In Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s, a thousand years of Chinese and French-influenced culinary tradition went down the drain as austerity set in and restaurants came to be regarded as bourgeois indulgence. Some of the best chefs fled the country. So the restaurant at 202 Hue St. in Hanoi is known as Restaurant 202. Thang Loi Hotel in Hanoi has a Restaurant A and a Re staurant B. Happily, there has been a remarkable return of gourmet Vietnamese food in the 1990s.
Key ingredients are now in much better supply.
You can eat well.