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Best Cava Wineries Near Barcelona – A Penedès Wine Region Road Trip

Best Cava Wineries Near Barcelona. Cavas Llopart, Penedès, Catalunya, Spain. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

The best Cava wineries near Barcelona are peppered around the Penedès wine region, just 50 kilometres southwest of the capital of Catalunya, Spain. We get a taste of what makes Cava so special, and why the Spanish sparkling wine matches so well with food, on a road trip through the Cava producing region.

The best cava wineries near Barcelona, the capital of Catalunya, Spain, are in the Penedès wine region and can be visited by car, train, or on a guided tour. We explored the Penedès on a road trip with a small group of wine writers.

While they were there for the wine, we had a quest of our own. Not only did we want to get a taste of what makes Cava so special, we also wanted to find out if what the Catalan Cava makers we’d met on our previous trip had told us was true: that Cava matches so well with food, it goes with absolutely anything.

Best Cava Wineries Near Barcelona – A Penedès Wine Region Road Trip

First some practical tips to getting to the Penedès wine region near Barcelona.

How to Visit the Penedes Wine Region from Barcelona

There are a few options for visiting the best Cava wineries near Barcelona: self-driving, taking the train or doing a wine tour from Barcelona.

You could rent a car from Barcelona airport or in Barcelona to drive to the Penedès wine region, about 40 minutes from Barcelona by car. One advantage of travelling by car is that you can load the boot up with cases of wine. Note that for most wineries it’s essential to email or call ahead to make appointments for vineyard tours and wine tastings.

You can also get to the Penedès wine region by train from the Renfe Station on Plaça Catalunya. The trains are ‘Renfe Cercanies’ and the best destination is Vilafranca del Penedès, the region’s liveliest town, on the Sant Viçens de Calderes line. The journey takes an hour and passes through Sant Sadurni d’Anoia. You could then hire a car or driver and vehicle locally

If you prefer not to take the train or drive (you’re going to be Cava tasting after all) you can tour the Penedès wine region with a guide. Try this Catalunya Wine, Tapas and Cava Tour from Barcelona or this Wine and Cava Tasting in Catalonia. Craving more Cava? Back in Barcelona you can sample more on this Tasting of Catalan and Spanish Wines.

Where to Stay to Visit the Best Cava Wineries

If you only have one day in the Penedès wine region, base yourselves in Barcelona. We love Hotel Omm (265 Carrer Rosselló) near the Gràcia neighbourhood. Home to the Michelin-starred Roca Moo restaurant, it has a rooftop pool terrace overlooking Gaudí’s Casa Milà.

If you’re going to stay in the Penedès, try the Hotel Mastinell (34-93/115-6132), which has its own winery, a restaurant overlooking a Cava vineyard, and a spa offering wine treatments. It’s just outside Vilafranca del Penedès, the region’s main town.

Discovering the Best Cava Wineries Near Barcelona in the Penedès Wine Region

I am a woman on a mission. On our last trip to Barcelona we met a man and I fell in love – with Cava. The dashing gentleman in the dark suit and striped tie was Josep Elías Terns, owner-winemaker of Parato winery in the Penedès wine region, 50 kilometres southwest of Barcelona.

As Josep poured us glasses of the crisp, light, elegant Catalan sparkling wine that is to the Spanish what Champagne is to the French, he told us something I would never forget.

“Ferran Adrià said that Cava is the only wine that can match 25 dishes,” Josep pronounced with pride. “It’s like with music. Sometimes you want classical, sometimes you want rock, but then there is music that goes with everything.”

Josep’s revelation about the master of modern Catalan cuisine’s theory on Cava was music to my ears. I’d thought the Spanish sparkling wine was for quaffing at barbecues. Champagne was for toasting serious celebrations like weddings and anniversaries.

I would sip Cava in the sunshine on a summer’s afternoon but at a restaurant I would order Champagne. While Cava might serve as a cheeky aperitif and could easily cut through a rich dessert, I couldn’t envisage glasses of bubbles enduring a degustation menu. Or so I thought at the time.

A Penedès Wine Region Road Trip

Four years later, and Terence and I were on a plane to Spain and then a train trundling through the Catalan capital’s lacklustre suburbs toward Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, the gateway to the Penedès wine region to visit the best Cava wineries near Barcelona.

We were on our way to meet some wine writers to test the theory out over five days of tasting the best Spanish Cavas on a Penedès wine region road trip – tastings that we were assured would be accompanied by the breadth of dishes from the Catalan region’s renowned gastronomy.

Soon after the red brick apartment buildings with green canvas awnings gave way to red-roofed farmhouses and gently undulating hills planted with ancient vines, our train was pulling into the station opposite the Cava house, Freixenet.

Freixenet famously introduced Spanish Cava to the world in the 1980s. While the familiar black bottle was credited with making Cava the number one imported sparkling in the world, over the course of our trip we’d hear time and again that “it’s not really Cava”.

Our new friend Oriol Ripoll, director of Decántalo, an online Cava retailer and distributor, sells some 200 Cavas although he claims the Consejo Regulador del Cava, the Cava Regulatory Board has 246 registered.

Some 56 Cavas on a 50 Great Cava list compiled by Penedès-based wine marketing company Wine Pleasures have received gold and silver awards, but Freixenet does not have a sparkling on the list. I ask Oriol what distinguishes a great Cava?

“A good expression of terroir above all,” Oriol believes. “The wine should have fled all preconceived ideas of Cava, as it should have decades of personality from the winery and should be rich in variety… there are differences in latitude, geography, weather, and grape varieties used, so there are great differences between the wines.”

Best Penedès Wine Region Cava Wineries

These are our picks of the best Cava wineries near Barcelona, all tried and tested.

Adernats Wine Cooperative

At our first stop, the Adernats wine co-operative at the Vinícola de Nulles, a short drive from the village of Nulles, we soon learn about the terroir. Standing on a gravelly, sloped track, surveying the vineyards, a salty sea breeze wafts over the vines and caresses my cheek.

The setting isn’t picturesque in the way that the pretty northeast of France is where Champagne’s grapes grow in neat rows, surrounded by manicured lawns and lines of perfectly pruned hedges.

Here the craggy vines twist down hills and into rocky gullies. Scrubby bushes and wild herbs encroach, as do groves of walnut and olive trees. I scramble over a stony clay track, kicking sizeable pieces of slate and limestone pebbles from my path.

I spot the jagged blue ridges of the mountain range of Montserrat, which I will see all week, watching over us wherever we go. The Penedès has that wild rugged beauty of the Mediterranean – along with its flavours and fragrances. The air is perfumed with the scents of pine, thyme and rosemary. I will smell, taste and sense all of this in each Cava I sip.

My first chance to test out the El Bulli chef’s theory follows soon after dinner, held high in the vaulted ceiling of the Modernist winery, built in 1920, and cathedral-like in design. Andernats holds these candle-lit dinners for the public monthly.

Of the Cavas, and wines made from Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada, the three native grapes traditionally used to make Cava, the best pairing for me is the starter: the Catalan summer soup of tomato and watermelon gazpacho with marinated fresh anchovies that we sip with Andernat’s aromatic Essencia Cava.

Mas Codina

The next morning, in the village of Puigdàlber, we amble to a misty hilltop vineyard before settling around an antique table in the cavernous dining room of the sandstone farmhouse at Mas Codina to sample their Cavas.

Here we breakfast on a range of bubblies with Catalan cold cuts and cheeses, but it’s the heady Gran Reserva Brut Nature, aged 42 months in the cellar, that best holds up to the rich creamy goats cheese from the Pyrenees foothills, the sweet, oily melt-in-your-mouth Jamon Ibérico, and a spicy chorizo sausage that is too pungent for a Champagne.

Llopart Winery

Lunch is at the family-owned Llopart winery, established in Subirats in 1887, where the lovely Jeci Llopart greets us outside the sleek contemporary tasting rooms with glasses of their crimson Rosé Brut Reserva. A fifth-generation winemaker Jeci runs Llopart with her three siblings. I first met Jeci on that Barcelona trip four years ago when I fell hard for Cava.

After trying the gamut of Cava grape varietals, which we carefully pluck straight from the vine, we hike up the hill to the original old family farmhouse, where we savour sweeping vistas of the Penedès valley and majestic Montserrat.

We climb down into the dank cellars that lie deep beneath the vineyards and make our way back through the bottling area to the tasting room. Here, an expansive spread of traditional, regional dishes and contemporary tapas has been laid out to accompany our Cava tasting.

Jesi guides us through pairings, starting with three rustic classics: pan com tomate y Jamon (toast rubbed with fresh tomato and a slice of Jamon Ibérico); coca de seats y butifarra, the Catalan take on pizza, with forest mushrooms and the beloved Catalan sausage that dates to Roman times; and plates of escalibada, smoky grilled vegetables drowned in virgin olive oil. Everything is local and it works wonderfully with the Cava.

As Jesi pours the last drops of a well-structured, creamy Imperial Gran Reserva Brut into my glass I recall what she told us in Barcelona four years earlier: “It’s the fruitiness and freshness that really makes Cava special… and its flexibility.”

“I love Cava because you can have it at anytime, winter or summer, with or without food,” she says, opening a bottle of Leopardi Gran Reserva Brut Nature, which she suggests having with the sausage. “The spicy notes match well with richer, heavier dishes.”

Cuscó Berga and Bohigas Wineries

Over the course of five days, we wash down an array of Catalan specialties with countless glasses of Cava. At Cuscó Berga winery there’s a humble peasant dish called fideus, fine fried noodles with seafood that our hosts call Catalan paella, which they pile onto our plates.

Under the chandeliers in the sumptuous dining room of centuries-old Bohigas Winery, our grand feast begins with what the Catalans call a ‘pica-pica’ – sharing plates.

We savour sublime tuna tartare, plump scallops on creamy mashed potato, piping hot croquettes that melt in the mouth, and fried quails eggs with tasty trumpet mushrooms, followed by creamy risotto with the freshest of seasonal ceps, and fillets of freshly-caught turbot with potato confit.

Juvé y Camps

After a marathon-like tour of Juvé y Camps multi-storied cellars beneath Sant Sadurni d’Anoia – so large they could probably house the entire population – we indulge in another epic multi-course Michelin-star quality meal.

There are mountains of Jamon and cheese, salad, an escalibada with herring, duck cannelloni with foie bechamel and mushrooms, seafood stew with octopus, cod with spinach, chicken with pine nuts, and, finally, a decadent chocolate mouse with almonds.

Adrià would have approved. The Cava was well matched to every dish, from the fun Brut Rose through to the big Cava Gran Juvé that impressively paired with both the main and dessert.

Canals & Munné

It’s our final meal at the endearingly old-fashioned restaurant at Canals & Munné’s cellars in the centre of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia that best demonstrates the versatility of Cava that Jeci Llopart described.

Our hosts, the winemaker Oscar Canals and his charming export manager Natalia demonstrate the most quintessential of Catalan rituals, the calçotada – the act of barbecuing, peeling and eating the first of the season’s calçots – and teach us how to eat calçots like the locals.

After dipping these enormous spring onions in Romesco sauce, we bend our heads back, open our mouths, and let the sweet, soft morsels slide along the tongue, before washing them down with a mouthful of Cava.

I could never imagine doing the same with Champagne.

As I wipe the sauce from my mouth with a very pedestrian paper napkin I recall what Josep Elías Terns told me excitedly four years ago: “When you go to Penedès and you drink the Cava, expect that you will really feel the place!”

Mission accomplished.

Best Cava Wineries Near Barcelona

Vinícola de Nulles Nulles
Mas Codina El Gorner, Puigdàlber
Llopart Subirats
Cuscó Berga Les Gunyoles, Avinyonet
Bohigas Finca Can Macià, Òdena
Juvé y Camps Carrer Sant Venat 1, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia
Canals & Munné Plaça Pau Casals 6, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia

Published 12 January 2018; Last Updated 11 June 2025

Book Penedes Cava Tours and Cellar Door Wine Tastings

Have you explored the Penedes wine region? What do you think are the best Cava wineries near Barcelona? We’d love your suggestions. Feel free to leave tips in the Comments below.

Japanese Food in Tokyo – Motsuyaki, Yakitori and Yakiniku are What You Need to Eat

Japanese food in Tokyo for most culinary travellers means sushi and noodles – but I'm thinking smoky barbecue and grilled meats and raw offal. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Japanese food in Tokyo for most culinary travellers means sushi, tempura, and ramen – fish, seafood and noodles – but when I fantasise about eating Japanese food in Tokyo, unlike Jiro I’m not dreaming of sushi. I’m thinking grilling and barbecue. That means yakitori, yakiniku, motsuyaki, and jingisukan, generally in cheap and cheerful local spots.

While Jiro dreams of sushi prepared in immaculate minimalist spaces, my dreams of Japanese food in Tokyo feature yakitori, yakiniku, motsuyaki, and jingisukan – succulent grilled and barbecued meats served in smoke-filled joints on atmospheric Tokyo lanes, so casual you could find yourself standing up to eat and even doing your own cooking.

When I first shared this guide to Japanese food in Tokyo, Terence had been cooking up a storm, baking sourdough, French batards and hot cross buns one week, and the next frying, barbecuing and grilling Japanese tsukune, tonkatsu, and fried chicken called karaage. It’s those charcoal grilled, charring and twice-fried Japanese meats that have had me dreaming of a long-overdue eating trip to Japan.

Terence’s tonkatsu, a perfectly deep-fried, crunchy breaded pork cutlet, has had me reminiscing about our last trip to Japan and the tranquil tonkatsu spot at sleek Roppongi Hills where we tucked into the Tokyo specialty in silence. But it’s not long before those culinary reveries transport me to the boisterous Tokyo eateries I prefer, like the yakitori joints on Omoide Yokocho or ‘Memory Lane’ in Shinjuku.

When I dream about eating in Japan, it’s the cheap and cheerful casual places – the tachinomiya and izakaya – that specialise in the likes of jingisukan, yakitori, yakiniku, motsuyaki, and more. This is the Japanese food you need to eat in Tokyo!

Japanese Food in Tokyo – Why You Need to Eat Yakitori, Yakiniku, Motsuyaki and More

Our last trip to Tokyo was essentially a two-week eating trip. We hadn’t gone to dine on that trip we had gone to eat.

We weren’t interested in making reservations at Michelin starred restaurants. We had wanted to go where the locals went to breakfast, to lunch and to graze after post-work drinks. We were also eager to experience the kind of serendipitous discoveries we had on our inaugural Japan trip.

Many years earlier, as young travellers, Tokyo had been the first destination we ever visited with our fresh Australian passports, and we got lucky with our first Tokyo lunch: sublime noodles at a local eatery we stumbled upon in a Shinjuku laneway – we ordered by pointing to the plastic replicas in the window and the noodles were absolutely wonderful.

We hoped for the same sort of luck again. On our first night venturing out in search of some Japanese food in Tokyo we came upon a noisy neighbourhood izakaya not far from our apartment. Packed with locals, with plastic milk crates topped with cushions for chairs, and friendly staff with the day’s specials handwritten on paper signs stapled to their t-shirts, it was a great find.

As soon as we sat down, the first thing that caught our eyes were the summer oysters: colossal, plump, and disappearing fast from the seafood display. We quickly ordered a few each, then a few more. Then some sashimi that was skilfully being sliced in front of us, glistening under the bright lights of the bar. Then delicious tempura that had a light batter that deftly coated amazingly crisp sweet prawns and fresh vegetables.

The next morning we made the mistake of grabbing a guidebook from the apartment rental we were staying in and went out in search of a ‘famous’ noodle place the book recommended. After that disappointing first ramen we decided to trust our instincts once again.

Just around the corner from the ramen spot were some eateries with long lines of locals that looked far more interesting than our empty lunch venue. We didn’t open the guidebook again and the next night we returned to one of them – an atmospheric stand-up place that was crammed with locals called the Nihon Saisei Sakaba or Japan Reborn Bar.

Decorated in the nostalgic mid-20th century style that was popular in Tokyo at the time, with plenty of worn wood and retro touches, the placed warmed our hearts, as did the food. We ordered with the help of our neighbouring diner, by watching what the chef was turning on the grill, and by snooping at the plates on the pass. It was one of those “we’ll have what they’re having” kind of meals.

From the restaurant’s only English-language menu that listed gullet, trachea, spleen, rectum, stomach, breast, and uterus, and the like, we pointed to the parts that we guessed were the ones that we’d liked the look of, ordering countless tapas-size plates of barbecued, grilled and barely-seared raw offal, including small and large intestines, tongue, shoulder, raw liver, and raw heart.

We weren’t deterred by the waiter who muttered “courageous, courageous…” in English with a cheeky smile as he took our orders. Although we stopped at raw brains. We loved that the place celebrated the tradition of using every part of the animal. It couldn’t have been further from a several hundred-dollar sushi menu and it was all incredibly delicious.

We would later learn that horumon (grilled offal and innards) or nose-to-tail dining was called horumonyaki or motsuyaki and the type of cuisine was horumon ryori (offal cuisine). Next trip we’ll be seeking out more of these eateries and we’ll most definitely be having the brains.

Equally memorable and just as much fun were the yakitori bars lining an atmospheric laneway and side alleys beside Shinjuku railway line. Known as Omoide Yokocho or Memory Lane (also known as ‘Piss Alley’), the gritty, old-fashioned quarter defied Tokyo’s reputation as a futuristic city and its rustic and often rowdy eateries provided a stark contrast to the sleek, minimalist restaurants normally associated with eating Japanese food in Tokyo.

A black market area after World War II, Omoide Yokocho’s skinny lanes of dilapidated wooden buildings were lined with dozens of smoky yakitori bars famous for their simple skewers grilled over open flames. We hopped on a couple of stools at a particularly loud diner-like place blaring heavy metal music whose proprietor wore an Ozzy Osbourne t-shirt.

Just like the Japan Reborn Bar, there was no menu in English but the cool young bloke beside us helped with our order, suggesting the seared raw liver in sesame oil (his favourite) for starters, washed down with a shot of shōchū with soda and lemon called chūhai. I remember us toasting “kampai!” with our new friends and the fantastic food we feasted on in that tiny smoky spot in the heart of Tokyo that oozed charm.

Another night we returned for more yakitori and the rest of the trip for me is a blur of chicken skewers, cheap cuts of grilled meats (yakiniku), and Hokkaido-style slices of mutton grilled over dome-shaped barbecues called jingisukan after Genghis Khan (the Mongol army was thought to have cooked their lamb on their helmets).

When I think of eating Japanese food in Tokyo, it’s those smoky skewers, the grilled offal bits, the barely seared raw meats, and the barbecued lamb, that come to mind. So much so that when I start to ponder a return trip to Tokyo it’s yakitori, yakiniku and motsuyaki joints that I start dreaming about. Sorry, Jiro, it’s not sushi.

Skip the guidebooks and see the Japan National Tourism Organization site for more tips on where to eat Japanese food in Tokyo, the 10 must-try dishes, the most adventurous Japanese specialties, and the must-do culinary experiences.

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Recipe – How to Make Rice Noodles for Pho and Pho Cuon

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

This Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe can be used to make both the rice noodle sheets for the Vietnamese fresh rice noodle rolls known as Hanoi style pho cuon (phở cuốn Hà Nội) and the pho noodles or bánh phở that are used in Vietnam’s world famous rice noodle soup called pho (phở).

This Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe is the second in our series of Vietnamese spring roll recipes. We launched with a recipe for fresh Vietnamese spring rolls called Hanoi style pho cuon (phở cuốn Hà Nội) as I’d returned from Vietnam’s capital Hanoi, where I had just finished hosting a 22-day Vietnam Culinary Tour and was missing Vietnamese food terribly already.

If you aren’t able to buy the fresh flat rice noodle sheets locally that are needed to make the Hanoi style pho cuon then you’ll need this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe to make them. And as I said in the intro, this is also a recipe for the fresh pho noodles or banh pho (bánh phở) used in Vietnam’s beloved rice noodle soup, pho (phở) so plan to make both dishes simultaneously.

VIETNAMESE FRESH RICE NOODLE RECIPE – FOR PHO AND PHO CUON

In Vietnam, pho noodles or banh pho are sold fresh daily and dry, and just like any Asian noodles, or, say, Italian pasta, while dry noodles can be used in a recipe, food lovers would agree that fresh is always best. No self-respecting pho noodle cook in Vietnam would use dry noodles for pho soup when fresh noodles are readily available – or they could make the noodles themselves.

If the cook lives in a big city, such as Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, each of which has a population of around 8 million in a country of 93 million people (at the time of writing), where more than one third of that population lives in cities and towns, then they’ll probably be buying fresh rice noodles that have been manufactured in a factory.

It’s very different to here in Cambodia, where the total population is just 16 million and 80% of people live in rural areas, and most living beneath or hovering around the poverty line. Here, most noodle production still takes place in small artisanal home workshops by families of noodle makers.

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

(By the way, if you’re a noodle lover, on our Cambodia culinary tours and travel and creative retreats we also take participants to rustic family workshops in local villages to see the making of rice paper and rice noodles, as they’ve always made them. People also get to try their hand at making rice paper in the same way it’s done in Vietnam.)

You will still find these fresh noodles for pho and banh pho made by small producers in cities and town right across Vietnam. We have visited similar small cottage industries and these tend to be made for a local market or are sold direct to street food cooks.

And we’ve also come across many Vietnamese cooks and street food vendors who will get up in the wee hours of the morning to make their own fresh rice noodles for their soup or these rice noodle sheets for pho cuon which they’ll see from their own stall or shop later that morning.

When they do, they will pretty much be making this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe fresh rice noodle sheets and soup noodles in the same way that you see in the images in the gallery and outlined in the Vietnamese fresh flat pho rice noodles recipe below.

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

NOTES ON THIS VIETNAMESE FRESH RICE NOODLE RECIPE

What I love about this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe is that the noodle sheets can be used to make both pho cuon and the quintessential Vietnamese noodle soup, pho, that we all know and love.

If you’re making a Vietnamese meal to be shared amongst a table of friends or family, just double the amounts if you’re making soup and rolls for four people. If you’re preparing a feast for eight, say, then you’ll need to double again, and so on.

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Once you’ve made the fresh flat pho rice noodle sheets for the Hanoi style pho cuon recipe you can keep half the noodle sheets aside which you can later cut with a knife or scissors into thin 1cm strips of noodle for your Vietnamese pho noodle soup.

You can keep the noodles for the soup in a bowl in the fridge until your pho broth is ready. We’ll be posting a oho soup recipe at some stage, too.

Both of those can be made the same day, however, this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe, which we learnt to make at the wonderful Red Bridge Cooking School in Hoi An, needs to be started the day before as you need to soak the rice in water overnight.

PREPARING THE STEAMER TO MAKE PHO RICE NOODLES

While this Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe isn’t difficult, making the noodle sheets over the steamer can be tricky at first. It’s fiddly and it takes a little practice to get the hang of it.

To make the flat pho rice noodle sheets you’ll need to prepare a steamer using a big pot of boiling water, a piece of cotton or muslin, and string or thick elastic.

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

You can either boil the water first in a large pot as the Vietnamese do, then carefully cover the pot of boiling water with a thin piece of cotton or muslin, or, if you’re concerned about burning yourself, you can secure the cotton with room temperature water before boiling it.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a long bamboo stick, which is available from markets in Southeast Asia, or Asian supermarkets and grocery stores if you don’t live in the region. It just looks like a very large wooden cooking chopstick.

Now please don’t be alarmed if your first attempts don’t come out great. Our first ever attempts at cooking school were comical. But, as you get the temperature of the water right and become more confident in spooning out the batter evenly, it will become easier. I find having your phone with a stopwatch on will help you to get the steaming time right once you have a good batch going.

VIETNAMESE FRESH RICE NOODLE RECIPE

Fresh Vietnamese Steamed Rice Sheets Recipe. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.
Print Recipe
5 from 3 votes

Vietnamese Fresh Rice Noodle Recipe – How to Make Rice Noodles for Pho and Pho Cuon

This Vietnamese fresh flat pho rice noodles recipe makes fresh noodle sheets (bánh phở) for Hanoi Style fresh Vietnamese rice noodle rolls called pho cuon (phở cuốn Hà Nội), which can also be cut into strips to make pho noodles for the classic Vietnamese soup, pho (phở). We have adapted a recipe we learned to make at Red Bridge Cooking School, Hoi An.
Prep Time1 day
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time1 day 10 minutes
Course: Noodles
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Servings: 4 4-6 Servings
Calories: 34kcal
Author: Lara Dunston

Ingredients

  • 4 cups white rice jasmine rice is best
  • 8 cups of water
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
Metric - US Customary

Instructions

  • To prepare the batter for the fresh flat pho rice noodle sheets, first soak the 4 cups of white rice in a large plastic bowl of water overnight.
  • The next day, drain the water from the rice then thoroughly wash the rice in water. Do this at least three times, properly draining the water each time until the water is clear. Ensure the water is completely drained from the rice.
  • Put 1 cup of white rice, 2 cups of water, and a pinch of salt in a blender and blend for 10-15 minutes.
  • Remove the mixture from the blender and put it in a bowl and leave to rest for one hour.
  • Repeat with the remaining rice, 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water at a time. Leave each mixture to rest for an hour.
  • Spread a little vegetable oil onto a flat tray or plate in preparation for the steamed rice noodle sheets.
  • To make the flat rice noodle sheets, cover a pot of boiling water with a thin piece of cotton, pulled tautly over the pot and secured with string.
  • Using a large spoon (should hold two tablespoons of batter), pour the rice noodle batter onto the cotton, using the bottom of the spoon to move the batter around to form a thin circle-shaped layer that evenly and completely covers the cotton.
  • Steam the batter for one minute until you have a firm flat rice noodle sheet.
  • Use a bamboo stick to lift the rice batter from the cotton, by sliding it between the rice noodle sheet and cotton at the centre. Place it onto the oiled plate.
  • Repeat, stacking the flat rice noodle sheets on top of each other as you go. They shouldn’t stick together but if concerned spread a little vegetable oil onto each sheet.
  • Allow to cool

Nutrition

Serving: 100g | Calories: 34kcal | Carbohydrates: 8g | Protein: 1g | Sodium: 2mg

Vietnamese Cookbooks for Spring Rolls and Pho cuon (phở cuốn)

You’ll find more spring roll recipes in these terrific cookbooks.

Vietnamese Street Food by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl – the former owners of Hanoi Cooking Centre and authors of several Vietnam cookbooks have ten Vietnamese spring roll recipes in this book, which is one of our favourites. When we last met Tracey she was talking of writing a book 100% dedicated to spring rolls. Fingers crossed.

The Songs of Sapa, Stories and Recipes from Vietnam by Luke Nguyen – the Aussie-Vietnamese chef who splits his time between Sydney and Saigon and owns the excellent GRAIN Cooking Studio has half a dozen different Vietnamese spring roll recipes in this beautiful book that charts his discovery of dishes during his travels through Vietnam.

Street Food Asia by Luke Nguyen – you’ll find some spring roll recipes in this cookbook on street food snacks from Vietnam and beyond.

As usual, we’d love to hear from you if you make our Vietnamese fresh rice noodle recipe. Please let us know how they turned out in the comments below and share a pic with us on Instagram.

New Turkish Cuisine in Australia – Mikla’s Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks

Mehmet Gürs and the Young Turks at Lezzet, Melbourne. Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

New Turkish Cuisine in Australia had been intriguing me for some time and then I spotted the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival event called ‘Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks at Lezzet – an Anatolian Discovery’. We signed up immediately.

Sampling New Turkish Cuisine in Australia was high on my to-do list when planning our trip home to attend the 2017 Worlds 50 Best Restaurants awards and Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. While researching new restaurants to try before our trip, I discovered a handful of establishments that to me seemed to represent a new movement of Turkish-Australian cooking down under, Tulum restaurant in Melbourne being the latest.

The fact that Turkish-Scandi Mehmet Gürs, owner-chef of our favourite Istanbul restaurant, Mikla, who we’d met and interviewed back in 2008, was involved in a festival event with Australia’s new generation of Turkish chefs that they’d called ‘Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks at Lezzet – an Anatolian Discovery’ made it impossible to resist. We booked tickets immediately.

Scroll through the image gallery above to get a taste of what it was like behind-the-scenes and at the pass as well as drool over the deliciousness that was delivered to our table.

New Turkish Cuisine in Australia – Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks at Lezzet

The ‘Young Turks’ was a reference to a group of early 20th century rebels – students, civil servants and soldiers – who helped replace the Ottoman Empire’s absolute monarchy with a constitutional government, introducing multi-party democracy to Turkey for the first time in its history.

Australia had a long history of Turkish immigration and the Turkish, like so many immigrants and refugees had contributed to making multicultural Australia a country with a rich culinary diversity. We had no idea what kind of gastronomic upheaval Gürs and his Turkish-Australian chef mates had planned, but whatever it was we wanted to experience it.

Traditional Turkish Food in Australia

As a child growing up in Lidcombe in Sydney’s Western suburbs I’d often walk home from school with a little Turkish friend whose parents owned a modest bakery. Interestingly, locals referred to it as ‘the Lebanese bakery’, despite Mohammed and his family hailing from Turkey. I recall thinking that was weird as I also had Lebanese friends and despite my young age I knew they spoke a different language even though their lunch boxes contained similar food.

Every Friday afternoon as Mohammed and I parted outside the bakery, his dad would give me a plastic bag full of large discs of warm flat bread – which Australians called by the Greek name ‘pita’ – to take home to my family. I did what any good Aussie kid of Russian heritage did for an afternoon snack and as soon as I got home I smothered a piece with thick layers of strawberry jam and sour cream.

Although my mum cooked everything from Italian to French and we went out for Chinese food (or Pizza Hut) most Thursdays after late-night shopping, it wasn’t until I was a uni student in the late 1980s that I’d try Turkish food. My teacher-uncle Sandy, who I lived with in the inner city Sydney suburb of Glebe for a while, introduced Terence and I to Indian, Malaysian and Thai food. Soon after, Terence and I moved in together in Balmain and our culinary adventures got more serious as we began exploring Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Greek, and Turkish.

Our Turkey food forays were limited to a few types of food, however. The first was Turkish fast food, over-sized doner kebabs, packed with salad, lamb sliced off the vertical spit, a garlicky sauce, and soft fries, or piping hot pide stuffed with spinach and cheese or minced lamb and spices, which we bought from flouro-lit takeaway joints – generally after a big night out.

The second was the traditional style of Turkish cooking found in the first generation of family-owned Turkish eateries. Generally set over two floors, with a take-away occupying the ground floor, these popular establishments usually secreted away a few rooms on the first floor kitschily decorated to resemble an Ottoman-era harem.

In Sydney these eateries were peppered around the inner city, especially along Cleveland Street, Redfern and Surry Hills and on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. By day they’d be frequented by an older generation of Turkish men, who got together to gossip and talk politics over plates of meze and grilled meats, while after dark large groups of both Turkish- and non Turkish-Australians, plopped onto the fringed cushions and slid around the low tables to gorge on generous serves of tasty Turkish food.

We’d mop up creamy hummus with torn pieces of pita and tuck into plates piled high with stuffed vine lines, mixed grilled meats, yoghurty chicken shish, and succulent lamb cutlets. Dessert was baklava, Turkish delight, a bellydancer and a puff on a sheesha pipe.

I’m told that of those older-style Turkish restaurants that we used to frequent only a few exist, such as Erciyes on Cleveland. Reassuringly, it’s still owned by the same Saracoglu family. Once little more than a take-away pide joint it’s now a full-blown diner with a never-ending menu, 150-seats and weekend bellydancers.

The third type of Turkish food we were exposed to was an ever so slightly elevated style of home cooking that we used to enjoy at a stylish light-filled café in Darlinghurst called Fez. We’d drop in for brunch or lunch on a sunny Saturday or for dinner with friends. While Fez labelled itself a Moroccan/Middle Eastern eatery there was the occasional lesser-known Turkish dish and a wonderful Middle Eastern breakfast plate similar to those we’d come to love years later in Istanbul.

On a trip to Sydney a few years ago we stumbled upon a narrow Surry Hills café called Mint (sadly it closed in 2018) that we recognised as the one-time location of Bar Giorgio, our old friend John’s Italian trattoria where Terence learned to cook while I was studying in South America. Scanning the menu, we recognised some familiar dishes. For nostalgic reasons, we sat down and ordered a couple of old favourites only to start chatting to the proprietor and realise it was the owner of Fez. It was comforting that little had changed apart from the location.

Turkish Food in Turkey

It wasn’t until we finally travelled to Turkey after moving to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 1998 that we really discovered the depth, breadth and richness of Turkish cuisine.

While we were relieved to find that the Turkish food we’d been eating in Australia had been the real deal (unlike, say, the Turkish food we’d sampled in the USA), we realised that it was largely the kind of hearty drinking food that was typical of a meyhane (a sort of Turkish tavern) and were pleased that like the locals in Turkey we had always enjoyed it in the company of dear friends.

Being based in the UAE, first Abu Dhabi and then Dubai, our departure point for travels through the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East and Europe, we began to appreciate how much Turkish cuisine had influenced the other cuisines of the Mediterranean and Middle East, and vice versa.

Over 500 years Turkey’s Byzantine Empire and then Ottoman Empire conquered some of Eastern Europe, most of the Balkan States, Mediterranean islands such as Malta and Cyprus, and parts of Greece, Macedonia, Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Yemen. Qatar and Bahrain were vassal states, paying tributes to the Ottomans.

While there are rich, local, and old culinary traditions in all of these places, traces of Ottoman cuisine, which was concocted in the imperial palace kitchens in Istanbul, travelled right across the empires with the Ottoman sultans and armies. It should be noted, however, that the novelty-loving sultans also brought back cooks from the colonies, with their recipes, techniques and ingredients to experiment and create new dishes, so, as always, the gastronomic influence was two-way.

Eating out in Istanbul we quickly learnt that Turkish food, like most cuisines, is regional with different geographical areas, climates, terroir, and cultural traditions combining to give rise to regional and local specialties.

The specificities of place aside, there were ingredients and produce that we saw in markets and on tables time and time again: lamb, olives and olive oil, eggplant, capsicums, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and cucumber, yoghurts and white cheeses, fruits such as figs, pomegranates, and watermelon.

Ubiquitous herbs and spices included thyme, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, sumac, and saffron. Sesame was another favourite and seemed pistachios were everywhere. While dishes had spice, they weren’t spicy, but rather exhibited a balance of savoury, salty and sweet. And the Turkish loved their sweets.

Breakfast was Turkey on a plate, with a spread of eggs, sujuk (sausage), tomatoes, olives, white cheeses, jams, preserves, honey, yoghurt, and breads, and one of our favourite breakfast dishes, menemen, which consisted of eggs, tomatoes, capsicum, onion, and olive oil was Turkey in a pan.

Over those years being based in the Middle East and Europe, we just worked out that we’d spent over a year in Turkey during this period, from hotels to apartment rentals where we spent months cooking and eating like locals.

Almost a decade ago, in Istanbul, we discovered that young Turkish chefs were digging deep and travelling wide to explore the many different cuisines of Anatolia, once known as Asia Minor, which now comprises most of modern Turkey.

In cosy basement eateries and sleek rooftop restaurants in Istanbul, chefs were drawing inspiration from recipes from as far as the South-eastern Hatay region near the Syrian border and the Black Sea in the north.

One of those chefs was Mehmet Gürs. An Istanbul resident, Finnish born Mehmet was the son of a Swedish mother and Turkish father and his restaurant Mikla, currently at #51 on the 2017 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, remains Istanbul’s finest and most inventive. Few have elevated Turkish cuisine to such lofty heights.

Mikla’s Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks at Lezzet Restaurant

When we sat down with well over a hundred other curious Melbourne Food and Wine festival-goers in the big bustling dining rooms of Turkish-Aussie chef Kemal Barut’s Lezzet restaurant in Melbourne’s seaside suburb of Elwood, we didn’t know what to expect.

We’ve lived away from Australia for so long that we had no idea what our country’s next generation of Turkish-Australian chefs had done to their cuisine, but we knew if Mehmet was involved the meal was going to be interesting.

The ‘Young Turks’ included Kemal Barut of Lezzet, Coskun Uysal of Melbourne restaurant Tulum, and Somer Sivrioglu and Bektas Ozcan of Efendy and Anason restaurants in Sydney.

The chefs collaborated with Mehmet to develop a four-course meal that paid homage to their centuries-old culinary traditions, and influences from across the region, from Greece to Persia and from the Roman to the Ottoman empires, all washed down with Turkish sommelier Tan Sumer’s Turkish wine pairings.

1st course by Kemal Barut of Lezzet
Pancar – beetroot, watermelon shisha-smoked goats cheese, fig and pomegranate

2nd course by Coskun Uysal of Tulum
Cilbir – organic egg, smoked yoghurt, brown butter crumble, and sumac butter

3rd course by Somer Sivrioglu and Bektas Ozcan of Efendy and Anason
Lamb tandir – lamb shoulder, sweet peppers, eggplant, and kashar begendi

4th course by Mehmet Gürs of Mikla
Kitir Kabak – candied pumpkin, saffron yoghurt ice-cream, sesame, pistachio, hemp

New Turkish Cuisine in Australia

New Turkish Cuisine in Australia doesn’t so much as represent a break from the past and the Turkish food we came to know through modest neighbourhood restaurants, take-away joints and food courts. Rather it builds upon that, elevating those traditional staples and showing us that there is so much more to Turkish food than kebabs, tabbouleh, and baklava.

New Turkish Cuisine embraces everything from traditional regional specialties, made in house from scratch, with the finest quality produce – you won’t see big buckets of bought-in hummous at any of the restaurants below – to modern and contemporary experiments that deconstruct and reinterpret traditional dishes in a style that was pioneered at Istanbul restaurants such as Mikla.

At Somer Sivrioglu’s Efendy restaurant, for instance, you’ll taste traditional delights like barrel-aged feta and house cured beef pastirma and regional specialties such as Black Sea style sardines, rice pilav, chestnut, and sweet corn, and Adana style lamb kebap with strained yogurt and pepper butter. But you’ll also find on the same menu a reinvention of the Turkish Mess, modelled on the Eton Mess, made with merengue, Turkish delight cream, berries, rose, and pistachio.

Where to Try New Turkish Cuisine in Australia

Efendy

Turkish-born chef Somer Sivrioglu, owner of decade-old Efendy restaurant in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Balmain (our home for seven years), is considered the godfather of New Turkish Cuisine in Australia. Somer grew up in the 1970s in Istanbul’s multicultural neighbourhood of Kadıköy to a father who owned a hotel and hammam in the countryside and a mother who had restaurants in Istanbul and Bodrum, which is where he learnt to cook. After arriving in Sydney in 1995 with a hospitality degree, Somer enrolled in an MBA, working nights as a dishwasher until his culinary hero Musa Dağdeviren, from Kadıköy’s Çiya restaurant, visited and reintroduced Somer to Turkish food made with Australian ingredients that he found foraging in Sydney’s Chinatown. When you dine at chef Somer’s Efendy restaurant in Balmain you’re not only guaranteed authentic Turkish cuisine, you’re in for specialties from across the country and dishes that you may never have heard of, let alone tried before. Efendy’s chefs are all Turkish, with a cook from every culinary region. The chef’s wife Asli and brother-in-law Fatih ensure you’ll also experience genuine Turkish hospitality in the dining room.
79 Elliott Street, corner of Darling Street, Balmain, Sydney, (02) 9810 5466, www.efendy.com.au

Lezzet

Owner Kemal Barut, an Australian-born chef of Turkish heritage, may call Lezzet’s food ‘contemporary Turkish cuisine’ and on the day we dined the dishes exhibited all the hallmarks of contemporary cooking with the artfully arranged plates of premium ingredients presented in unexpected textures. However, you’ll also find elevated Turkish delights in their traditional forms made with the finest Australian produce and cooked to perfection, such as just-baked wood-fired breads, fresh homemade dips and plenty of grilled meats. There are also twists on the traditional, such as manti (dumplings) filled with crab and served with a smoky paprika butter and wine reduction. The emphasis is on sharing plates, an inherently traditional custom made modern, with several ‘platters’ to be shared between two or more. The star of the Lezzet Platter is Lamb Four Ways featuring a loin, 20-hour slow-cooked shoulder, lamb cutlets, lamb skewers and kofte, with a bulgur wheat salad, haloumi ‘fingers’, and Yulfka flat bread with tahini cream. The Sofra Breakfast (weekends only) to be shared between two, includes grilled Turkish sucuk (sausage), olives, sumak sprinkled cucumber, cured meats, pickled mushrooms, haloumi, fetta, and menemen, Lezzet’s famous wood-fired Turkish bread, and berry jam.
81 Brighton Road, Elwood, Melbourne, (03) 9531 7733, lezzet.com.au

Tulum

Turkish-born owner-chef Coskun Uysal worked at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen and River Café in London and had been visiting Australia for a decade before he moved to Melbourne to open his snug (36-seat), modern Turkish bistro. Uysal is offering something different yet again at his restaurant Tulum, which opened in mid-2016. Intent on showing Australians that there’s more to Turkish food than kebabs, Uysal has introduced diners to the style of cuisine being cooked in Istanbul right now. While Uysal’s cuisine is rooted in tradition, with many dishes inspired by the recipes he learnt from his mother, the execution is contemporary, with emulsions and edible flowers, dusts and ‘dirt’. Much talked-about dishes include the Black Sea specialty, Dana Yahni, melt-in-your-mouth 12-hour beef cheek, fragrant with cinnamon, served with corn that resembles rice, walnut-filled figs and kale chips, and Çilbir (poached eggs in yoghurt), poached organic egg with smoked yoghurt, a sumac brown butter sauce, brown butter crumbs, and crispy chicken skin. Uysal hasn’t given up the traditions of his culinary heritage, however, curing, pickling and fermenting in-house. He even makes his own tahini from sesame seeds he roasts over an open fire and grounds in a stone mill.
217 Carlisle Street, Balaclava, Melbourne, (03) 9525 9127, tulumrestaurant.com.au

Anason

Somer Sivrioglu recreated the spirit of Istanbul’s meyhanes in Sydney with his second restaurant, Anason, located on the waterfront of Barangaroo – right down to the ferries, boats and ships that glide by on the harbour outside that channel Istanbul’s busy Bosphorous, and the sesame sprinkled simit bread sold from the charming Turkish-made street cart on the terrace. In true New Turkish Cuisine form, Anason continues to explore authentic Anatolian cuisine – with a twist. White cod roe tarama comes with native Australian finger limes and simit chips, while fried cauliflower and burnt mint yoghurt has chickpeas seasoned with dukkah, the Egyptian-spice mix that has become an Aussie staple. Just as you’d find at a meyhane in Turkey, there’s more of an emphasis on meze (small appetiser-size sharing plates) and seafood, including the street food favourite, stuffed mussels – here, with wild rice and sweet currants – that’s sold at Istanbul’s wharves. While most of the produce is Australian, Somer air-freights baklava in weekly from the Cagdas family in Gazientap, Turkey, who have been making it for several generations. After Somer visited their baklava bakery to learn their secrets, he felt he could never do it justice. He also stocks Turkish wine, beer and raki to really take you back to your travels through Turkey – or inspire you to book a flight.
5/23 Barangaroo Avenue, Sydney, (02) 9188 1581, www.anason.com.au

Learn more

Read Anatolia, a wonderful Turkish cookbook co-authored by Istanbul-born Somer Sivrioglu, owner-chef of Efendy and Anason restaurants in Sydney, and writer David Dale, covering everything from Ottoman Empire banquet cooking to Turkish street food. Somer and Dale travelled all over Turkey to research the beautifully photographed tome.

We got a taste of New Turkish Cuisine in Australia at ‘Mehmet Gürs and The Young Turks at Lezzet – an Anatolian Discovery’ as guests of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. All memories, reflections and opinions are obviously my own.

Vietnam Culinary Tour – Join Us On A Vietnam Food Adventure

Vietnam Culinary Tour – Join Us On Another Vietnam Food Adventure in 2019. Riverside, Hoi An, Vietnam. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Our Vietnam Culinary Tour will explore the regional cuisines of Vietnam, from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and the Mekong Delta in the south, Hoi An and Hue in Central Vietnam, to Hanoi and the mountain food of Sapa and Bac Ha in the north. We’d love you to come discover Vietnamese cuisine with us.

UPDATE January 2019: We have scheduled a Vietnam Cuisine and Culture Tour from 19-31 July 2019 taking in Saigon, Dalat, Hoi An, Hue, and Hanoi with two optional extensions including a 2-night Halong Bay cruise and a trip to Sapa. Click through to the link above for the full itinerary, inclusions, and prices.

We’ll be staying in stylish boutique hotels and historic grand hotels, eating street food from tiny plastic stools and dining in Vietnam’s most exciting restaurants, doing market tours, cooking classes and history walks. We’ll be travelling with Vietnam Airlines between several destinations, private luxury vans between others, and all domestic flight and transport are included in the price.

Need more inspiration? Read about our first Vietnam Food Tour and browse our Vietnam stories. See Terence’s beautiful time-lapse of dancing boats at sunset in Hoi An. Click through to read the testimonials of participants who have done our Cambodia culinary tours and travel and food writing and photography retreats and feedback from clients of our bespoke trips. Click through to this post to find out why Ho Chi Minh City is still called Saigon.

If you are interested in joining us on our July 2019 Vietnam, Cuisine and Culture Tour, sign up for our newsletter, leave a comment below or email us. We can’t wait to show you our Vietnam!

Vietnam Culinary Tour – Join Us on a Vietnam Food Adventure

When a few of the lovely participants who did our Cambodia Culinary Tours and Travel and Food Writing and Photography Retreats in 2016 asked us to host a Vietnam Culinary Tour this year, we couldn’t resist the opportunity to escort such fun food-loving people through one of our favourite countries.

When we lived in Vietnam, before we moving to Cambodia, we fell head over heels in love with the country, its cuisine, culture, and people, which was fortunate seeing it was food and travel stories for Feast, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, The Guardian, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, Silkwinds, Ocean, and Lifestyle+Travel among other publications, that took us there in the first place.

We covered everything from Hoi An’s specialty dishes, including its legendary cau lao noodles and famous chilli sauce to Hanoi’s beloved bia hoi and contemporary art scene, and beguiling Halong Bay, where we got to compare different cruises.

It was only seven months, but I say ‘lived’ because we rented an apartment in Hanoi (on Food Street) for a few months, where Terence shopped the local markets each day, and we made ourselves at home in Hoi An for another few months, where we became smitten with the little old ladies in the markets as much as the pups of Hoi An.

We took cooking classes, did street food tours, shopped the markets, cooked Vietnamese cuisine, and generally enjoyed the bounty of fantastic fresh produce on our doorstep. We made friends and settled in, especially in Hoi An, which we thought would be the place we’d be calling home now. It was our time there that made us realise how much we enjoyed the intimacy of small towns compared to big cities, which is what drew us to Siem Reap over Phnom Penh.

So we’re super excited to be hosting this Vietnam Culinary Tour and especially delighted that some of our participants from our previous Cambodia trips have signed up. We know we’re going to have a memorable time and we hope you’ll join us too.

Our approach will be the same as the Cambodia trips we host, which is in line with our Grantourismo philosophy of going slow, local and experiential. This means you can expect:

  • insider perspectives – thanks to our Vietnam experience and our carefully chosen Vietnam guides and local experts, from chefs to street food operators;
  • local insights – you’ll visit local spots that we know and love, along with places that our local hosts who live in the destinations frequent;
  • engaging and immersive experiences – hands-on cooking classes, market tastings, street food tours, history and architecture walks, farm visits, coffee appreciation classes, wine tastings, and more;
  • a relaxed vibe – our trips feel more like well-organised holidays with new friends than tours with travel companies;
  • slow pace – we cram in a lot, but at a comparatively slower pace to most tour companies because we want you to have a deeper rather than a superficial experience – when most travel companies spend two days in a place, we’ll take four;
  • responsible and sustainable travel – we use local guides and small businesses and, wherever possible, NGO/charity-ran workshops, social enterprises, and hospitality training restaurants.

Vietnam Culinary Tour Highlights

These are some of the tantalising experiences that we have planned for you:

  • in-depth hands-on cooking classes at the very best cooking schools, including Chef Luke Nguyen’s GRAIN cooking school (with optional wine pairing) in Saigon; full day class at Hoi An’s Red Bridge Cooking School, with a visit to Tra Que organic herb gardens and a boat cruise back to Hoi An; authentic heritage dishes at a home in Hue; lessons in cooking the cuisine of Hanoi and the Northern Highlands at cookbook writer Tracey Lister’s Hanoi Cooking Centre; dessert making with a legendary Hanoi street food vendor specialising in sweets; and cooking with women from the Hmong ethnic minority group in Sapa.
  • mouthwatering ambles through lively local markets and delicious street food tours with lots of snacking led by local experts in Saigon, Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi, and Bac Ha.
  • street food feasting at authentic local spots for breakfast, lunch and snacks in every destination – from the best pho and bun cha places in Hanoi to Hoi An’s beloved banh mi spots, which we used to eat at almost every day, including the Banh Mi Queen’s heavenly banh mi op la and Vietnam’s finest banh mi at Banh Mi Phuong, a local favourite that Anthony Bourdain made famous;
  • memorable meals at some of Vietnam’s finest restaurants with the chance to meet the chefs and owners behind these establishments;
  • visits to artisanal producers to observe traditional processes, including an opportunity to witness noodle-making by the family responsible for Hoi An’s legendary cao lau noodles (followed by a tasting tour to sample Hoi An’s finest noodles) and the chance to see the making of Hoi An’s illustrious chili sauce;
  • village and countryside experiences to get a taste of rural life, including a day exploring the lush waterways of the Mekong Delta, a visit to an organic farm in the rice fields outside Hoi An, and tours of tea and coffee plantations, fruit orchards, (fried) cricket farm, rice spirit distillery, and wineries in the former French-colonial hill station of Dalat;
  • coffee appreciation tour in Hanoi taking in historic coffee shops and arty cafés, sampling everything from the traditional ca phe sua da to the famous creamy egg coffee;
  • evenings spent in local ‘bia hoi’ joints sampling Hanoi’s beloved ‘fresh’ beer and drinking snacks, such as delicious fried tofu with salt and pepper sauce;
  • a fun Vietnamese language lesson on the first day of the trip so that you become confident in using very basic greetings and are exposed to some food-focused vocabulary;
  • tours with locals on foot and by cyclo, bike and boat in every destination, taking in Saigon’s elegant opera house, splendid post office and handsome Notre Dame Cathedral; Hoi An’s ancient houses, Japanese covered bridge and incense-filled Chinese temples; Hue’s Imperial City, royal tombs and pagodas, and Perfume River; and Hanoi’s atmospheric Old Quarter, splendid French-colonial architecture, serene Temple of Literature, and striking communist monuments, including Ho Chi Min’s colossal mausoleum;
  • cultural experiences, from an enchanting ca tru concert to visits to superb museums, including Saigon’s sobering and often heartbreaking War Remnants Museum and vintage Reunification Palace; Danang’s splendid Museum of Cham Sculpture, home to the finest collection of Cham sculptures in the world; and Hanoi’s magnificent Ethnology Museum, which showcases the intriguing customs and culture and colourful costumes and handicrafts of Vietnam’s many indigenous groups;
  • downtime, some of which we recommend you reserve for shopping: retro communist kitsch, and stylish fashion and accessories in Saigon; edible souvenirs, such as dried fruits, preserves, coffee, and wine in Dalat; lanterns, lacquerware, coconut wood utensils, and chili sauce at Hoi An; silk and embroidery in Hanoi, and hill tribe handicrafts and textiles in Sapa and Bac Ha;
  • memorable stays in hotels with character – expect anything from a colonial-era heritage hotel that oozes history to a stylish boutique hotel with spa;
  • a taste of Vietnam train travel, from the epic journey from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi on the Reunification Express, which runs the length of the country – we’ll ride the Danang to Hue section – to an overnight sleeper from Hanoi to Lao Cai for Sapa.

Vietnam Culinary Tour 2017 – Prices

Returning participants discount for our 22-day Vietnam Culinary Tour US$3,664 pp*
To book pay US$500 non-refundable deposit by 31 March and US$3,164 balance by 30 April (3 spots only at this rate)

Early bird discount US$3,964 pp*
To book pay US$500 non-refundable deposit by 12 May and US$3,464 balance by 19 May (4 spots only at this rate)

Just in time bookings US$4,164pp*
To book pay US$500 non-refundable deposit and US$3,664 balance up to one week before departure

*Price includes the inclusions below for single occupancy in a double room, which is what most of our participants prefer. If you’d like to share a room with someone please get in touch for twin occupancy rates.

Vietnam Culinary Tour 2017 – Inclusions

  • All accommodation and daily breakfasts
  • Almost all lunches (sometimes these are part of street food tours/cooking classes)
  • Almost all dinners
  • Countless snacks and tastings (sometimes these are part of market walks and street food tours)
  • Three domestic flights – Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)-Dalat, Dalat-Danang, Hue-Hanoi
  • All airport transfers for international and domestic flights
  • One train trip in soft seats from Danang to Hue and one overnight train in a sleeper compartment from Hanoi to Lao Cai for Sapa/Bac Ha
  • All train station transfers
  • Transport between destinations by private air-conditioned mini-buses
  • Transport within cities – taxis, cyclos, bicycles, etc
  • English-speaking Vietnamese guides
  • Tips for volunteer student guides
  • All cooking classes, language lessons, street food tours, walking tours, and other activities, except where indicated for optional activities
  • All entrance fees, except where indicated for optional activities
  • Your private host (Lara)

*Note that domestic flights can only be assured if participants pay in full on time. In the event that payments are not received on time we may need to reschedule a flight, adjust the itinerary and/or replace a flight with overland transport.

Vietnam Culinary Tour 2017 – Exclusions

  • International flights
  • Travel Insurance –compulsory. We recommend World Nomads.
  • Visa – check here to see whether you need a visa and what kind of visa you need, then click here to arrange your own visa; it’s easy, can be done online and only takes a few days. Note that you will still need to pay a ‘stamping fee’ (US$ recommended) at the airport (fees are listed here) and you will need to bring passport photos etc so read the information carefully.
  • Drinks, water and alcohol, except where indicated
  • Personal expenses – mini-bar, laundry, calls, room service, etc
  • Tips for professional guides and drivers – at your discretion
  • Expenses during free time/optional activities – eg. taxis, extra snacks/meals/drinks etc
  • Meals/activities indicated as ‘optional’ or ‘at your own expense’

Halong Bay Cruise Optional Add-On

We’ve included an optional post-Vietnam Culinary Tour 3-day/2-night Halong Bay cruise in the 22-day itinerary above to take in the jade waters, clusters of craggy islets, and dramatic limestone karsts and schist outcrops of this breathtaking area. If you do not wish to do this, let us know.

Activities will include a cooking class, a boat trip to a floating village, and early morning tai chi. Or you can simply relax in a sun-lounger on the rooftop deck of the boat and absorb the breathtaking panoramas. So far, all participants have signed up for this.

2 night/3 day cruise Halong Bay Cruise

Premium Cabin with French balcony $355 pp
Deluxe Cabin with window, no balcony $325 pp

Halong Bay Cruise – Inclusions

  • Land transport Hanoi – Halong Bay – Hanoi (modern, comfortable bus with A/C)
  • Welcome drink
  • Deluxe en-suite cabin with A/C, hot water
  • All meals on boat
  • English speaking tour guide on board
  • Kayaking or cruise on bamboo boat to floating villages (optional)
  • Entrance & sightseeing fees
  • Cooking class (demonstration)
  • Tai Chi (optional)
  • Insurance, taxes and service charges
  • Free Hanoi walking tour

Halong Bay Cruise – Exclusions

  • Beverages, tips & personal expenses
  • Massage (optional)

To obtain a comprehensive itinerary and payment details and to book spots on our Vietnam Culinary Tour or express interest future tours, email us at info@grantourismotravels.com. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments below or email us on the address above.