What exactly is Vietnamese food?

This is a genuine question on my part because after living here for years I don't really know the answer to this. I live in Vietnam so you would think I would know the answer to this but in my travels into the Vietnamese food world I can't really say that I know a real answer to this. Sure I know some of the names of dishes but when I eat them I wouldn't say there is anything particularly geographically specific about them

When you think of other foods like Japanese, Korean, or Thai dishes, you can point to them and say that there is something specific about the dish that makes them uniquely from that country. I can't really say that I feel this way about Vietnamese food.

I'm not saying I am correct, I am saying that I don't know what it is after years of living here and I came kind of to this conclusion when I was having lunch today.

Now there doesn't appear to be anything particularly special about this dish and trust me when I say that there isn't. It's just some beef mixture with sauce from a cheap lean-to establishment that is down the street from my apartment. I go there just because it is quick and cheap, not because it is mind-blowingly good.

This is just a beef stir-fry and it tastes like any beef stir fry that i have had anywhere else in the world.

The most famous dish out of Vietnam is likely Pho (pronounced "fuh") and it's probably the only dish name that is known all around the world including in North America.

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That's basically Pho right there although it is a fancy looking one that I took from a stock image, not one that I actually ate. Would you care to know the reason why I don't have any photos of Pho that I have eaten? Well it is because I don't generally get involved with Pho because I don't think there is anything special about it at all and most of the year I find that it is entirely too hot to be eating hot soup noodles without breaking out into an unstoppable sweat that will not go away.

Here's the thing about Pho: There are lots of different varieties of it and no, I don't know what they all are. Here is the "problem" with Pho - on it's own and without the various additives that are up to you on how you want to spice it up, it is basically a warm bowl of tastelessness. The amount of meat you get in it of course changes this but for the most part, there is no distinct taste to it that separates it from other noodle soups that exist all around the world.

I have sat down to many Pho places and added various things to it only to come to the conclusion that the broth, which is probably the most important thing in any noodle soup, doesn't really taste like anything at all.

Do noodles taste like anything? Well i guess they taste like noodles which is to say that almost all noodles of any variety don't actually taste like anything.

I'm no picking on Pho, or Vietnamese food, or Vietnamese people, or Vietnam. I'm just saying that I don't think that this national dish, if it even is that, tastes like anything in particular.

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Some might say Bahn Mi is distinctly Vietnamese but I will counter that statement with "does anyone get to claim meat and veggies thrown into bread as a national dish?" Ok, so the specific things they put in there might be pretty unique but overall it's just a baguette and everyone has that.

There's another delightful steak dish that is normally a breakfast food called bò né and I absolutely love it.

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This is beef, eggs, some veg, and gravy served in a sizzling pan and served with bread. It's delightful, but how is this distinctly Vietnamese? There are a lot of things that fall into this same category... maybe even steak and eggs from Waffle House and I don't think they are going to claim any sort of ethnic food category any time soon.

So the point of all of this is to point out that after years of living in Vietnam, I have no idea what makes their food distinctly their own. I've tried looking and I just don't know the answer to that. Perhaps one day I will know but even though I eat at cheap local places most of the time, I really have no idea what makes food Vietnamese. Maybe you can shed some light on this.

I know I could do a search and get an answer but honestly, when I talk to expats or even my Vietnamese friends they don't really have a good answer for this question.