More than 400 delicious dishes to highlight HCMC food festival

More than 400 dishes from different regions across Vietnam will be presented at the Ho Chi Minh City Culinary Culture Festival, which will take place from March 28-31 at Van Thanh Tourist Park in HCMC.

The culinary event, organized by Saigontourist Group, is aimed at honouring Vietnamese cuisine.

The festival will be arranged into the North, Central, South regions, and feature over 40 culinary booths from units of Saigontourist Group, culinary brands from Ben Tre and Tay Ninh provinces, Vietnam Airlines and Saigon Trading Corporation (Satra). The festival can serve over 12,000 customers.

Representatives of Tay Ninh will introduce local specialties, such as Tay Ninh veal and rice paper. Meanwhile, Ben Tre will bring delicious food made from coconut to the festival. Vietnam Airlines will also serve airline meals and Satra will serve quickly prepared dishes.

Skilled chefs and culinary artists will make specialties from cities and provinces across the country, offering visitors unique cuisine experiences.

A food map made from 400 typical dishes of localities will be introduced at the event as part of efforts to promote Vietnamese culinary excellence.

In particular, in order to serve the needs of entertainment and traditional cultural experiences for guests to enjoy, this year's festival will organise many special activities such as art performances, cultural exchanges, and folk games to re-enact the activities of traditional craft villages.

In addition, this year's festival will serve 'racket' coffee, a unique style of enjoying coffee of urban residents, organised by Binh Quoi Tourist Village.

It will also arrange seven traditional craft villages to make vermicelli, traditional cakes, bamboo wickerwork, hats, sedge mats, and pottery.

Meanwhile, the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho has announced it will host its annual Southern Traditional Cake Festival next month.

The festival will include around 250 stalls showcasing 100 signature savoury and sweet cakes such as banh xeo (sizzling rice crepe), banh khot (deep-fried shrimp pancake), banh it tran (sticky rice dumpling), and banh bo (steamed rice cake).

Hundreds of speciality foods from Can Tho and localities across the country will be introduced as well.

More than 100 artisans will compete in the cooking contest, as well as present cooking demonstrations for visitors at the festival.

The event will also include cooking classes for children, folk games, and live folk music performances every night.

According to the city’s Tourism Development Centre, since the Southern Traditional Cake Festival began 10 years ago, it has attracted millions of visitors and has quickly become a favourite destination for people in the region and tourists in and outside the country.

In addition, the festival also aims to preserve and promote the traditional cuisine culture of the region, as well as build an export strategy to bring traditional cakes to the world market.

The festival will take place from April 17-21 at Binh Thuy district’s Square. It is expected to attract around one million visitors.