An older Asian woman is hunched over a gas burner serving noodles, a young couple in the distance shuffle piously into a tiny Buddhist temple, and a perpetual gaggle of families emerge from a Vietnamese supermarket armed with giant sacks of rice. It is a scene as authentically Vietnamese as I could expect to find. But I am not in Vietnam or even Asia. I am in Prague.
Sapa, or Little Hanoi as it is affectionately known, is the hub of the Czech Republic capital’s Vietnamese community, and is a far cry from the spires, dumplings and beer-sploshed splendour of the historical centre. Tucked inconspicuously on its outskirts, this city within a city is where the nation’s Vietnamese people come to stock up on spices, eat plates of bun cha or sell inordinate amounts of large, fluffy geese.
The fact that there is a Vietnamese community in Prague may come as a surprise to anyone who’s visited. Unless you popped into a corner shop – potraviny – for some late-night crisps, or accidentally stumbled into one of their cheap clothing boutiques, it’s unlikely your paths will have crossed. But after Ukrainians and Slovaks, the Vietnamese are the biggest minority group in the country.
“It all happened during communism,” says Khanh Ta, who – along with his brother Giang – owns four Vietnamese restaurants in Prague. “An agreement between the Vietnamese and Czech governments meant that talented students from Vietnam were given the opportunity to study here and then later work. My parents came in the 1980s from Phu Tho, a small town 40 miles (70km) from Hanoi, and then got jobs working in the textile industry.”
It wasn’t just the Vietnamese who were invited through such a scheme; students from Mongolia, Laos and Cuba also came. However, after the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, which spelled the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, it was only really the Vietnamese who stayed. “Very simply, there was a better life here,” Ta says.
You’d assume that with such a long-rooted presence, Vietnamese food would have been a Czech staple for decades. But when I arrived in Prague 15 years ago, there were no notable Vietnamese restaurants to speak of, and the Vietnamese people who did own restaurants were serving Chinese food.
“The Vietnamese simply didn’t think of selling their food,” says Trinh Thi Duan, owner of the hugely popular Pho U Letné restaurant in Prague 7. “The Chinese were here before us and Vietnamese food was unknown to Czech people. It just seemed far easier to sell Chinese food because the Czechs were used to it.”
This all changed just over a decade ago, when Prague’s first Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Vietnam, opened in Vinohrady, with other restaurants such as Pho U Letné tentatively following suit. So what made this sudden change happen?
Trinh hands me a plate of her acclaimed bun bo nam bo (€8), and says: “As more Vietnamese people kept arriving in the Czech Republic, Czechs started travelling in turn to Vietnam. They tried our food there and told us how good it was. So the Vietnamese people decided to try to sell their own food in Prague, and it just caught on.”
This is an understatement. Despite a tepid first few months in which the restaurants struggled to attract sceptical locals, there was a sudden surge around 2015. Just through word of mouth alone, Prague residents – aided by a rise in foreigners seeking non-stodgy alternatives – began flocking to the city’s Vietnamese establishments in droves, prompting Trinh to move to larger premises and the Ta brothers to open other restaurants.
“Vietnamese cuisine is a simple cuisine and although there are so many flavours, it’s never overpowering,” Khanh Ta says, introducing me to his latest outlet, Taro, a high-end concept restaurant in the city centre. “Here we take food that we like from our childhood but we make it a little bit different. Not too different, though, because the feeling from the food should always be the same.”
By way of demonstration, he hands me a trio of Vietnamese amuse-bouches – crab basket, cauliflower croquette and a quay puff pastry with steak tartare, all with clearly authentic Vietnamese roots but given a stylised gourmet twist. The banh cuon that follows is similarly constructed: rice pancakes made with a specially imported machine from Hanoi, but served with succulent cubes of pork knee, a meaty treat more common on a Czech menu.
The entire meal – an impressive seven-course tasting menu (€105)– is delectable, and when he serves the green rice ice-cream – kem – out of a polystyrene box like the one used by bike tenders in his grandparents’ home town, you can’t help feeling that you have, in fact, experienced a taste of his childhood.
The most authentic place of all to experience Vietnamese cuisine and culture in Prague, however, is undoubtedly Sapa. Located in Libuš (take tram 17 from the centre, or bus 197 from Smíchovské nádraží), this is the mecca of all things Vietnamese. Once through the pagoda-style entrance, you’re thrown into a chaotic labyrinth of alleyways, wholesalers and market stalls selling all kinds of knick-knacks, clothes and fluffy toys. It is not designed for tourists – as the “No photography” signs and the brusque manner of some vendors attest – but if you dive deep into Sapa’s frenzied heart, you will be richly rewarded.
The golf-themed Hippo Café, for example, is a good spot for coffee – their robusta beans imported from Vietnam and roasted on site by the chatty, golf-obsessed owner – and the banh mi (baguettes, around €4) served from the street stalls behind the Lotus restaurant are delicious.
When all’s said and done, though, Vietnamese food is almost always about the pho – and while there are lots of great options dotted around, Pho Tung is the undisputed king. The bowls are always piping hot and packed to the brim with beef and noodles, and the generous pile of free quay – sticks of tasty deep-fried dough – make for great dippers (€7). True, you might not get too much of a smile from the waiter but by the time you’ve finished such a satisfying meal, your smile will probably be big enough for the both of you.
