is very hard to make at home because it requires a from-scratch batter and steaming thin rice sheets on fabric.

Purchases at bánh cuốn are made by weight (around $6 per pound) and come with nuoc cham dipping sauce. Sometimes there are accompaniments like bean sprouts and fried shallot (not at this shop though). You choose if you want plain sheets or ones filled with shrimp, or pork and mushroom. A pound is plenty for two adults. (For easy banh cuon at home, I use rice paper, which is detailed along with a recipe in Ever-Green Vietnamese on page 77. )

⚡️Next door to the bánh cuốn shop was Banh Beo Tolan! Hot damn, it was a place specializing in bánh bèo, silver dollar-size central Vietnamese steamed rice pancakes — another time consuming snack to make. I love my old school recipe in Into the Vietnamese Kitchen but heck, here I was at a strip mall where I could have bánh cuốn and bánh bèo for lunch!

At Banh Beo Tolan, you never step inside the shop. At the door, there’s a counter and bell that you ding for service. For $9, I got 50 bánh bèo with mung bean, dried shrimp and green onion oil; nước chấm sauce came in a separate container.

🫸 And, wait, there’s more! Two shops down from the bánh bèo spot was Vinh Khang Tofu, which sells small containers of chilled soy bean milk pudding for $2 each. For less than $20, we had a Vietnam-worthy lunch in San Jose’s Little Saigon!

All three shops were owned by women who practiced their craft with focus and care. Their cash-only businesses were low-key but thrived because the community knew about them.

The only issue was this: The bánh cuốn and bánh bèo were fresh and tender — incredible expressions of Viet rice craft. I wanted to eat them sooner than later but these shops were only for take-out. Given the 95F midday heat, we sought cooling shade for lunch. We went to the mall.

Viet Tailgate

Here’s a quickie video not just about us eating but how to eat these Viet treats:

I hope these tips encourage your Viet food adventures inside and outside of Vietnam.