Jain & Vegetarian FoodMost kitchens will tell you they can cook Jain food. Very few in Vietnam have, and you need to find out which is which before you sign a contract — not on the second evening of your programme with the group already seated. We are Xtravel, the India desk of a Vietnamese tour operator working since 2011, and what follows is the assessment we run on a kitchen before we hand it a group.
“Vegetarian” is not a brief
In Vietnam, fish sauce and shrimp paste are base seasonings. They sit next to the salt. A cook told “vegetarian, no meat” will serve vegetables seasoned with fish sauce and believe the brief has been met. Nothing was hidden from you. The word does not mean here what it means to you.
Jain requirements go further. Out: onion and garlic in every form, including powders, pastes, sauces and stocks. Out: root vegetables grown underground — potato, carrot, radish, beetroot, ginger, fresh turmeric, sweet potato. Out: fermented items. Many Jain guests also observe ratri bhojan tyag and will not eat after sunset. In a Vietnamese winter the sun sets early, so your gala service moves forward — a logistics decision, not a catering one.
Satvik is a separate brief. It also excludes onion and garlic, but permits many root vegetables and treats freshness as a rule: food is eaten the day it is cooked, and reheated dishes are refused. A Satvik menu can still fail a Jain table on one potato. If your group contains both, say so in writing on day one.
The ten questions to ask first
Ask these on the first call, in this order, and listen to how specific the answer gets.
| # | The question | Weak answer | Workable answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Have you cooked Jain — no onion, no garlic, no roots — for a group this size? | “Yes, no problem, we do all Indian.” | “Twice, both your size. Here is what went wrong the first time.” |
| 2 | Who cooks it, by name, and are they on shift both days? | “Our team will handle it.” | Names a cook, gives their days off, names the substitute. |
| 3 | Can you send an ingredient list per meal, signed by the cook? | Sends a menu instead. | Asks what format you want it in. |
| 4 | What is in your base gravy, and when was it made? | “It is our standard base.” | “Made fresh and separately, no onion, from the first pot of the day.” |
| 5 | How are tasting spoons kept apart from the non-Jain line? | “The chef is careful.” | Colour-coded or separated sets, plus a named checker. |
| 6 | Do you use fish sauce or shrimp paste anywhere in the kitchen? | “Not for vegetarian food.” | “Yes, on the Vietnamese line. Here is how it is separated.” |
| 7 | Which ingredients are hard to source here, and how long do you need? | “Everything is available.” | Names three items and asks for 14 days. |
| 8 | Is there a kitchen usage fee or an equipment charge? | Silence, then a figure appears later. | Quotes it before you ask. |
| 9 | What happens to guests who do not eat after sunset? | Has not considered it. | Proposes an earlier service or a packed option. |
| 10 | What is your batch size per pot, and how many pots? | Cannot answer. | Gives numbers and the resulting service timing. |
Question 8 is the one people forget. A kitchen usage fee — charged when you bring an outside cook into a hotel kitchen — is common here and often surfaces after the headline price is agreed. Get it in writing at quotation stage.
Question 10 settles what “large” means: a group is large for a kitchen once the Jain dish no longer fits one pot and one cook. Below that line kitchens improvise and get away with it. Above it, improvisation fails.
The ingredient list will come back in Vietnamese
If the word “vegetarian” does not survive translation, neither does a document. A Vietnamese cook writes that list in kitchen shorthand, using product names for sauces and stocks. Run it through a phone app and nước mắm comes back as “sauce”. You tick the line, and the fish sauce goes through.
So the question is not only whether the kitchen produces a list, but who reads it and who carries the consequence if the reading is wrong. Name that person before the list is requested.
An Indian has always held the director’s chair at Xtravel. That is policy, not staffing. You brief in your own language, to someone who lives here and reads the kitchen’s side of the paperwork.
Go and stand in the kitchen during morning prep
A tasting is cooked by the head chef for four people. Prep is cooked by whoever is on shift, for everybody. Go and see the second one.
Look for the base gravy pots. In most Indian kitchens working at volume, the base gravy is made in bulk in advance, and onion is in it. If it was made yesterday, your Jain dish cannot come out of it: the kitchen has to build a separate base from the first minute of the day. Ask which burner.
Then look at the spoons. A tasting spoon travelling between a Jain pot and a regular pot is the failure we watch for first, and it is invisible in a photograph. Ask what stops it. “The chef is careful” is not a system.
Look at the store: are onions, garlic and root vegetables kept where the Jain prep bench is, or across the room? Is there bench space for a parallel line, or will the Jain dish be cooked on the same steel later that evening? Ask how far the food travels to the room — a walk across the property in the heat changes what you can serve.
When the venue owns the kitchen
Many resorts and hotels here will not let an outside cook into their kitchen, or allow it only under a fee. You are then not choosing a kitchen; you are auditing the one you were given. Ask three things before you sign. Will they accept an outside Indian cook, in writing? If yes, what is the fee, and does it cover gas, equipment and a dedicated section, or only floor space? If no, will their kitchen commit to the ingredient list and the separation above, and who supervises it? If their kitchen then fails questions 1, 4, 5 or 6, change the venue. That is cheaper than changing the food.
Signs the kitchen has never handled a large group
- They send a menu when you asked for an ingredient list. A menu is marketing. An ingredient list per meal, signed by the cook, is a document you can check.
- They agree to everything and ask you nothing. A kitchen that has done this pushes back on one item, wants more time on another, and asks for numbers by meal, elders, children, and who is Jain.
- Batch size is unknown. If they cannot say how many portions come out of one pot, they have not worked at scale.
The lunch stop nobody briefed
Everyone plans the gala. The transfer-day lunch is where briefs collapse: the coach pulls in somewhere chosen for its car park, and nobody in that kitchen has heard of you. Decide it at itinerary stage, in writing, one of three ways. Carry packed meals from the assessed kitchen. Or brief one named stop in advance and assess it on questions 4, 5 and 6. Or move the strict meals off travel days and serve fruit and packaged food in transit. What you cannot do is leave the day blank.
The timetable that makes an assessment real
| When | What happens | Why this date |
|---|---|---|
| 14 days before | Dietary form to the kitchen | Time to source rare ingredients — and to change kitchens if the list comes back weak |
| 14 to 10 days | Kitchen returns a signed ingredient list per meal | The list, not a menu, is what you assess |
| 7 days before | Confirmation pack to the client | Guests see what they will eat before they fly |
| 24 hours before | Jain meals re-confirmed | Catches shift changes and substitutions |
| On the day | A coordinator present at service | Where an ingredient list becomes a plate |
The 14-day mark exists so you keep the option of walking away. If the list comes back four days out, you have lost that option, and the kitchen knows it.
Turning this into a score sheet
Set your threshold before you score; deciding afterwards is how kitchens talk their way through.
| Check | Type | Pass / Partial / Fail |
|---|---|---|
| Q1, Q4, Q5, Q6 | Non-negotiable | |
| Kitchen usage fee in writing before agreement | Non-negotiable | |
| Named person who reads the Vietnamese ingredient list | Non-negotiable | |
| Q2, Q3, Q7, Q9, Q10 | Scored | |
| Site visit — separate base, storage, bench space | Scored | |
| Written plan for transfer-day meals | Scored |
A fail on any non-negotiable line ends it, whatever the total.
Where Vietnam loses, and what we cannot do
Capacity. Indian arrivals reached roughly 750,000 in 2025, and the first quarter of 2026 alone passed 242,000, up 169 per cent. Da Nang took around 101 Indian MICE groups and 28,428 guests in the first five months of 2026. Kitchens did not grow at that rate, so the two or three per city that can genuinely do this are booked out in wedding season, which makes the 14-day mark a floor rather than a target. Vietnam competes on cost, not on the density of Indian kitchen infrastructure. Budget for a site visit.
Ho Chi Minh City. We work with partner kitchens producing Jain-pure food in Hanoi, Da Nang and Phu Quoc, north Indian and south Indian both. We have none in Ho Chi Minh City we would put a group into. We are looking. Until then, we will tell you to place the Jain-critical meals elsewhere in the itinerary.
Sapa. There is no Jain kitchen on site. Three honest options: send a cook up from Hanoi, cook in Hanoi and carry the food up, or split the itinerary so the strictest meals fall before or after Sapa. Each has a cost and a risk, and we put all three in front of you rather than pick one quietly.
Visas. Vietnam’s e-visa for Indian passport holders is USD 25 single entry, USD 50 multiple entry, valid up to 90 days, processed in three to five working days. Thailand admits Indian nationals visa-free for 60 days. On paperwork alone Vietnam is behind; build that window into your timeline.
Evidence. We have run three Indian MICE and wedding groups in Vietnam — Da Nang, Phu Quoc and Sapa — and Indian agencies send us work. We will give you the guest counts, the dates and a client’s number on the call; we will not put them on a public page. Some clients want a gallery before they book. We do not have one. Our working list of kitchens by city, with capacity and Jain status, is not published either — email Harry for the version current that week.
Send us the venue name and your guest count. We will run these ten questions on that kitchen and send you the answers, whether or not you book with us.
About Xtravel
Xtravel is the India desk of VINATAT Group, a Vietnamese travel company operating since 2011, holding an international tour operator licence, with offices in northern, central and southern Vietnam. Xtravel is headed by Sreehari Sajeev – “Harry” – our Director, an Indian who lives and works in Hanoi. When you call us, you speak to him, not to a translator. We plan and run programmes on the ground here. We are not a reseller.
Travel like a local.
Talk to the person who will actually be there.
Sreehari Sajeev (Harry) – Director, Xtravel
+84 92 4567 333 · Hoang@vinatat.vn
Xtravel – VINATAT Group · 212 Nguyen Trai, Thanh Xuan, Hanoi
International tour operator licence 01-1082/2018/TCDL-GP LHQTWe don’t publish our clients’ events. Yours won’t be either.
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