The Best Breakfasts in Kon Tum City Food Guide

Kon Tum is a street food wonderland. It’s easy to find authentic treats around the hotels but why don’t we kick the morning off with delicious dishes only local people know? In this blog post, I’m going to share with you the best breakfasts to die for in this city.

Dear food lovers from all over the world, please be ready for these mind-blowing tips!
 

Phở

 

Let’s start our journey with something traditional. Known as the most popular Vietnamese dish in the world, Pho is the local favorite as it’s a perfect and healthy meal to enjoy on a peaceful morning. Once you start, you can’t stop slurping on fresh, thin noodles dipped in the simmering broth. The meat in Pho can vary between beef or chicken but most restaurants specialize in beef Pho.

A tip from a pro Pho eater is to order a small side bowl of raw egg submerged in the beef broth. Then use a spoon to scoop the egg yolk and let it melt in your mouth. It tastes like heaven!

Originally from the North, Pho came a long way to the South and became the spiritual dish of the whole country. Each region does it a little bit differently. The Pho in Saigon is topped with beef balls and eaten together with many kinds of herbs, bean sprouts, vegetables, and sweet black bean sauce. While Pho in Ha Noi doesn’t have side vegetables but instead: youtiao – a kind of Chinese deep-fried doughnut. For those reasons, I would recommend more than just one restaurant and mark the regional specialty of them below:

- Phở Thìn: 804 Phan Dinh Phung st, Kon Tum City

- Phở 54: 62 Phan Chu Trinh st, Kon Tum City

Bánh Mì Chảo - Bread Combo Pan

Experience the flavors of Kon Tum through a bread with combo pan (banh mi chao) recipe, where meatball is marinated, paired with black pepper sauce, and complemented by an array of toppings.

Bánh Mì Chảo (bread with combo pan) and Bít Tết (Vietnamese style beef steak) aserved in frying pans are popular and easy to find in Kon Tum City.

The basic version with bread combo usually contains egg, pate, and sausage and bread.

The best time to eat the dish is right after it is cooked. Typically, a mixture of chilli sauce and soy sauce are added. The egg yolk combined with seasoning makes for a tasty sauce that a piece of crispy bread is dipped into.

The customers can also add more toppings such as ham and canned sardines. A dish cost VNĐ35,000.

Another famous food served in a frying pan is Bít Tết also known as Bò Né. The beef slices frying in the pan exude a fragrance that is difficult to resist. The dish will taste even better with an omelette, shumai, sausage and bread.

Where to find it? 

Gác Măng Rê - Kon Tum Kafé

Best Pizza, Spaghetti, Breakfast Kon Tum

86 Tran Hung Dao st, Kon Tum City

0931 082 082

This restaurant also serves Pizza, Espresso, Cappuccino, Latte, Pasta In Kon Tum

 

 

 

Cơm Tấm

Vietnamese love to eat rice so this list wouldn’t be perfect if I forgot to bring up this extremely common dish. Broken rice or Cơm Tấm is available all over the streets. Perhaps only in Kon Tum, it’s more famous than even Phở, I usually brought a takeaway box of Cơm Tấm to class when I was a kid from one of the local street food vendors near my home.

Broken rice refers to grains of rice that come loose during the milling process. This ingredient is less expensive compared to the whole grain white rice and is usually eaten by lower-income class families in the past. In present-day Ho Chi Minh City, broken rice is eaten by everyone in the southern part of Vietnam and can even be considered an expensive dish at some vendors.

The basic version of Cơm Tấm is broken rice and topped with a marinated grilled pork chop, carrot and radish pickles, cucumber, tomato, and cooked green onion mixed with crunchy pork fat. This whole combination is served with sweet fish sauce drizzled on top. You can upgrade all your com tam with loads of extras such as sausage, steamed egg & mushroom cake, a fried egg, or even thinly sliced pigskin.

Throughout the city, you can find many versions of Com Tam because each stall owner has their own recipe. My mom said, “The thing that makes Com Tam exclusive from place to place is the fish sauce and how the pork is marinated.” As it’s difficult for me to choose only one restaurant, here are some recommendation for the best Cơm Tấm in Kon Tum:

Cơm tấm 302 Hương vị Sài Gòn tại Kon Tum
302 Tran Hung Dao st - Kon Tum City
 

"Goi la" An interesting twist on the ‘spring roll’ in Kon Tum Province

Every day, in the afternoon and late evening, Tran Cao Van Street in downtown Kon Tum Province becomes crowded with foodies who come to taste ‘goi la’, a savoury dish which features fresh green leaves, pork, shrimp and sauce.

‘Goi cuon’ (spring roll) is a popular dish in Vietnam, and ‘goi la’ is an interesting twist on it. The main ingredients of the dish include green leaves, pork belly, sautéed shrimp, shredded pork skin, salt, chilli and pepper. People in Kon Tum can eat ‘goi la’ every day but the amount of green leaves changes up to the season of the year.

In the dry season, there are 30 to 40 different kinds of leaves which can be featured in the dish. However, in the rainy season when plants grow quickly, the feast includes up to 60 or even 70 different kinds of leaves.

‘Goi la’ features familiar vegetables and herbs like cabbage, lettuce, basil and spring onion along with lots of rare native plants which can only be recognised by the locals. Some varieties of leaves are hard to find in the market, so locals have to head to the forest to collect them.

Unlike other kinds of Vietnamese spring roll, ‘goi la’ doesn’t include rice paper to wrap all the ingredients. Instead, foodies use leaves to roll it up. First, they should place a big leaf, such as a cai (cabbage) leaf, in their palm and shape it into a funnel, then top it up with green leaves, some chops of pork belly, sautéed shrimp, and a small slice of green chilli, before rolling or wrapping them all up. Then they dip the ‘goi la’ in the thick sauce and enjoy.

Goi La Ut Cung

16 Tran Cao Van St, Kon Tum City

Bò Kho

 

Finally, to complete this food guide, there is another wonderful and beloved Vietnamese favorite: Bò Kho. Bò Kho means beef stew in English.

The broth is savory and meaty in flavor as it is a combination of carrots, tough cuts of beef in cubes, shallots, and lemongrass simmered for hours. The beef is always marinated with different spices such as star anise, cinnamon, and seasonings for a long time before the cook pours them all into the cauldron. That’s why the stew is so rich, flavorful, and the meat is deliciously tender.

A bowl of Bò Kho is accompanied with fresh herbs, vegetables and dipping sauce on the side just like other Vietnamese noodles. The taste is balanced but if you want extra flavor, add a few slices of spicy Vietnamese chilies to your bowl to extend the fragrant of natural spices and soothe the sweetness of luscious juicy carrots. It will be a mouthwatering breakfast you won’t easily forget.

Beef stew is pretty popular for breakfast so there are many stalls serving it around the city. In Kon Tum, it’s also common to eat Bò Kho with egg noodles.