Banh beo Bánh bèo
Banh beo is a set of small steamed rice cakes in little dishes, topped with shrimp and eaten with a spoon of sweet-salty fish sauce. It is a snack or a light lunch all along the central coast.
Food tours Banh beo Search a food tour or a cooking class for this dish.
Search on KlookWhere it comes from
Hue steamed cakes, eaten all along the central coast.
How to enjoy it
Spoon a little dip into each cup, then eat the cake from the dish. A fork flattens it.
Afternoon is the easy hour. It is not a beach dinner.
In Da Nang, order the set if the sign says bèo nậm lọc: three cakes, three textures of the same snack. The cup is a flat white rice-flour cake topped with peeled shrimp pounded with ground pork, fried until browned, then fried with scallion fat. Spoon on fish sauce with chili and crushed roasted peanuts.
In Hue, a few drops of slightly sweetened fish sauce go on the cake, then you eat it from the dish.
In Dong Hoi the cake is soft, smells of new rice, and carries browned shrimp with a salty-sweet fish sauce. It is poured thinner, with some chew, rather than in the small cup of Hue and Da Nang, and can come topped with stir-fried sea shrimp and tương ớt.
Where to try it
In Da Nang, Bà Bé is at 100 Hoàng Văn Thụ. Order the bèo nậm lọc set.
In Hoi An, the cakes come in small bowls with a shrimp-and-pork topping and a fish sauce with a lot of chili, sometimes with dried shrimp, fish cake, peanuts, and crisp pork crackling and a sweet-sour dip.
In Hue, start at Dong Ba market, then look for bánh bèo and bánh khoái.
In Dong Hoi the cake is on Lê Thành Đồng, Cô Tám, and Đồng Hải.