Eating different in Da Lat

After spending some time in the hotel, we visited the market square in Da Lat. Da Lat was a bustling city which had a market road that was packed with people.

All of the action happened around a big lake. It’s called Hồ Xuân Hương.

There was a weird but good looking building which actually was a coffee shop. It’s one of the iconic places in Da Lat. The coffee was really good. I think they served a blend that was mostly Arabica.

After some coffee n cake we proceeded towards the main market road. The amount of people on the road reminded me of Ranganathan Steet in Chennai or the Commercial Street of Bangalore.

As expected the food choices were mostly non-vegetarian. In fruits, strawberries were very popular and were available at cheap prices. There were some peculiar things I noticed about Vietnamese food.

High in Fibre and Protein.

We were looking for some vegetarian options. After multiple rounds of google translate, a Vietnamese lady understood what we want and started repeating “salad tofu, salad tofu”. We were served with Salad first which had different types of lettuce, cabbage n some herbs. Then we got a huge bowl of sautéed vegetables with generous quantities of roasted tofu in it. If one eats half of it, he/she would not be hungry anymore. We also ordered some rice to go with it.

Weird non-vegetarian items.

While they served beef, pork, fish and chicken, they had some weird non-veg choices. Eg. Chicken feet fried like a pakoda was quite common. Octopus, Squids and other types of meat that I could not identify were also available in every stall.

Lot of types of rice.

We make coloured rice in India by colouring the rice, and call it lemon rice, tamarind rice, coconut rice. Here, the rice by itself came in multiple colours. Green, violet, Brown, Black and so on. Each of them had a different texture and flavour. We tried that too.

Unseen egg dishes.

I saw some first-time-in-life egg dishes. One of it was egg omelette cooked on rice paper directly kept on the coal. Another was eggs cooked directly on coal to make a smoky whole cooked egg. Weird part was the yolk n whites had blended inside the egg to make a complete mixture. There were mini egg burgers made on small earthen cups. There were few more I don’t have the photo of.

No common dish

Apart from cooked rice I didn’t find a single dish which was similar to an Idly or Dosa or Chapatis of sorts. We can always stretch our comparison skills n say anything that is flat and round is like a Chapati or Dosa. But that’s not the point. None of the dishes reminded me of any kind of food back home except for some barbecue sweet potato and corn.

Small chairs and tables.

The Vietnamese people have a smaller build as compared to Indians. But when it comes to seating, the sizes shrink even further. All the chairs and tables were baby size. I don’t know how we managed to sit on it. The chairs gave me a really snug fit. It almost felt like the chair will raise up when I stand up. It was that snug.

No age limit for alcohol

Alcohol was served on vending machines kept open on the roads. Even small tuck shops in the market served alcohol. Looking at the way it was sold I don’t think there were any age restrictions on the consumption.

Dehydrate anything

Dehydrated fruits and vegetables were very common all across the market. You name the fruit or vegetable and the dehydrated version of it is available. Strawberries, bananas, carrots, beans, okra, beetroots, mushrooms etc etc. Anything under sun was dehydrated,

Mostly rice n coconut

Most desserts were made from sugar, rice and coconut. Even icecream was made from coconut milk. There were weird sweets which was made from rice paper with sugar n sandwiched grated coconut. They had some sweetened coconut yoghurt also.

After belting a lot of food we a returned to our resort. Even after eating all this randomness, our stomachs were fine and no adverse reactions happened to anyone. Clearly we Indians share the micro biome to a good extend with the Vietnamese.