History, Geography, and Culture

How do historical, geographical, and cultural ingredients combine to make Hue cuisine unique?

Huế, Việt Nam's capital during feudal times, is the cultural and culinary heart of the country's central region, where a complex history and rich tradition have produced foods that are both simple and sophisticated. According to researcher Trương Định Giản, Vietnamese cuisine has 1,700 different dishes. Of these, 1,400 come from Huế. Some people believe Việt Nam even has 3,000 dishes.

Huế lies on the Kiang (Perfume) River in a narrow, fertile valley between forested mountains to the west and the marshes and sea to the east. Huế residents combine products from these distinct geographical sources to form a rich and varied cuisine found nowhere else in Việt Nam. Scholars think ancient Chăm cooking may have influenced Huế cuisine, especially in methods of making fish and shrimp pastes. In addition, according to ethnologist Từ Chi, Huế's local habit of eating many raw vegetables may have arisen from the Muting ethnic minority group, which some scholars consider the source of Kinh (Vietnamese majority) culture.

In the early seventeenth century, Viet Nam was divided into northern and southern kingdoms. The Kim Long - Phu Xuan region near present-day Hue was the capital of the southern kingdom for about 150 years, until 1777. When Gia Long (Nguyen Anh) ascended the throne in 1802, he established the Nguyen Dynasty and moved the capital back to Hue, where it remained until King Bảo Đại abdicated in August 1945.

During Hue's three centuries as royal capital, the city's upper and middle classes developed a unique and elaborate culinary culture. Unlike the majority of Vietnamese people, the mandarins and scholars at court ate not only to fill their stomachs but also to express their social rank and artistic sensibilities. Cooking became highly refined, with meals consisting of many, many courses.

According to the Đại Nam thực lục (Veritable Records of Viet Nam) compiled by the Nguyễn Court, a grand banquet to welcome foreign envoys or new doctoral laureates typically included 161 dishes. A small banquet had fifty dishes, while avegetarian feast had only between twenty and twenty-five choices.

The ingredients of royal court cuisine were also extraordinary: peacock spring rolls, grilled "phoenix," rhinoceros skin, bear paws, deer sinews, elephant legs, and orangutan lips. These dishes are no longer served, and their recipes have been lost. However, other dishes such as birds' nests, abalone, oysters, and lobster still appear in the "royal meals" served to guests at exclusive Huế restaurants.

What was the secret of King Minh Mang's good health?

According to historical records, King Minh Mang (who reigned from 1820 to 1840) was so physicallystrong that he fathered 142 sons and daughters. Legend attributes his virility to a medicinal liquor made especially for him. The drink later became known as Rượu Thuốc Minh Mạng (Minh Mang Tonic Wine).

Among the thirteen kings of the Nguyen Dynasty, KingTuDuc (who reigned from 1847 to 1883) and King Minh Mang were both known for their interest in medicine and for their patronage of the Royal Medical Academy. Tu Duc was physically weak and needed many royal doctors. Even though Minh Mang was strong from birth and well-built, he still had the best medical practitioners assess his pulse regularly and give him special prescriptions.

Royal doctors selected appropriate Chinese herbs,soaked them in liquor, and served this brew to the king each day. The ingredients of Minh Mang Tonic Wine included as many as twenty-six different herbs. Thanks perhaps in part to this tonic, King Minh Mang was the most successful of the Nguyen rulers. He renovated Hue's Inner Citadel, erected cannons on the city walls, and had the first administrative map of Viet Nam drawn. In addition, he composed over 3,500 poems, which were collected in seventy-three volumes.

The king prohibited any illegal copying of the recipe for Minh Mang Tonic Wine. Nevertheless, some royal mandarins who admired the wine's apparently miraculous effects secretly transcribedthe prescription and passed it down to succeeding generations. Minh Mang Tonic Wine remains popular in Hue today, although its quality isperhaps not quite as potent as the original.

How did Confucian notions of women influence Hue's cooking tradition?

During the Nguyen Dynasty, the concepts of Confucianism played an important role in the court as well as in the wider society. Confucian families set great store in the four great virtues of men: hieu, le, trung, tin (filial piety, brotherhood, loyalty, and trustworthiness). Society measured men's success by their progress in scholarly study and in their careers.

Meanwhile, the determining factors for women were: cong, dung, ngon, hanh (good work, good countenance, good speech, and good nature). Of these four feminine virtues, society considered the first the most important. Although "good work" included skill at sewing and weaving, the most prized talent was cooking. Hue women raised on this philosophy used their refinement and skills to transform cooking from daily drudgery into an artistic profession and a way of life.

The central place of cooking in women's lives persisted into the twentieth century. In 1915, Truong Dang Thi Bich wrote a book of poems with recipes for over a hundred local dishes (see entrybelow). During the 1920s, a number of cooking schools started up in Hue: When Mrs. Dao Duy Anh opened her school, the patriot reformer Phan Boi Chau gave a famous speech on what women needed to know. In 1943, Mrs. Hoang Thi Kim Cuc, a teacher at the Dong Khanh Girls' High School, compiled the first comprehensive Hue cookbook,Mon an nau loi Hue (Dishes made in Hue style), where she introduced the diversity and subtlety of cooking in central Viet Nam.

Confucian philosophy no longer dominates as it did during the Nguyen Dynasty. These days, Vietnamese women and men share involvement in society. Women cannot invest the time and energy in housework as they did in the past. Nevertheless, Hue women remain renowned for their cooking skill. Ms. Hoang Thi. Nhu Huy, a chef at a Hue hotel, has become a member of France's National Culinary Academy. Another hotel chef, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Anh, recently won two gold medals in a cooking contest held by the Viet Nam Administration of Tourism.

How do popular foods sold on the streets contribute to the culinary image of Hue?

Hue street vendors serve common dishes, which they make with the same sophistication as delicacies found; in the luxurious "royal meals" served at expensive restaurants and five-star hotels. For example, a Iui spring roll costs only 2,000 VND ($0.13) on the street. 

However, the complete dish is by no means simple. Cooks make the rolls themselves from ground lean pork mixed with fish sauce and powdered grilled rice, but they may use dozens of ingredients — such as pig livers, flour, sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce, and coconut milk — to concoct the thick, aromatic sauces for dipping the spring rolls. Other typical and cheap Hue specialties include mussel rice, Hue noodle soup, and canh noodles.

These foods may also have royal origins. Some of the court chefs took palace tride secrets back totheir home villages. As a result, some villages began to specialise in certain dishes; soon, the refined cuisine of the court became popular among ordinary people. For this reason, even poor Hue residents may favour a high-class eating style.

How does Buddhism influence people's eating habits in Hue?

No survey of Hue culinary culture would be complete without mentioning the deep influence of Buddhism and vegetarianism. Hue has over 400 pagodas plus nearly 230 Buddhist houses of prayer. These serve the 200,000 active Buddhist followers who account for two-thirds of the city's population.

According to Buddhist beliefs, followers should eat vegetarian meals to show respect for life and to nurture the mind and clear it from immoral thoughts and bad moods. Vegetarian foods are especially popular during Buddhist festivals and on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month (the new and full moons, respectively). Nowadays, serious Buddhists, Hue residents, and visitors from outside Buddhism enjoy the city's vegetarian meals, which are delicious and healthy.

Vegetarian foods first became popular in Hue under the Nguyen Lords during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Lord Nguyen Phuc Chu (who ruled from 1691 to 1725) and his family became vegetarians. Cooks developed new dishes to satisfy the family's tastes. Preparing vegetarian food became an art, especially since the chefs needed more time and skill to make their dishes as attractive and delicious as non-vegetarian foods.

Few markets in Hue sell meat or fish during the first or fifteenth day of the lunar month or on National Buddhism Day (the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, usually falling in mid-May). On those days, most residents eat only rice, noodles, rice cakes, soybeans, vegetables, and fruit. Local residents also place vegetarian delicacies on their family altars in the belief that their ancestors will return from the Other World and enjoy these foods with them. Pagodas all over Hue also serve vegetarian food to Buddhist followers and tourists.

How was the royal cuisine of Hue revived?

In the early 1990s, hotel director Nguyen Huu Dong came up with the idea of reviving the cuisine of the Hue Court as a means for attracting tourists. He implemented his idea with the help of Hue historians and Mrs. Buu Hien, a granddaughter of King Thanh Thai.

Today, visitors to Hue can enjoy special meals including delicacies that were formerly reserved for the royal family. The most skilful and experienced hotel and restaurant chefs are in charge of preparing the dishes under the supervision of Mrs.Buu Hien, who remembers attending royal parties when she was young.

Customers can try out life as a king or queen by wearing royal robes and enjoying music and dance in the style of the royal court.

What did people in Hue eat to celebrate the Vietnamese Lunar New Year?

People all across Viet Nam celebrate TET (the Lunar New Year festival), but each region has its own TET traditions. For people from Hue, the traditional TET meal must have at least these three dishes: bánh tét ăn với dưa món (sticky-rice cakes served with pickled vegetables), thịt dầm (preserved meat), and tré (spicy pork rolls). A serving tray brimming with delicacies doesn't seem like Tet unless it contains these three dishes. Each can be prepared well in advance, allowing the cooks to rest at TET and enjoy the feast.

Hue residents shape their traditional TET sticky-rice cakes into a roll. To prepare this dish, they soak glutinous rice in a mixture of pure water and ground herbs, which turn the rice a fragrant deep green. Then they season ground mung beans and mix them with pork fat. They layer the sticky rice and the bean mixture on banana leaves, which they roll. The finished cake is similar to the bánh chưng xanh (square sticky-rice cakes) eaten at Tet in northern Viet Nam.

Local people in Hue balance the heavy, fatty taste of sticky-rice cakes with the sharper flavour of pickled vegetables made from beets, squash, carrots, green papayas, pineapples, and peppers. Chefs sculpt the vegetables to look like cut flowers, then soak them for one week in high-quality fish sauce and sugar mixed in a glazed pot. The pickle juice turns a deep amber, while the vegetables become crunchy, white, fragrant, and sweet.

Hue culinary artists prepare their traditional Tet thịt dầm (preserved meat) from corned beef or pork rump mixed with ground cow snout, pig ears, and cartilage. They cut the meat into large slivers, which they boil until thoroughly cooked. They then cool the meat, dry it with a clean towel, press the slices under a bamboo strainer and cover them with a mixture of fish sauce, sugar, and vinegar. They let the brew steep for five days to preserve the meat. The resultant thin slices are like big leaves. Hue residents eat thịt dầm with pickled vegetables, green onions, and mustard greens. Even more special condiments are green bananas and figs that have been soaked in milky white vinegar.

Cooks prepare tre (spicy pork rolls) by boiling meat from the head of a pig. Then they fry the pork until the meat is firm and the skin cracks. They slice the meat into thin threads and spice it with galangal, garlic, fried sesame, rice powder, salt, and pepper. The chefs then knead the spiced mixture into cylindrical shapes, which they cover with a guava or clove leaf to add fragrance and to accelerate fermentation. Finally, they wrap the tre in banana or palm leaves and hang them over a warm stove for several days to marinate. Cooks must do this process exactly right to achieve the desired taste.

Mussel Rice

Cơm hến (mussel rice) is a Hue specialty enjoyed by local people and domestic and foreign visitors alike, especially for breakfast. The main ingredients of this popular dish are cold rice and small mussels, to which are added roasted peanuts, sesame, shrimp paste, roasted pigskin, chilli, onion, and various raw vegetables. All these ingredients combine to create a unique sweet and spicy flavour.

Cồn Hến (Mussel Island) in the middle of the Hong River provides mussels for the entire city. Inhabitants of Ngoc Anh Village in Phú Thượng Commune outside the city limits shuck the mussels and prepare the other ingredients. Early each morning, hundreds of peddlers from the village shoulder baskets of mussel rice and carry them into the city. Customers squat on the pavement around a seller, creating an intimate and home-like atmosphere. Restaurants such as Mrs. Cam's in Truong Dinh Street also specialise in serving mussel rice.

A bowl of mussel rice costs from 2,000 to 3,000 VND ($0.13 to $0.19). Visitors are amazed that so little money buys such a tasty dish. Mussel-rice vendors remain dedicated to preserving this Hue specialty even though they must work hard to earn only 20,000 VND ($1.3) per day.

Nhật Lệ: Sticky Rice Cakes

Every city or province in Viet Nam has at least one area that is famous for making bánh chưng (sticky-rice cakes), the typical and indispensable Tet food. The best Huế sticky-rice cakes come from Nhật Lệ Street in the Imperial Citadel. They're a tasty combination of rice, green beans, lean pork, lard, and spices such as salt, pepper, and spring onions. According to Mrs. Thêm, whose family has been making sticky-rice cakes for three generations, a quality cake requires selecting pork fresh from the butcher and the best sticky rice with even grains. The cook should boil the sticky-rice cakes for exactly the right amount of time so that the sticky rice inside is well done yet not pasty. Cool cakes are more delicious than hot cakes.

While many other shops sell banh chu'ng only at Telt, Nhật Lệ sells bánh chưng year round. Every household on the street has a workshop to make sticky-rice cakes.

Mrs. Thêm, at No. 97, produces cakes in the back yard and displays and sells stacks of cakes at her front door. She has about a dozen workers. Some clean dong (arrowroot) leaves to wrap the cakes, while others wash the sticky rice, chop meat, pack the cakes, and stoke the fire. Mrs. Thêm, who is 60, has been making sticky-rice cakes since she was a child. Every day she supervises her children and grandchildren to be sure they produce the best quality banh chung Nhât Lê.

People from Nhât Lệ make sticky-rice cakes of different sizes and kinds, including vegetarian cakes. The smaller cakes are more difficult to wrap. The smallest cakes, which are the size of a match box, use fifty grams of sticky rice and cost 2,000 VND ($ 0,13) for two. The next larger cakes are twice the size and price. The largest cakes costs from 30,000 to 50,000 VND ($1.90 to $3.18) a pair. Shops make these largest cakes only on special order for weddings, death-day anniversaries, and for Tet.

Salted Rice

A frugal meal of cum mtioi (salted rice) is the daily menu of impoverished families. However, the mandarins at the royal court in Huế regarded this dish as a specialty to reserve for distinguished guests. Today, many Hue residents still express their hospitality to close friends by serving them salted rice.

Cơm muối includes husked rice and refined salt served with chilli, lime, pepper, and lemon grass. After harvesting, farmers husk the rice without removing the bran and make sure the grains do not break. Then they cook the rice in a small earthen pot. They roast, simmer, or fry salt with the other ingredients and spices to create various dishes of salted rice with distinctive tastes. They usually serve the rice in antique-style bowls.

Hosts and guests enjoy a meal of rice and salt in a refined manner, eating bit by bit to savour the different flavours. The writer Nguyen Tuan meticulously described dozens of different salt dishes in his writings about the Hue cuisine.

Few people in present-day Hue are accomplished in cooking salted rice. Hue restaurants want to restore this simple dish to its former place of honour, but that is not as easy as it seems.

Hue Noodle Soup

If one had to pick a single food that is emblematic of Hue, it would be bún bò (rice noodle soup with beef). Hue residents prefer to buy their bún bò from street vendors rather than in restaurants. Street vendors carry bún (soft, thin white noodles) and (bò) slices of beef in two bamboo baskets hanging from poles balanced across their shoulders.

People eat noodles on the sidewalks, squatting on small stools next to a pot of boiling broth. The intense fragrance rising from the pot seems to beckon others to eat as well. One joy of buying from street vendors is that they ladle out soup for only from 4,000 to 5,000 VND a bowl ($0.25 - $0.31).

Most Hue street vendors come from villages such as Thily An, Phat Lat, and Van Van outside the city. Each household in these villages has one or two street vendors. Selling rice noodle soup is both a way of earning a living and of carrying on a family and village culinary tradition. Vendors sell to regular customers, usually in small side streets or alleys. When lunchtime is over, they stop selling and go shopping for the next day's ingredients.

Street vendors carry one pot of broth they can set on a portable charcoal stove. Another container holds additional ingredients such as stewed pork legs, grilled ground pork, beef and pork tendon, grilled crab, pig and duck blood, and thin slices of beef.

On the other side of the bamboo pole is a pot of fresh rice noodles and seasonings such as onions, scallions, chilli peppers, fish sauce, bean sprouts, banana flowers, and diced lettuce. The baskets also contain bowls, spoons, chopsticks, a basin for washing, napkins, toothpicks, a pot of green ginger tea, and a few stools. Truly, this is a moveable feast.

Bún bò Huế is completely unpretentious. Its charm lies solely in its fragrance. According to the women who sell rice noodles at Bến Ngự Market, the broth must be clear with a balance between the salty and sweet flavours that come from stewed beef, pork, and chicken bones and not from any added MSG.

Vendors tailor each bowl to the customer's desires. In the winter, customers sit next to the red-hot stove and the boiling broth, warming their hands over their steaming bowls, slurping the broth, clipping the noodles with their chopsticks, and biting into pieces of meat. Even connoisseurs dedicated to the cuisines of Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City admit to a love for bún bò Huế, which is sold all over the country. However, nowhere is this dish more popular or more tasty than in Huế.

Shrimp Leaves

These dumplings made with red shrimps and white rice powder and wrapped dark green dong (arrowroot) leaves are simple and colourful. Cooks boil fresh-water shrimps, remove the heads and shells, and grind the shrimps. They dry them over a fire until the meat turns bright red. Then they grind fresh onion to extract the juice, which they pour over the shrimps. The cooks then spread out the dong leaves and arrange on the leaves a thin layer of rice powder to which they have added a teaspoon of ground manioc plus water and salt. They add a layer of dried shrimps and wrap the mixture in the leaves, which they steam. 

A plate of unwrapped bánh lá chả tôm creates a colourful picture. Hosts serve banh la cha torn with grilled, chopped shrimps and high-quality fish sauce.

Clear Dumplings with Shrimp and Pork

These dumplings made of manioc powder, lean pork, and shrimps are a popular dish available in all Hue markets. The attractive, transparent dumplings reveal a red shrimp and a slice of brown pork stuffed inside.

The preparation is neither expensive nor time-consuming but does require experience. Cooks choose high-quality manioc powder and fresh shrimps; they pour the white powder into boiling water and knead the resulting dough until it becomes soft and flexible. Then they stirfry the shrimps with spices and spring onions and slice boiled pork for the stuffing. Finally, they make the small half-moon-shaped cakes and drop them in boiling water for several minutes.

Hue residents serve bánh bột lọc with yellow bread crumbs, chilli sauce, and the stock from the boiled shrimps, which they use for a specially prepared fish sauce.

Rice Cakes with Diced Shrimp

Elderly women wearing casual clothes and carrying one or two bamboo baskets along the streets in the afternoons are a common sight in Hue. Besides bánh bột lọc, they also sell bánh bèo tôm chấy (rice cakes with diced shrimps), a light dish that Hue residents often enjoy in the afternoon.

The preparation of bánh bèo tôm chấy is simple. The cooks soak rice powder in water for several minutes until it turns into a fine paste. Then they mix it with melted lard and pour thin layers in small earthen bowls that are approximately seven to eight centimetres in diameter. After that, they steam the cakes in a pot. The finished bánh (cakes) look like fern leaves (bèo), hence their name.

Vendors place tôm chấy (diced shrimps) on the cakes. Since the cakes are thin, people do not use chopsticks but instead take a paddle-shaped piece of bamboo to slice the cakes. They dip the pieces in a special sauce made with sugar, garlic, and chilli.

Each bánh bèo tôm chấy costs only 1,000 VND ($0.06). Five cakes are usually enough for a satisfying snack.

Traditional Noodle Soup

The image of women peddlers with baskets of bánh canh noodles from Nam Phổ Village of Phú Vang District is a familiar sight in Hue. Nam Phổ has been producing this special noodle soup for generations. The broth is similar to that of phở. 

A bowl of canh noodles includes rice noodles, shrimps, field crabs, fish, pigskin, onion, coriander, and pepper. Since this dish costs very little — only from 2,000 to 3,000 VND ($0,13 to $0,19) — and tastes wonderful, it is popular with rich and poor alike and is served for breakfast, lunch, or a snack.

Stuffed Rice Pancakes

Two small restaurants Lạc Thiện and Lạc Thạnh —at Hue's Thượng Tứ Gate have become famous for serving rice pancakes stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimps, and beef. A single family runs the shops. Lạc Thiện, well-known since before 1975, has only seven tables, but it is always full of Vietnamese and foreign customers patiently awaiting their turn.

A deaf, slender young woman with a cheerful smile works at the stove, pouring rice-powder paste into round pancake moulds. She signals arriving customers to sit down and prepares tea for them. Although she says nothing, her eyes seem to ask, "How many pancakes would you like?"

A handsome young man brings a colourful tray to the table. The half-moon-shaped cakes are bright yellow on the white ceramic plates. Then there are the bowls of thick dipping sauce dotted with sesame seeds and plates of fresh green vegetables: lettuce, basil, bean sprouts, sliced green banana, and sweet star-fruit.

According to Nguyệt, the young man's wife, the Lê family has three brothers and sisters, all of whom have been deaf from birth. Nguyệt's husband, Lê Văn Trung, is the elder brother of Lê Thị Thanh Ngọc, the woman at the stove. Ngọc has been helping her mother sell bánh khoái since she was ten years old. In the Hue dialect, "khoái" means "smoke," referring to the fact that the pancakes are usually served hot.

Ngọc became the main cook after her mother retired. She, her brother, and her younger sister Yến own and operate four restaurants. Trung runs Lạc Thạnh and Lạc Thiện. Yến and her husband run another shop next door, and Ngọc owns a shop in Ho Chi Minh City. All the restaurants are popular, especially since economic reforms began in late 1986.

Nguyệt fills her pancakes with shelled shrimps, sliced beef, sliced lard, and fresh bean sprouts. Her pancake moulds made of cast iron are the size of a child's hand and a centimetre deep. As soon as a customer arrives, Nguyệt ladles batter into a heated mould. When the pancake turns yellow, she adds to half of the pancake a slice of beef, a small piece of fat, some shrimps, and bean sprouts. Then she flips the other half of the pancake over on top to form a half-moon shape. More important than the cakes themselves, however, is the dipping sauce (leo), a thick mixture of dozens of different ingredients. The sauce is the decisive element differentiating each shop.

Fermented Shrimps

Hue's tôm chua (fermented shrimps) is a specialty that can be found nowhere else. Local women known for their skill, intelligence, and hard work create attractive dishes from fermented ingredients: small fish, pork, bean curd, and especially shrimps. Connoisseurs of Hue cuisine consider fermented shrimps to be a refined, high-class dish. The twentieth century writer Nguyễn Tuân likened the dish to a fragrant flower just beginning to blossom. He would open a new jar of tôm chua only in the company of close friends.

High-quality tôm chua is made using shrimps from a single location: the brackish water of Tam Giang Lagoon outside of Hue. Chefs remove the heads and tails from fresh shrimps and soak them in rice alcohol until the shrimps become "drunk." They then dry the shrimps and mix them with bamboo shoots and salt and add fragrant sticky rice. They place this mixture in tightly sealed ceramic jars for fermentation that lasts one week in summer or a month in winter. After fermentation is complete, they add spices such as galingale, garlic, sliced chillies, and sugar.

Local residents typically eat fermented shrimps with boiled pork, lettuce, sliced green bananas, figs, and star fruit. They also serve tam chua with rice pancakes (bánh cuốn) and grilled potatoes, spinach, basil, rice noodles, boiled pork, and fish sauce.

Many Hue enterprises produce tôm chua. Families also prepare the dish according to their preferred tastes. One person making delicious fermented shrimps in Hue is Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Hường, who operates a small shop in Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai Street, Vĩnh Lợi Ward. According to Mrs. Hường, authentic tôm chua should be pinkish, not red. One should check the production date since fermented shrimps must be consumed within a limited period of time.

Gobies Simmered in Fish Sauce

During the rainy season, rivers in central Viet Nam teem with many kinds of fish, including several varieties of goby (cá bống), a spiny, large-jawed tropical fish. Some varieties of goby are as small as a soybean or as large as a baby's wrist. Residents steam the small goby to serve with sesame cakes. 

They cook the larger sand-coloured goby (cá bống thệ), which has a plump body and soft scales, in fish sauce and pepper. These fish are especially good for the health of women with young babies. Goby livers, which are very nutritious, are a delicacy that is hard to find in markets.

Local residents catch gobies by carving holes in bamboo poles, which they tie up in a river. At night, the gobies, which live along the river bottom, swim through the holes into the bamboo, where the fishermen find them in the morning.

Most Hue people enjoy eating rice or green-bean-and-rice porridge with gobies steamed in fish sauce. They choose fish of equal size and chop them into two. Then they layer the fish with rau răm (knotweed leaves) and thinly-sliced pork belly, spice the mixture with fish sauce, sugar, and chillies, and simmer the fish over a low flame. Once the fish is cooked, they add some pepper and serve.

Steamed sandy-coloured goby is one of the favourite dishes of rural people around Hue. Today, it is also available in restaurants and hotels.

Sesame Candy

Hug people believe that the best companion for their famous lotus tea is mè xửng (sesame candy). They take a sip of tea and a bite of the candy so that the rich sweetness of sesame complements the scented bitterness of tea.

The ingredients of mè xửng (moulded sesame) include sesame (mè), peanuts, white cane sugar, and rice powder. La Khê Village in Hương Trà District outside Hue and Sa Đéc in Đồng Tháp Province make the finest rice powder. The mè xửng chefs boil sugar in a pot and add fried, half-broken peanuts and rice powder, then stir the mixture hard with two heavy sticks so that the candy does not stick to the pot. After some time, they pour the paste into moulds and cover the candy with a layer of sesame. They let the paste cool and then cut into it into square or rectangular pieces. The finished product is yellowish-brown, translucent, soft, and flexible with a strong sesame flavour.

Nowadays, sesame-candy makers diversify their products into varieties that are crisp, decorated with black and white sesame, and with differing proportions of peanuts, sugar, and rice powder.

Hue Sweet Pudding

Chè (sweet pudding) is one of the three typical images of Hue summer, along with flamboyant flowers and the Hương River. After dark, residents converge on the river banks to enjoy fresh air and savour puddings made from maize, potatoes, green and red beans, lotus seeds, and other ingredients mixed with coconut milk and served over ice.

Hue is said to have thirty-six kinds of chè. However, the actual figure is much higher. No other city in Viet Nam has as many varieties. Hue people, with their skill in food preparation, make hundreds of strange, delicious, and nutritious chè varieties.

In the past, chefs at the royal palace and at the homes of rich, aristocratic families usually cooked sophisticated and refined puddings, including chè with lotus seeds, chè with longans stuffed with lotus seeds, and chè with roasted meat. Previously, ordinary people only enjoyed simple and cheap dishes made from grains and legumes. Today, however, everyone can taste the different kinds of chè. At only 2,000 VND (US$ 0.13), a glass of chè is affordable for rich or poor alike.

Hue boasts dozens of restaurants and hundreds of street vendors serving chè. They concentrate in Hùng Vương, Trần Phú, Trương Định, and Cửa Thượng Tứ Streets and along the banks of the Hương River.