Huế Highlights

We just returned from our vacation to the imperial city of Hue, the culinary capital of Viet Nam. According to various guidebooks, we can thank Emperor Tu Duc for the city’s culinary diversity: when the former emperor sat down for dinner, he insisted on being served fifty different dishes, each prepared by a different chef. Of course, the chefs didn’t always create entirely new dishes–they’d make minor alterations to meals by mixing up the garnishes, for instance–but they certainly did manage to diversify the cuisine in the region quite a bit.

Our first mission was to find nem lụi and bánh khoai¹. Nem lụi is grilled minced pork that comes on a bamboo stick. Like almost all the pork I ate in Hue, it’s brushed with some kind of shrimp sauce that makes it taste a little sweet². You build each roll of nem lụi at your table by putting some greens on a sheet of rice paper, pulling the pork off the stick and onto the paper, and rolling it all up into a “nem.” Then you dip it in peanut sauce and enjoy. Bánh khoai is a fried rice flour pancake filled with bean sprouts, pork and shrimp. So greasy and delicious.

Desserts in Hue are fantastic. I had my first glass of chè–a gooey, gloppy drink that originated in Hue–on a street corner near the Perfume River. The drink consists of crushed ice and coconut milk plus whatever else the chè-maker feels like throwing into the glass that day. You drink/eat chè with a spoon, and each bite tastes different. In the photo, the chè on the right contained red beans, sweet corn and tapioca, among various other ingredients. At another chè place, we had chè xoa xoa, which, according to our Vietnemese friends³, literally translates as “chè touch touch.” Chè touch touch consists of a bunch of colorful jello-like squares⁴. I also tried chè heo quay, which is essentially a glass of crushed ice and coconut milk with about 6-8 pork dumplings thrown in. Pork in a dessert drink confused my tastebuds, but didn’t stop me from gulping it down. We also tried lotus chè and banana chè, both refreshing and a little less extreme.

Another popular drink is nước mía, or sugarcane juice. Ours came in a clear plastic bag, like the kind goldfish come in, with a straw sticking out. The best thing about nước mía is that the stands are easy to spot: you just look for a bucket of sugarcane stalks next to a metal crank-powered stalk-crushing machine. (Lucky for us, in the last week or so a few chè and nước mía stands have popped up on our street in Hanoi.)

We also found some scrumptious candy. One is a gooey sesame seed-covered square⁵, and the other is a tiny peanut bar⁶ that tastes sort of like a Payday, minus the sticky caramel part.

1. known as bánh xèo in Hanoi and Saigon [↩]
2. This sauce is made from shrimp paste (mắm tôm) mixed with garlic, chilies, and caster sugar [↩]
3. or, rather, according to their guesses, which were presented in the form of song lyrics [↩]
4. We all agreed that the name must refer to the interesting way these squares feel in one’s mouth [↩]
5. kẹo mè xửng [↩]
6. kẹo đậu [↩]