The best Thai food in Vietnam

There’s a bit of Thailand in Vietnam’s mountainous Northwest – travellers reckon a trip into the hills isn’t complete without trying the local food, |and they happen to be Thai specialities.

On our trip earlier this month to Dien Bien Phu, we were taken for a wonderful dining experience in the village of Noong Chun in Nam Thanh district, home to members of the Thai Dam ethnic minority that’s spread across Southeast Asia.

Vietnamese in general like to share their meals, and every dish provides enough food for a few people – apart from big-city office workers who get lunch with everything on one plate. When you go out of town you need to go in a group of five to six to truly try everything special about a region or an ethnic cuisine.

We were five in number plus a local couple, Vu Van Phu and his wife, with their two sons. They took us to a village that offers home-stays for a Thai dinner. The main stilt-house restaurant was fully booked, so we carried on to another place where Phu produced a big jar of strong, locally distilled rice liquor and poured the contents into a soup bowl in the middle of the table. We had to dip thumb-tip-sized ceramic cups into the bowl to get our share.

“Please,” his wife said after the first round, “let me shake your hand!” Handshaking after each shot is the custom in the mountains, part of a “drinking test” that ensures warm camaraderie. And, for the first time, I shook hands with my co-worker, with whom I’d worked for more than 20 years!

The dinner was packed with Thai Dam dishes, a feast of colours, ingredients and spices, downed with the strong rice liquor.

Anyone used to starting with crispy shrimp rolls at restaurants in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City has the local Thai equivalent here, made from taro and tapioca, varying in colour from yellow and white to pale purple.

The second dish was roasted buffalo skin, finely sliced and mixed with mac khen seeds and other seasonings. It’s chewy and well seasoned.

We’d come anticipating the Hoa Ban (Orchid Tree) Festival, which affords a chance to see gorgeous flowers cultivated by members of a local botany club – but also means the food is in high demand and the service suffers. “Please bear with us,” restaurant owner Lo Van Phong kept saying, smiling sincerely and profusely apologetic at the same time.

The cuisine of the Northwest, which is home to vast bamboo forests, includes the best bamboo-shoot dishes. We had stir-fried bamboo with a strong bitter taste that lingered but gradually turned sweet in the mouth.

Another popular snack while drinking is smoked shredded pork, but we also wanted to sample the signature orchid-petals salad. Unfortunately a chill in January had curtailed the blossoms, so there weren’t enough to make the dish.

A Thai meal often includes a fish dish called pa pinh top. It’s a whole fish well marinated with local seasonings, chopped green onions and ginger and grilled over charcoal.

The most inviting dish I’ve ever seen on a Thai table was the chicken stew in a whole pumpkin. The sweet flavour of the pumpkin added amazing taste to the chicken. To end the feast we had taro stew and sour beef soup with la lom. The sour taste refreshes the palate after so much rich food. But there was also the beautiful sight of white and purple mountain sticky rice begging for one more bite. The rice is squeezed into a long bun and then dipped in a salty mix.

The bill for nine people was 1.3 million dong – just over Bt2,000. The larger the group, the less you pay and the more dishes you get to try.

And, since we hadn’t been able to finish all the food, we took leftovers back to our hotel. 

In the courtyard outside, people were enjoying a performance of Thai and Mong music and dance, with Phong, the restaurant owner, playing host and even singing a song.

 

RESERVATION

< Lo Van Phong Noong Chun Cultural Village in Dien Bien Phu’s Nam Thanh district City can be reached at (096) 711 1232.