Da Nang’s rich and delicious cuisine has carved out a solid position among international friends from all four corners of the world.

The Da Nang Culinary Culture Association organises a culinary exchange activity with the US Navy delegation in June 2023. Photo: VAN HOANG

Culinary ambassadors

After finishing as a runner up at the 'MasterChef Viet Nam 2015 ' cooking contest, Pham Thi Tuyet, hailing from Quang Nam Province, and her colleagues have chosen Da Nang as a stopover and written a culinary story called "Mi Quang" from the brand Nu Do Kitchen.

With her special love and dedication to her homeland's specialty, plus her sensitive sense of taste, Mrs. Tuyet has brought new life into Quang noodles and promoted the traditional dish of Quang people to many international tourists.

After nearly 5 years of operation, about 60% of visitors to the Nu Do Kitchen from foreign countries, especially Europe, the US, Australia and South Korea, are conquered by the flavour of Quang noodles.

According to Mrs. Tuyet, the selection of local ingredients is a prerequisite to introduce a delicious dish rich in regional identity to tourists. She also added that chefs just need to "infuse" stories about culinary cultural values during the processing process to create "love" with tourists. The most important thing is that the stories conveyed must be realistic, originating from the people, land and indigenous culinary culture. The purpose is that diners not only feel the chef's enthusiasm but also understand the value of the food.

Mrs. Tuyet believes that cuisine is one of the factors that retain tourists and make them choose to come back a second time. Therefore, the use of local ingredients and traditional flavours to transform into international flavours that suit modern tastes is an important factor.

Above all, the dish must be fragrant, rich and flavourful, creating a new but familiar feeling for international tourists. That is Ms. Tuyet's guideline and accumulated experience when experiencing and interacting with many cultures, people, and cuisines in the world.

Mrs. Tuyet expressed her belief that young people with an open mind and strong love for their homeland will be the golden generation to continue the mission of spreading the unique and impressive cuisine of Quang Nam Province and Da Nang to their international friends.

Mrs. Huynh Thi Thu Thuy, Director of the Ba Ba Hoi Cooperative in Tam Ky City, Quang Nam Province, highlighted that cuisine is a bridge connecting tourists with the locality and each person plays the role of a cuisine "ambassador".

Introducing dishes with strong homeland flavours to international friends is not only an opportunity to bring regional and indigenous culture to the world but also create a brand of local and Vietnamese cuisine in general.

With that enthusiasm, the Ba Ba Hoi Cooperative has linked and cooperated with the LNS International JSC to officially distribute products of ‘ca nuc rim’, ‘banh chung’, frog Quang noodles, and ‘ca bong rim’ (braised goby fish) to the US, European and New Zealand markets.

"Although Vietnamese cuisine is very diverse and unique, only a few typical dishes such as ‘pho’ or ‘banh mi’ are positioned on the world culinary map. Therefore, the export of homeland dishes to international markets not only introduces nutritious and delicious dishes but also demonstrates the creative process and quintessence of Quang cuisine" Mrs. Thuy said.

Runner-up of MasterChef Viet Nam 2015 Pham Thi Tuyet (centre) takes a photo with chefs from the US Navy delegation in June 2023. Photo: VAN HOANG

​Let Da Nang cuisine reach out to the world

According to Mrs. Tuyet, Da Nang has great advantages to develop culinary tourism. However, the city is in need of active support from local government, and joint efforts of the culinary business community and local people as well in a bid to effectively make good use of available advantages.

She also highlights the necessity for the city to create "signatures" and characteristics of dishes with the sustainable development of brands, as well as issue a set of evaluation criteria and organise competitions to support culinary brands in promoting local cuisine to domestic and international tourists.

Besides, she proposes the city to gather a team of experts with deep understanding of cooking, flavour and business to support Da Nang to realise its goal of turning itself into one of the best culinary destination in the world.

Mr. Ly Dinh Quan, the Chairman of the Da Nang Culinary Culture Association, recognised that some of the city's outstanding dishes have caught the “green eyes” of gourmets around the world. Therefore, he underlined a must-do for Da Nang to converge the resources of many related organisations to create its own culinary brand by exploiting and gathering knowledge to position own dishes associated with cultural origins, indigenous advantages, resources, and people. This will help build a database of dishes and a framework of standards and processing processes, thereby creating a culinary cultural asset for Da Nang.

On the other hand, the establishment of a team of chefs and culinary cultural artisans is the goal that the city needs to aim for. However, training a young generation of talented chefs and artisans to promote the development of local cuisine is a big challenge in the era of world integration.

Therefore, he underlined the need for the city to harmonise local culture with integration factors through thinking, acting, and orienting culinary culture based on emotional and intellectual factors, multicultural cohesion, hereby creating favorable for local brands to go farther and develop more.

To realise its goal of making Da Nang culinary culture become a global brand, it is necessary for the city to build an ecosystem where resources: the government, schools, training facilities and tourism and culinary associations, converge. In particular, businesses, chefs, artisans, and culinary culture experts play a vital role in forming the ecosystem, promoting the big factors of food - talent - chefs (human resources).

“An ecosystem needs pioneers, leaders, entrepreneurs, responsible educators, to cooperate and work towards common goals to solve major challenges in the process of bringing Da Nang culinary culture to the world level", Mr. Quan emphasised.

Reporting by VAN HOANG - Translating by M.DUNG