Vietnam Overview

Apart from its charming landscapes, Danang is also famous for seafood dishes, including goi ca Nam O (raw Nam O fish), mi Quang (Quang noodles), banh dap Hoi An (Hoi An cake) and especially ca ba trau nuong muoi ot (grilled ca ba trau with chili salt).

Unlike the smaller species with the same name living in fresh water, ba trau living in seas or rivers is larger, around 150 to 200 grams. To make the dish, you should choose fish weighing about 200 grams each and clean the fish out with vinegar or ginger water after cutting feelers and fins and taking the entrails out.

Next, you will soak ba trau with salt, sugar, monosodium glutamate, cooking oil and mashed green pepper. It takes about 15 minutes for the fish to absorb the mixture of spices.

Put the fish on the grill, wait until the fish turns yellow and turn them over.

Now you prepare raw vegetables such as fennel, tomatoes, sliced green bananas and cucumbers on the plate. Of course, you cannot forget to make a small plate of salt or fish sauce added with mashed green pepper, some drops of lemon juices and some garlic.

Sitting at a small stand along the riverside dining on this dish with some buddies makes for an enjoyable evening. Put a piece of rice-paper in you palm, pick up a piece of grilled ba trau with some raw vegetables and soft noodles and you have an unforgettable taste with a bowl of chili salt.

The delicacy is attractive due to its sweetness, crunchy taste and specific smell of the fish dissolving into the salty and hot flavor.

(Source: SGTO)

Tom long, a kind of small crayfish the size of a thumb, is popular in the Mekong Delta area and is expensive for its size but worth every dong.

Tom long nau bong so dua is delta favorite - Photo: Hoang Tham

Tom long lives in canals and waterways or along the banks of Tien and Hau rivers. The local farmers usually put bung, a tool to catch this shrimp, in the area with strong flows of water. The crayfish can even be raised in paddy-fields or small ponds.

To cook tom long nau bong so dua, you need a half kilo of fresh catches. First, you need to wash them, cut their feelers and leave the shrimps in a basket until they dry.

The next step is to cook a pot of water, wait until it boils and add some salt. Then you need to mince some lemon grass, red pepper and merge it all into hot water.

After that, you put some sugar, monosodium glutamate, fish sauce, tomatoes, pineapple, and tamarind into the pot. The dish will be even tastier if you add some con me.

A half kilo of flowers of so dua should be prepared for the next step. When the water boils, you have to put tom long into the pot first.

When the shrimps turn red, put so dua flowers into the pot and turn off the cooker. What you have to do now is to add some flavor with mu om vegetables.

Enjoy the dish with hot cooked rice or bun (soft noodles), and dipping one shrimp into delicious fish sauce or a combination of salt and red pepper surely makes for a beautiful taste. The season to taste tom long is from January until the rainy season arrives.

You can find many tom long dishes in several restaurants in Mekong Delta provinces, including tom luoc nuoc dua (shrimps boiled with coconut milk), tom chien bot (shrimps fried with flour), tom tron goi ngo sen (shrimps mixed with lotus rootstock) etc. However, the most simple and attractive one is still tom long nau bong so dua.

(Source: SGTO)

Saigon has so many dishes made of mollusk and crustacean species that people call them simply oc (snail). And now oc is part of Saigonese life.

Fried crab’s pincers with chili salt is a popular snail dish of Saigonese - Photo: My Tran

It is easy to find snail eateries as they are everywhere in Saigon, from downtown to outlying areas, from big restaurants in main streets to small bistros off alleys or along the city’s many canals. Don’t think for a minute snail dishes are only for beer drinkers, as it is a favorite snack for both young and elderly Saigonese, from students to executive and clerical officers, from cyclo drivers to glamorous celebrities.

Snail eateries often open from late afternoon to midnight. When students finish classes or workers gather to eat and make some jokes with friends before they head home. Middle-aged men with drinking companions enjoy idle talk while women come to satisfy their eating pleasure and gossip with their buddies. Also, celebrities come to sample something from home instead of signature Western foods in luxury restaurants.

People call them snail restaurants but they serve many kinds of dishes to meet diverse options of diners. From many kinds of snails such as oc buou (middle-sized snail), oc huong (sweet snail), finger snail or oc mo (fat snail), diners can also enjoy clams, oysters, shrimps, crab and duck embryos. They are often made with lemon grass, lemon leaves, tamarind and garlic – boiled, grilled or steam fried to balance the flavor of the seafood and make them delicious.

In some snail stalls, revelers can also find other dishes made of pork, beef, rabbit, ostrich and many kinds of hotpots. Therefore, boiled oc buou with lemon leaves, fried oc mo with tamarind, grilled oyster with onion fat, steamed oc len with coconut juice, steamed clam with lemon grass, snail salad, fried crab or shrimp with chili salt, grilled chicken wings, legs or fried rau muong (water spinach) with garlic, seafood fried rice and fish or beef hotpot are some popular dishes for oc lovers.

The price depends on location and season. But the dishes often cost from VND30,000 to VND100,000 a dish.

Beer or a soft drink like coca-cola are suitable drinks for snail eaters who are recommended not to drink fruit juice or sweet soup while eating snail dishes to ensure they don’t get stomach trouble. If you are also an oc addict, why don’t you make an evening out with your friends when you finish work today. I make a bet on that you will have a lot of fun and will enjoy some tasty delights.

(Source: SGTO)

Saigon these days is quite cool in the evening due to the incessant heavy rain but it can’t stop Saigonese dining out, especially at hotpot shops. The cooler from rain, the more perfect reason for people to sit around a smoke spiraling hotpot to taste the hot soup and watch the raindrops falling down from the eaves.

A guest enjoys a Thai-style hotpot in Ba Huyen Thanh Quang Street in District 3 - Photo: Kieu Giang

Saigon has many locations offering different kinds of hotpot including keo fish at Ba Huyen Thanh Quan, Su Thien Chieu and Nguyen Thi Dieu streets in District 3, beef at Truong Dinh Street in District 3 and An Duong Vuong Street in District 5, goat at Nguyen Cong Tru Street in District 1, mam (fish sauce) at Tran Huy Lieu Street, fish heads at Chau Van Liem Street in HCMC’s District 5 and mixed hotpot at Tung Thien Vuong Street in District 8.

Apart from local hotpot, people can find many international styles of Thai, Japanese and Korean hotpot at many restaurants around town.

Eating hotpot doesn’t mean dining only. It brings you into a cozy atmosphere when friends and family members gather to talk and share a big cook of soup. Food accompanied with hotpot is diversified, including many kinds of meat, seafood and vegetables for people to choose which one they like or sometimes to compete with each other for their favorites. It makes a happy and jubilant atmosphere and sees people join together.

The most important thing about hotpot is the soup; it has to be not too salty or not too flat so that when you put all the ingredients together they will mingle together for a perfect taste.

Once eating this dish, we should put the food which takes longer to cook first then wait until bubbles appear on the surface to put vegetables inside. Then, we take some rice vermicelli into a small bowl, and pour soup and food into the bowl.

It’s a big mistake not to mention the fish sauce when eating hotpot. If soup contributes 60% to the delicious flavor of the dish, fish sauce adds 20%.

The freshness of vegetables and ingredients is the other 20% to complete the perfect hotpot. Just imagine the pungent spice of fish sauce at the top of your tongue mingled with the morish flavor of hot soup and the chewy taste of vegetables is an amazing feeling that only a hotpot can give us.

Additionally, hotpot not only wakes up our taste buds but also our vision thanks to the many colors of ingredients including the white-yellow soup, the green vegetables and the white and red meat and dark brown of fish sauce.

People, especially foreigners, find it interesting to see different cookers at different hotpot shops. They range from a coal cooking fire in Chau Van Liem Street, alcohol cookers at Ba Huyen Thanh Quan Street and gas cooker at many hotpot shops.

Prices for hotpot vary from VND80,000 for a small pot to over VND300,000 for a large one. If you want to order more vegetables or food for the pot, you pay VND10,000-50,000 per dish.

Even when the rain stops, people don’t want to leave hotpot shops. Maybe they are scared of the coldness outside or does the soup, the warmth of the cooker or the happiness inside keep them in the bosom of the hotpot.

(Source: SGTO)