Xin chao!: Vietnam food and drink

Tropical fruit

Noodle soup

Luxury goods originating from Vietnam

VietNamNet Bridge - The names of these luxurious foods and drinks attract not only Vietnamese but international gourmets.

Marou Chocolates

Marou, the first artisanal chocolate maker in Vietnam, makes its products for serious cocoa fans. The chocolatier has displayed its wares for the past two years at the annual Salon De Chocolate trade fair in Paris.

All products are dark chocolate. Tien Giang chocolate 70 percent is a rare type of chocolate which is produced with 70 percent organic cocoa beans grown in the southern province of Tien Giang.

Meanwhile, their Dong Nai chocolate is described by the two founders of Marou, Samuel Maruta and Vincent Mouro, as a rare chocolate. It is processed in their factory near Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai Province.

Marou also produces raw chocolate containing 65 percent cocoa. All products of Marou are packed with a special kind of paper with patterns inspired by Vietnam’s wooden patterns.

Dalat Grapes

In 2006, viticulture expert Daniel Carsol planted the first crop of four French grape varieties, including Cabernet, Caladoc, Merlot and Syrah, in Dalat.

Carsol says he had traveled everywhere, from Laos and Cambodia to Myanmar, before finding the "right soil" outside Dalat City in Lam Dong province.

Carsol has cooperated with local partners to establish Dalat Grapes joint ventures. The first vintage products were produced in 2012, with only 500 bottles of Syrah and 300 of Cabernet. The number rose to 2,500 bottles in 2013.

The Better Seafoods

More than a decade ago, discouraged over the European Union’s increasingly burdensome regulations related to food production in his country, Jean Christophe Sevin, owner of an oyster farm, moved to the suburbs of Nha Trang to live and work.

Over the past seven years, his company, Biological Vietnam Seafoods, has produced world-class quality seafood such as lobster, blue crab, mussels and abalone, but the main product of the company is organic oysters. This product is provided to high-end restaurants in Hanoi and HCM City, as well as other countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia.

Caviar de Duc

The sturgeon farm of Vietnam Sturgeon Group was established in Dalat in 2007 at an altitude of 1,500 m above sea level. This is the first company in Vietnam producing and distributing caviar from sturgeon varieties bred in Dalat.

Previously, sturgeon eggs were produced only in areas with cold climates. Today, modern technology enables the breeding of rare fish like beluga in cool climate conditions, such as found in the highlands of Vietnam.

The firm’s top-quality product line, Osetra Malossol black caviar, has become the choice for leading hotels in Vietnam such as Sofitel Metropole and Park Hyatt Saigon.

Na Son

Hunter of Vietnamese delicacies

In the Vietnamese cuisine circle, Chiem Thanh Long, Director of Binh Quoi Tourist Village, is known as the hunter of Vietnamese delicacies.

Chiem Thanh Long, Director of Binh Quoi Tourist Village (September, 2012).

Over the years, he has made great efforts to collect over 500 delicious traditional dishes and 50 kinds of liguor to promote and introduce the culinary art of the Vietnamese to the world.
Chiem Thanh Long inherited the passion love for cooking from his mother who was an expert in making delicious dishes on special occasions. Because she was a vegetarian, she often asked Long to taste the dishes each time she cooked. At that time, Long felt very excited with the task.

However, only when he worked at Binh Quoi Tourist Village and participated in preparing a buffet entitled “Am thuc khan hoang Nam bo” with traditional dishes in 1998 to celebrate the 300th founding anniversary of Sai Gon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City), did he start engaging in a food career.

To formulate the idea of making the buffet, he, the chefs and cuisine experts of Binh Quoi travelled to every corner of the country to collect delicious recipes. They even visited food stalls in localities and met locals to learn the secrets of making their special food.

They then returned to the tourist area to cook the dishes as they were originally prepared. If he failed, he returned to the localities several times to manage to successfully create the dishes.

He also directly tasted all the dishes cooked by chefs to check the quality and flavors. All made the buffet successful, making a contribution to promoting the trademark of the tourist area.

Since then he has wholeheartedly researched traditional folk dishes. After a long trip to the south’s western region, he collected over 30 folk dishes of the region to add to his menu. So far, he has collected about 110 traditional dishes of the north, the central region and the south.

Besides cooking, he has also collected about 50 kinds of liguor made by famous liguor-making villages nationwide such as Van Village (Bac Giang Province), Bo Nam (Bac Can), San Lung (Lao Cai), Kim Son (Ninh Binh), Bau Da (Binh Dinh), Hong Dao (Quang Ninh) and Tay Nguyen (the Central Highlands). At present, he is nursing the idea of looking for the most tasty liguor of Vietnamese people that may be recognized as the “National Wine”.

He said that finding unique products in business would create a difference so Binh Quoi has focused on Vietnamese cuisine. He added that Vietnamese traditional dishes have preserved typical tastes.

It depends on each region and locality where the dishes are processed with different spices. For instance, the mountainous area in the north and the Central Highlands are famous for grilled dishes, the south for delicate dishes with reasonable spices. The dishes of people in the central region are spicy and fussy in preparation. The south and the watery area is famous for grilled fish served with raw vegetables.

Having engaged in the food career over the years, he has had many memorable experiences. During the trip to promote Vietnamese cuisine in France in 2004, he felt very happy and proud when Vietnamese dishes totally satisfied the French.

In the coming years, he and a Vietnamese delegation will organize another programme to promote Vietnamese cuisine in this country.

Chiem Thanh Long is one of the persons who has great contribution to developing Binh Quoi Tourist Village. The village has now five member units with a total number of 760 cadres and employees. Although he is busy with managing the village as a director, he has still kept his passion of looking for Vietnamese traditional dishes.