I recently heard that Kunming counts over 10,000 Vietnamese nationals. Why oh why isn't there a single Vietnamese restaurant (run by Vietnamese and true to the Vietnamese kitchen) to be found in Kunming?

I'm seriously craving some Pho, Nems, Com Rang and Ca Phe Da. There is a place near Baita Lu on Dongfeng Xiang that does good rice flour wraps but they're not what they were in VN.

Vintage Cafe has real VN coffee but they are not able to serve it iced. There seems to be more to it than just adding ice bits.

There is a good Vietnamese restaurant in Yongyi Alley, Yongchang Residential Quarter of Kunming (永昌小区,永益巷). Though it is small, its food is not bad. You can have a try there. en.kunming.cn/index/content/2012-05/14/content_2950171.htm
This resaurant has no signboard. Better ask some local people to find it.

That looks good. You have tried them, I take it? I'll give it a shot this or next week.

Can't vouch for any of these, but a quick google of "yuenancai kunming" turned up the following results pages on chinese listing sites:

www.aibang.com/kunming/yuenancai/

kunming.chahaotai.com/huangye/yuenancai

kunming.youbian.com/huangye/yuenancai/

and googling in chinese "越南菜 昆明" yields even more:

www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=越南菜+昆明

Most likely these places are all staffed by Chinese and they will ruin the Vietnamese food the way they do all over foreign food here (including foods from other parts of China like Guangzhou). I love those rice wraps with the vegetables in them and ate them up when I was in Laos. Then we saw a stand advertising them here and ordered a couple and ...well.. they were Kunminged. Full of local spicy crap. Nothing but cucumbers on the inside. And the wrap was some wet floppy er kuai sort of deal. Total rip off. people here cannot eat anything other than what they eat 3 times a day every day of their lives and so foreign foods but be made to resemble the local food (spicy, oily, covered in hua jioa and MSG) in order to get somebody to buy it.

There are 10,000 Vietnamese students studying in Kunming? Wow...that seems like a lot. I have noticed some, but there seem to be far more Thai and Lao students here than Vietnamese. I seem to recall a few recent "international" incidents in the South China Sea which have not contributed to China becoming "the flavor of the day" in the minds of the Vietnamese, but anyway, I digress.

Vietnamese food in Kunming? Where? Certainly not any around wenlin jie or nanping jie. If it's anywhere else then I'm too lazy to travel there...

There are many Thai, Vietnamese, and other chow houses selling authentic foods. The owners and chef probably are Chinese but of Vietnamese, etc. minority. Some of these minorities are very small and many Chinese are not that adventurous about non-Chinese food. Hence the little chow houses are often in someone's apartment.

The same is true for some Chinese ethnic foods. I have heard of a good Dong Bei restaurant in an apartment. The patrons are Dong Bei ren.

I think it would be really great if Go Kunming could compile a list of some of these 'special' little eateries. Because they don't advertise.

I can only think of one Vietnamese restaurant, and it's just ok, nothing like Hanoi. There are a handful of other places that serve the rice flatrolls as a side dish to their main business of Yunnan small dishes. Kunming sucks for Vietnamese food.

I know of a good Thai or Thai-style restaurant on the road that intersects with Wenlin Jie and 121 street. I believe it's Dongfeng dong lu but it may have a different name between xue fu lu and 121 street. Anyway, the restaurant is a dingy hole-in-the-wall place not far from Yunnan normal university half way up the hill.

I was surprised about the large number of Thais and even westerners that eat there - I think there were hardly any local Chinese patrons there when I went. The food is good, but when it comes to cleanliness and atmosphere: there is none. You go in to eat and get out as quickly as possible - it's definately not a place to linger. Surprisingly, some of the staff even speak some Thai despite being Chinese.

afaik, that's the Daizu 傣族 place on Jianshe Lu 建设路. Other than that the Dai are probably the ancestors of the Thai, the food is nothing like it. I go there quite often and enjoy the place even for its spartan interior. iirc the place does not have a proper licence and is therefore so cheap but also so basic. Anyway I know of few Chinese restaurants where I like to linger around long after eating.