London Vietnamese Open Festival

All it took was one tweet : "Enjoy Vietnamese food and entertainment on London's Southbank this weekend."

You had me at "food."

Choose your meat

A couple of dozen stalls are set-up, mostly food stalls (there are also a couple of handicraft stalls and tourism operators). The range of food was quite wide, although lacking the range of soups I associate most strongly with Vietnam (mostly I suspect as there was nowhere to sit down, so it had to all be stand-up food).

I'll have a one of those, and one of those, and a couple of those....

There was lots of barbecue pork (or beef) on noodles with salad. There were plenty of nem / spring rolls. Summer rolls too. Bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwiches). A little xoi (sweet sticky rice with flavourings). A dash of bahn cuon (stuffed rice film). You could also enjoy chao tom (prawns on sugarcane) or several different kinds of chè (a sweet soup topped with various bits, like longans, cubes of milk jelly, sweetened beans, or sweet potato).

There were a few non-Vietnamese items too (sate chicken skewers, Thai Green curry), presumably for those too cautious to try anything they hadn't seen before.

We spent an hour and a half eating our way along the length of the festival, eating until we could barely walk.

Get in my mouth

There was a large stage set up at one end of the festival, but it was empty the entire time I was there - possibly due to the weather (it was squally today, with high winds and the ever-present threat of rain).

The Vietnamese Open Festival is organised by the Vietnamese Culture and Arts Society. You can get more details on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/vietnamcas or the Society's website: http://vcas.org.uk/vof/

The festival is on again tomorrow from 10:00 - 21:00

Yes! Yes, I will take one of those bad boys....

My partners in face-stuffing