Hue Dining & Entertainment

Restaurants
 
Hue Cuisine   

Hue cuisine is distinctive: Vietnamese people regard it as the best in the country. There are two forms – Hue traditional food, which is explained on this page, and ‘Royal’ cuisine, the food of the Imperial Court.

Hue culinary traditions demand that meals must presented aesthetically, harmonising food elements, decorations and colours to create a gastronomic work of art. For example, the rice container must near a dish of salad vegetables, fermented bean sprouts, slices of red and green of chillies, slices of star fruit, round slices of bitter bananas, and a dish of sliced boiled pork arranged in a flower pattern. The array would include a dish of white or red flowers purely for decorative purposes to create a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach.

Most dishes are accompanied with sauces specific to the dish.A typical example of basic Hue food is clam rice. A more complicated everyday meal is likely to include rice and three common dishes: ‘bong the’ (fish boiled with fish sauce and aromatic vegetables), boiled spinach with a prawn sauce and a bowl of soup containing small prawns and tamarind.

Daytime meals are usually eaten away from home and mostly consist of single basic dishes

Formal meals for special occasions or for welcoming guests are more elaborate, usually comprising five or more dishes. A typical ‘menu’ might include:

• Fermented pork rolls (washed down with rice wine)
• ‘Banh la’ (sweet sticky rice wrapped in leaves),
• ‘Cha tom’ (a sort of shrimp pancake)
• Boiled pork with a sour prawn sauce or fermented fish, vegetables, slices of star fruit and bitter bananas
• Dried cuttlefish mixed with ‘thanh tra’ fruit
• Fish steamed with mushrooms
• Fatty meat
• Soy sauce and ‘envelopes’ of mandarin fruit
• Rice cooked with pineapple leaves

Dessert would normally be a bowl of sweet lotus seed soup or local fruit.


Hue Cuisine - flour-based dishes

Hue traditional food has a wide range of steamed and fried flour-based meals with savoury fillings. Here are three examples, but there are many more varieties.


Banh Beo (steamed ‘fern-shaped’ cake)

Rice flour is mixed with water, salt and fat and cooked for several minutes. During this stage, the chef has to stir the rice flour continuously to prevent it from sticking together. The rice flour is then poured into round wooden moulds or small round cups and steamed for fifteen to twenty minutes. Finally, the chef sprinkles a filling made from pounded shrimps fried with fat and dried onion mixed with salt, pepper and monosodium-glutamate on the surface of pieces of steamed rice flour. Banh beo sauce is a mixture of garlic, capsicum, and fish sauce.


Banh Khoai (plain rice flan)

This is also made from rice flour. First, the flour is mixed with cold water, salt, and sugar. When the moulds get hot enough, the chef coats them with fat, then pours in rice flour. The filling, a combination of fried shrimps, lean meat and mushrooms, is added and the ‘cakes’ are steamed. When they’re cooked, the chef adds bean sprouts, covers them with a thin coat of egg yolk, and continues to steam. After several minutes, he folds the cakes in two and flips them over so that they are grilled crisply both two sides. Banh khoai is eaten with fresh vegetables such as fig, unripe bananas, mint, etc., and dipped in a sauce made of ground liver, soybean jam, peanuts, and sesame, and condiments such as salt, capsicum, garlic and sugar.

Banh Loc

The major material for making this kind of cake is kudzu powder. It's a finely ground flour derived from starchy root of the kudzu vine, a leguminous plant originating in China.

The chef mixes kudzu power with boiled water and then squeezes and presses until it’s well-kneaded. After that, he divides the dough into small balls and kneads the balls into thin, round pancakes.

Next, the filling is added to the kudzu pancakes, typically shrimp and fat meat simmered with fish sauce, seasoning, onions, capsicum and sugar. They are then folded to form two semicircular shaped ‘cakes’. These are boiled for fifteen to twenty minutes until they become transparent.

To eat banh loc, you dip it into a sauce made from fish sauce, lemon, chillies, sugar, and other ingredients.


Hue delicacies  

Flour based dishes

Banh Khoai: a crepe with a savoury filling accompanied by salad and a peanut-based sauce
Banh La Cha Tom: soft pastry wrapped in leaves with meat, shrimp and eggs
Banh Hot Thit Quay: roast pork in pastry
Banh Bot Loc Boc Tom Thit: rice pastry containing shrimp and meat
Bun Tuan: noodles with stir-fried beef or boiled pork with fermented ‘nem’ fish sauce
Bun Bo Gio Heo: noodles with beef and pork

Dessert dishes - all variations of ‘che’ (sweet soup)
Che Dau Van: sweet French bean soup
Che Dau Ngu: sweet bean soup
Che Hot Sen Boc Nhan: sweet lotus seeds and longan soup
Che Bot Loc Boc Thit Quay: sweet rice and roast pork soup


Vegetarian food


Hue is a major Buddhist centre so its vegetarian food is well-known. Unlike vegetarian food in Western countries, Hue chefs aim to replicate the taste of dishes such as roast pork cooked with fish sauce, chicken salad, beefsteak, grilled meat roll, pork bolognese, chicken and so on. It’s a fascinating concept, but far away from the attitudes of foreign vegetarians who are mostly motivated by health or ethical concerns.

If you're particularly interested in Hue cuisine, let us know, and we’ll arrange a local expert to provide you with more detailed information, and teach you how to cook it, if you wish.

Drink

Bars and clubs

• DMZ Bar & Cafe, 44 D Le Loi. Stays open late.
• Café on Thu Wheels, 1/2 D Nguyen Tri Phuong. It's a little bar owned by the charming lady Thu.

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