When you think of backpacking Laos, you probably think of green mountains, the Mekong and long bus rides first. The food only crosses your mind once you are there, and usually as a very pleasant surprise.
Lao food is less famous than Thai or Vietnamese, and that does not mean you eat badly here. Quite the opposite: fresh herbs, chilli, grilled meat, busy markets and a lot of sticky rice. Spicy, sour, herby and bold, and built on fresh ingredients rather than sauces out of a jar. At €2 a meal, you do not have to pick and choose either.
Below is what you have to try at least once, how people actually eat here, and what you finish the day with. Because we have not even started on Beerlao and the notorious lao-lao yet.
The basics: sticky rice
If one thing belongs to Laos, it is sticky rice, locally called khao niaw. And they take it seriously.
The rice comes in a small woven bamboo basket. Pull off a bit with your fingers, roll it into a ball and use that to scoop up other dishes and dips. You do not need a spoon, and here nobody really uses one.
Sticky rice is not a side dish, it is what carries almost every meal. After a few weeks in Laos you will not know any better, and then you miss it in the next country.
The dishes you have to try
Laap
If you only pick one, make it laap, also spelled larb. Finely chopped meat or fish with fresh herbs, chilli, lime and toasted rice powder, with sticky rice on the side.
It is the best-known dish in the country and is traditionally eaten at celebrations. Order a cold Beerlao with it and you have the complete Lao experience on the table.
Tam mak hoong
Eaten som tam a hundred times in Thailand? This is the Lao version: unripe green papaya, shredded, with chilli and lime. The difference is the padaek, a strong fermented fish sauce that goes into a lot of food here and makes the whole thing much fuller and sharper.
One warning, and we mean it: say up front if you cannot handle much heat. Lao spicy and the spicy you know from home are two different worlds, and once it is on your plate there is not much you can do about it.
Lao sausage
Sai gok lao, or Lao sausage, turns up at markets and local restaurants everywhere. Usually a pork sausage packed with lemongrass, lime leaf, shallot and galangal, fresh or fermented.
Grilled, with sticky rice and a spicy dip. Fine as a snack, fine as a whole meal, and one of the things you will see by the side of the road most often.
Ping kai
Sometimes food does not need to be complicated. Ping kai is marinated chicken grilled over charcoal, served with sticky rice, papaya salad and a spicy sauce.
See someone by the road with chicken over the coals? Stopping is almost always a good idea. This is the best roadside food in the country.
Khao piak sen
After days of sticky rice, sometimes you just want a big bowl of noodle soup, and then this is your dish. Khao piak sen is a hearty soup with thick noodles that you mostly find as breakfast or a simple meal.
Not a dish you take photos of. But exactly what you need after a night on the Beerlao or before a six-hour bus ride.
Jaew
Order local food and you almost always get a little bowl of jaew with it. That is the umbrella name for Lao dipping sauces, usually chilli-based, and different at every stall.
And that is where the sticky rice comes in again: roll a ball, dip, repeat. Simple and addictive.
Our verdict: start with laap and ping kai, and save tam mak hoong until you know how much heat you can take
The French legacy
You are in Laos, and suddenly there is someone by the road selling fresh baguettes. That is down to the French colonial past: Laos was part of French Indochina, and you can still taste that influence.
The best-known example is khao jee pâté, a filled baguette and a bit of a Lao cousin of the Vietnamese banh mi. Even the Lao tourism authority lists these French-inspired baguettes as part of the local food culture.
In practical terms this is your best friend on travel days: quick to grab, easy to eat on a bus, and the one thing here that does not come in a bowl.
Our verdict: always buy one for the road, because on a travel day it is the most practical food in the country
How to eat in Laos
A meal here traditionally is not one plate per person. Several dishes come to the table and everyone shares, with sticky rice on the side, and that goes especially outside the cities.
Travelling with a group of backpackers? Order a handful of different things and put everything in the middle. You taste far more that way than when everyone goes for their own safe fried rice.
And go to the market. Morning markets and night markets are the best place to find out what people here really eat. You do not need to know what something is: see where the locals are queueing, point at something and try it. That makes a better story than the top-rated Western restaurant on Google Maps.
And then the drinks
Beerlao
You cannot backpack through Laos without running into Beerlao, because it is everywhere: hostels, restaurants, little shops and terraces along the Mekong. It is the country’s famous beer, well beyond its borders too, and it costs you around €1.
Arriving somewhere after a long bus ride, dropping your backpack and ordering a cold Beerlao. It is a fixed ritual on this route and it never gets old.
Lao-lao
Traditional Lao rice spirit, and properly strong. Outside the tourist areas it can easily happen that someone offers you a glass, and it looks more innocent than it is.
Lao-lao has long been part of celebrations and social occasions, so accepting a glass is polite and fun. Five glasses is a different story, and usually the start of a lost morning.
One thing to know before you say yes, though: in 2024 several travellers died in Vang Vieng after drinking alcohol contaminated with methanol. So only drink from bottles you watched being opened, say no to free shots, and be wary of spirits poured from unlabelled bottles.
Lao coffee
Laos is also known for its coffee, especially from the south. The Bolaven Plateau is the country’s best-known coffee region, with good conditions for both arabica and robusta. Brewed strong, often with condensed milk and ice.
In southern Laos, a local cup is simply part of the day. For a country mostly known for its nature, it is a surprisingly good cup of coffee.
Our verdict: Beerlao with dinner, Lao coffee with breakfast, and lao-lao only when someone offers it to you
Two practical things
Having a beer with locals? Do not be surprised when a block of ice goes into your glass. That is completely normal here, and when it is thirty degrees outside and your Beerlao goes warm in five minutes, you get why straight away.
And more importantly: do not drink the tap water. Stick to bottled water or a reliable filtered source, and be extra careful about that outside the bigger towns. Nobody wants to swap three days of their Laos route for three days close to a toilet.
What do you really have to try in Laos?
If you remember only one thing: laap with sticky rice and a cold Beerlao. That is the meal this country revolves around, you get it everywhere, and all together it costs you about three euros.
On top of that, we would grab ping kai whenever you pass a grill by the road, order tam mak hoong once if you can handle the heat, and buy a khao jee for the bus on every travel day. In southern Laos, add a cup of Bolaven coffee.
But the best advice is this: eat at least once somewhere you have no idea what you are ordering. Find a busy local spot or a market stall, look at what the people around you are eating and point at something that looks good. Maybe it becomes your favourite dish in Laos, maybe you still do not know what it was after the last bite. Either way it is a better story than yet another plate of fried rice at the hostel.
