Nick Angiers

The Lunar New Year is celebrated in Vietnam, and called Tết here.

This was my first Tết in Vietnam, and I had heard that pretty much everything shuts down for the holidays. Based on my 7 years’ experience of living in China, I kind of knew what to expect, especially with banks and other businesses that I knew would be totally out of commission for probably a week. But I wasn’t sure of what to expect for vegan restaurants.

I asked at a local one that I had been frequenting, and the owner said she would be returning to her hometown for about 10 days, so that one was out of the question, and I was prepared to do a lot of cooking.

However, the next one I started going to would be open throughout the holidays, which was good to know.

I also noticed that one vegan restaurant near the board game café I usually go to on weekends was open on the first day of the New Year.

In Vietnam, vegan restaurants are seen as both a business and a kind of public service, since they’re encouraging people to eat meatless food, and they also give free food to Buddhist monks. For these reasons, they usually stay open during holidays, and I’ve found that vegan restaurants here are almost always priced quite low.

Vietnamese people also have a tradition of eating meatless on certain holidays, and many people do so on the first and 15th days of every month according to the Lunar calendar.

What really surprised me was that several large supermarkets I tried to visit had shut down for several days. Some friends had advised me to stock up on groceries before the New Year, and fortunately I had done so, but I still found myself getting pretty low by the fifth or sixth day.

Yesterday was the seventh day of the New Year, which just happened to be Valentine’s Day, as well as my last day in Saigon for this trip.

I went to scope out some new-to-me vegan restaurants, but the first three I tried were all still closed. (Business hours on Google Maps are not very reliable here, especially for smaller businesses.) I did, however, find a vegan grocery store that was open.

I ended up at a big mall, all the restaurants at which were packed, mostly because of Valentine’s Day. There weren’t any vegan or even really vegan-friendly restaurants there anyway, many didn’t even have empty tables, and some even had lineups. (But the gym that occupied the entire seventh floor was open, whereas my gym and other nearby ones had been closed for a full week.)

I wandered around for a while, then by 9pm it was still really busy, so I went to continue my search, now pretty hungry by this time.

I found two nearby vegan restaurants, one of which was still closed, and one that was not only open, but open till 10. It was a more “mid-range” one, so my meal was $6 instead of 3.

Conclusions

It’s tough finding vegan restaurants that are open during Tết, but if you ask around in advance they will tell you if and when they’ll be open, and many are.

Most of the ones that shut down are smaller ones, while larger ones, especially franchise chain vegan restaurants (yes, they have those here) are usually open.

Some smaller ones are also open, especially if they’re close to a temple, though that’s pretty hit or miss and depends on the owner’s schedule.

Even large supermarkets shut down, so make sure to stock up for about a week, but you might find a vegan grocery store that’s open.