Top 7 Weird Vietnamese Foods

There’re many weird Vietnamese foods & drinks that some of you will not even think of. They may be not so strange to Easterners, but are likely bizarre to Westerners.

In this article, I want to introduce to you the strangest foods and drinks in Vietnam.

Before we move on, I need to give a brief notice. In below part I collect several foods that might sound annoying, stunning, or even frightening to you.

I write them down here absolutely not to alienate my visitors. Rather, it’s just for the sake of sharing information. Like them or not, Vietnamese consume those foods and drinks for long time.

In case you don’t like or are not ready, please stop reading at this point and move to another article, say Fun Facts about Vietnam or Vietnamese street foods.

So, you want to move on, let’s go… Here’s the list of the weird Vietnamese foods that I pick up:

1. Weasel-Dung Coffee (Cà phê cứt chồn)

It literally means the coffee made out of the dung of weasels or civet cats, which eat coffee bean and give out a great local coffee materials.

This specialty has high quality thanks to the ripen coffee beans the animals chose to eat, and its digestive system help to add more flavor to the coffee.

Read more about Weasel Coffee here

2. Snake and Scorpion Wines (Rượu rắn, rượu bọ cạp)

Those are rice wines dipped with copra snakes or scorpions. The poison of the animals is cancelled out by the alcoholic content of the liquor.

Besides, Vietnamese have other type of wines called “medicine wines” (rượu thuốc), which include other elements like herb, snake, bear hands, gecko, goat’s testicles… 

Those drinks are among favorite liquors in Vietnam. They are served for drinking hobby, similar to other kinds of wine or beer. Moreover, many of them have effects of supporting health and curing illness like: back pain, rheumatism, lumbago, etc.

3. Duck embryo (Trứng vịt lộn)

It can be translated into English: fatal duck egg, half-hatched duck egg. 

The dish is made with nearly-hatched duck eggs, which are boiled, and served with fresh herbs (Rau Răm or Vietnamese Coriander), ginger, salt mixed with pepper and lime juice.

4. Mouse meat (Thịt chuột)

This meat is another bizarre food to many foreigners. Yet, it’s one of favorite dishes for drinkers in Vietnam. 

After harvesting, farmers usually trap and catch mice in rice fields. Mouse meat can be drilled, fried, or barbecued and become a delicious, tasty specialty in many luxury restaurants.

5. Snake meat (Thịt rắn)

Imagine a snake is still live! The cook forces the snake spit its venom into a glass and mixes with local wine.

The live reptile then is gutted in front of you. Its blood is drained into a glass and then mixed with rice vodka. The snake bile is put into another rice vodka bottle.

So you’ll have three types of wine container venom (yellow color), blood (reddish), and bile (green). These all are said to help strengthen virility, tone, and digestion. Some bold men can even eat the still beating heart of the copra by just … swallowing it.

To start the meal, drinkers enjoy these liquors while waiting for the restaurant to serve snake meat.

The snake meat, skin, and bones then can be cooked in many ways: fried, curries, etc. All are delicious and tasty.

6. Raw blood soups (tiết canh)

As the name suggests, the soup is mainly made of raw blood of animals: ducks, geese, goats, pigs, etc. Sometimes, other animals also count: shrimp, dog…

Fresh blood pours in to small bowls, mixed with chopped cartilage and cutting herbs, and after a while, gently congeals. The food readily serves after being scattered on top with chopped peanuts.

Almost Vietnamese, especially drinkers, love this favorite protein-rich dish in breakfasts and in drinking parties.

Foreigners dare not to eat because they think that’s a terrible and unhygienic food.

7. Dog meat, cat meat (Thịt chó, thịt mèo)

Those meats are just similar to beef, pork, or chicken and used as normal foods. I heard of story that foreigners get disgusting or offensive about these weird Vietnamese foods.

And here’s short of such story on a blog, though it’s exaggerated a little:

“If you ever see a dog in Mui Ne that is more than 1 year old, you can consider yourself lucky. Puppies can be seen everywhere, but grown up dogs are very rare and that’s because… Vietnamese simply eat them. 

As sad and repulsive as it is for me, this is just a cultural thing that one has to accept. Still, it always bothers me when I see a cute puppy running down the street and I know that sooner or later it will probably end up in someone’s meat & rice…”

I really wish to know what you think about those above weird Vietnamese foods and drinks. Have you tasted any of those? Are they challenging to eat or drink?

Please share your thoughts and comments here, so that other visitors and I also learn your experience.

Also, if you find useful information in this article, would you mind click the Like button to encourage me? I’d love your thumb up!

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