Published:  09:40 Thursday - July 14, 2016

Each region in Vietnam has a distinctive feature to make the difference of each culinary region. People in each region have different tastes and cooking styles that contribute to the richness and diversity of Vietnam cuisine.

1. Northern Cuisine

Green sticky rice (Cốm)

Northern cuisine is often not spicy, fatty, and sweet compared to other regions. It mainly uses diluted fish sauce and shrimp paste. Northern people use more vegetable dishes and fresh seafood which are readily available, such as shrimp, crabs, fish, clams, mussels, etc. Generally, because of the poor agriculture, northern culinary in the past had few popular dishes with the main ingredients from meat and fish. Many people appreciate Hanoi cuisine, considering that it represents the most typical of the North Vietnam culinary elite with Pho (Vietnamese rice noodle), bun thang (vermicelli and chicken soup), bun cha (noodles and grilled meat), Vong green rice flakes, banh cuon Thanh Tri (Thanh Tri steamed rolled rice pancake), and special spices like belostomatidae oil, basil,…They are also the best traditional Vietnamese food that visitors should try once when coming to the North Vietnam.

2. Central Cuisine

Banh beo Hue

Central food with all its unique characteristics reflected in distinct flavor, with more spicy and salty dishes than the food in the North and the South. The dishes’ colors are blended brilliantly, especially with natural red and brown colors. Some Central provinces, such as Hue, Da Nang, Binh Dinh are famous for sour shrimp sauce and many other types of shrimp sauce. In particular, nowadays Hue cuisine was mostly affected by Hue royal cuisine, so it requires high levels of food processing and decorating techniques. On the other hand, locals in the past could not produce a lot of special food while royal cuisine required a large amount of materials, so every kind of material are processed diversely, resulted in many different dishes.

3. Southern Cuisine

Banh khot Vung Tau

Southern cuisine is much influenced by the culinary of Chinese, Cambodia, and Thailand. Southern food uses a little bit more sugar and coconut water and coconut milk. This cuisine also produces numerous types of dried fish, such as mam ca sac (Belontiidae paste), mam bo hoc (prahok), mam ba khia (sesarmid paste), etc. Southern cuisine also contains more saltwater and brackish water seafood than the North (fish, shrimp, crabs, sea snails), and it is very special with rustic dishes – the typical of the land opening process in the past. Nowadays, there are so many dishes becoming specialties: voles steamed with coconut water, steamed flying fox with soya, ground green bean copperhead porridge, coconut larvae, grilled snakehead, etc.