Southeast Asia is divided by large regions, including Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Singaporean cuisine. Thai food is divided by country. Let’s briefly talk about the characteristics of the cuisine of several Southeast Asian countries.

Vietnamese food: The taste is light and delicious, often seasoned with fish sauce and lemon.

Lots of seafood, vegetables and herbs.

Vegetables are preferred fresh.

The staple food is mainly rice.

The flavor changes from fresh to sweet from north to south.

Representative dishes include beef rice noodles, vermicelli spring rolls, barbecued rice noodles, long bread sandwiches, etc.

Fresh Beef Pho.

Fresh raw beef is cooked in the soup and served with fresh vegetables.

Banh Mi, a Vietnamese sandwich.

Influenced by French cuisine, the biggest feature compared with Western style is that the fillings mostly use local Asian specialties, such as rice noodles.

Looking for food in Guangzhou, I found a military kitchen serving Vietnamese food from the West Vietnam era, which was very good.

Thai cuisine: Pays more attention to the three flavors of sour, sweet and spicy, and pays attention to the balance of flavors.

Commonly used seasonings include fish sauce, shrimp paste, coconut milk, turmeric, lemon, etc.

Stir-fries and curry stews are more common.

Lots of fruit.

The staple food is mostly rice and glutinous rice.

It can be roughly divided into four major cuisines: Northern, Isen (Northeast), Central and Southern.

Generally speaking, the further north you go in the mountains, the higher the proportion of products, and the closer it is to the flavors of Laos, Myanmar, and Yunnan. The further south you go, the higher the proportion of seafood and the richer the taste.

Representative dishes include Tom Yam soup, green and red curry, green papaya salad, mango sticky rice, pineapple fried rice, lemon fried chicken, Rojak stir-fried pork and other Tom Yam soups.

Thailand’s national dish fully embodies the harmonious characteristics of Thai food’s sour, spicy, and fragrant flavors.

Green Curry Kaeng Khiao Wan.

A representative of Thai cuisine that uses spices, it combines spicy, coconut milk, slightly spicy and slightly sweet flavors.

Malaysian cuisine: The cuisine that I am most familiar with, and Singaporean cuisine can also be included in this category.

The ethnic complexity and diversity are the highest among the three countries. The biggest feature is the coexistence of three main cuisines with different styles: Nanyang Chinese cuisine, Malay cuisine and Nanyang Indian cuisine.

The differences are far greater than the differences caused by internal regions in countries such as Thailand and Vietnam. Sometimes even dishes with the same name can be made in different versions by different ethnic groups (for example, curry fish head is divided into Chinese and Indian styles.

).

Although the differences are distinct, the influence on each other is also very important, and it has also given rise to fusion cuisines such as Nyonya cuisine.

Chinese cuisine tends to be based on the flavors of Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou and Qiong, which are fresh, salty, light and slightly sweet. There are many stir-fried dishes and they appear to be the most delicate (at least you can see the shape).

Malay food is similar to Indonesian food, especially Padang food. It is rich in flavor, oily, spicy, sweet and other strong flavors. There are many grilled, fried and curry dishes.

Indian food tends to have a South Indian flavor, with curry and stew as the main ingredients. The taste is spicy, sour and very rich, with distinct distinctions between vegetarian and meat dishes.

Most of the three eat rice, but there are more pasta dishes than those in Thailand and Vietnam.

Representative dishes include Hainanese chicken rice, Malay scenery (fried water spinach with sambal shrimp paste), chilli crab, shrimp noodles, bak kut teh, rendang (dry curry) roast beef, nasi lemak, satay kebabs, and curry fish head

, flying cakes, etc.

Desserts often use pandan leaves, coconut milk, glutinous rice, cassava and other local specialties. Various types of Nyonya cakes, red bean ice, jelly and other desserts are very popular.