I am almost reluctant to write this post as it seems we have uncovered a secret Veggie Com restaurant in Hoi An. This place is amazing and yet we’d not seen it on any of the usual listings. It’s a great place to get away from the crowded tourist streets and enjoy top-quality vegetarian Vietnamese  food with not a single person hassling you to buy a book, packet of peanuts, newspaper etc etc.

The restaurant was recommended to us by our landlord. We’d arrived home one afternoon shortly after moving in to our new house in Hoi An to find two monks sat at our dinner table having lunch with the landlord. It was a bit of an unexpected sight! We found out that the people we were renting from had fairly recently bought the house and so were having it blessed. By the front door there was also a table of food laid out as an offering.

I’d imagined that all the food was homemade, that they must have been slaving away all day to put together this impressive feast for the visiting monks. It turns out however it was a take-away! Ha.

Apparently the restaurant has quite a reputation amongst the locals as serving the best vegetarian food in town. It’s really quite well known and popular. Funny that it hasn’t been picked up by the guides.

The “restaurant” is a typical Vietnamese no-frills style place. The tin roof shed like building with water stained bare plaster walls is lit by bare bulbs and strip lights, furnished with plastic chairs, piles of fake meat boxes staked on rickety shelves, an out of date lunar calendar and the usual sea of discarded tissues on the concrete floor.

The food comes served on a prison style all in one metal tray with separate compartments for the rice, veg and soup.

Yet while to the western eye the presentation may be laking, to me it has a charm that lets you know this is the real deal. The food is definitely top notch. Each time we went we were served a slightly different selection from the buffet highlights of which included a spicy pumpkin puree, “tuna” steak in chili sauce, fragrant “chicken” drumsticks where the bone was a whole stick of lemon grass and a huge range of different vegetables, most of which I’d never seen before. So tasty.

They also do all the usual noodles dishes, pho, cau lau etc again very good, although I found them a bit heavy on the “meat” side. The cau lau especially is one fake pigs ear too far. It contains almost a whole pig, brains, crackling and all. The pork crackling in particular is scarily realistic.

The lady that runs the place is a dude! Really friendly. The last time we went she came running over and for some unknown reason started squeezing my arm, laughing and patting me like I was an old friend she’d not seen for years. She said something to me I didn’t understand, laughed again seemingly at how amusingly confused I was and squeezed my nose as you would a small child’s who’d just said something ridiculously cute. I have no idea where this sudden show of affection came from, but it was nice she seemed to like us anyway.

I’m going to really miss it, great value at 20,000 VND (about 80p) for the full monty rice dinner, including soup and free Vietnamese tea. If you know how to ask for it and want a smaller plate full it’s less depending on what you order.  Noodle dishes are 10-15,000.

So that’s it, the secret is out. Tam Quang Minh is just out of town at 144 Ly Thuong Kiet.