After coming to Hoi An for the first time 8 years ago, I have "pocketed" for myself the dishes that always remind me of this land. In retrospect, it was the year that the Faculty of Tourism of the University organized an annual experience program for third-year students of the Faculty. It was indeed a memorable trip, also the first time I "fell in love" with Hoi An and continued to come back many times after that.
Hoi An Chicken Rice
At the top of this list, I choose chicken rice. Chicken rice is cooked with glutinous rice and dry, dull rice, not soft and crumbly like the rice I often eat in the North. After washing the rice, it will be mixed with a little turmeric to create an eye-catching light yellow color and then cooked with chicken broth. Thus, the rice is both delicious and sweet, and the broth is not wasted. Boiled chicken, torn to taste. What blends rice and chicken is sweet and sour chili fish sauce, poured on rice when full of rice, chicken, onions, onions and accompanying pickles. A bowl of broth next to it to sip when feeling dry is indispensable.
Regarding the address to eat this dish, I usually don't choose a fixed address, but I will try it in a different row each time. Once, I borrowed a cup from a friend to drive 50km to Tam Ky to try chicken rice at a local shop.
Photo: Shutterstock
Cam Kim grilled stingray
Cam Kim is a commune separated from Hoi An city by the Thu Bon River. Once, cycling across the Cam Kim Bridge, we searched the end of the road to find a shop that was still open on a persistent rainy day at the beginning of the year.
To make this grilled stingray, the processor will use salt to wash the fish, remove all the intestines, then spread it along the fish body so that when marinated, the spices are evenly absorbed. Whole fish will be marinated with a mixture of turmeric, garlic, pepper, and salted fish sauce. The fish is not grilled directly with charcoal, but alternately arranged between 2 layers of turmeric leaves, covering the whole fish.
The way to eat grilled fish is to take a piece of rice paper, wrap it with raw vegetables of all kinds with 1 piece of fish meat that is both tender and chewy, dipped in sweet and sour sauce or fish sauce. It's delicious!
Photo: @Pam, Foody
Stir-fried mussel smashed cake Cam Nam
The 3rd dish on this list is stir-fried mussel smash cake, a suitable snack in the afternoon. In fact, people call it banh bang because of its way of eating. When eating this dish, people use crispy baked thin rice cakes and freshly coated wet cakes, put 2 types of cakes on top of each other, and then smash them into small pieces. After that, scoop on top of the mussels, although they are as small as the tip of chopsticks, but the meat is tender and fragrant, stir-fried with green onions, spinach, dried onions, and then sprinkled with a little peanuts on top. The rice cake comes with sweet and sour chili fish sauce, but I personally prefer to break the rice cake with mussels, because that way I can feel the crispiness of the rice cake and it is very suitable for the fleshy taste of the mussels.
Photo: Foody
Cup cake
Every time I visit Hoi An, I stop by a tiny cake shop outside the center of Hoi An, located on the section of Tran Phu adjacent to Phan Chau Trinh. In addition to this shop, I am sure you can easily find many cake shops in a small city of less than 60 km2.
Banh beo is a rice flour mixed with a little tapioca flour, pre-poured in beautiful small flower cups. The seller steamed both the bowl and the cake in a large bowl, when the customer ate, he lifted the cake, poured it on the cake with gelatinous shrimp sauce, and the high floor ram. When eating, just pour a little sweet fish sauce, add a little chili sauce and enjoy. It is because of this quick enjoyment that when I come to the restaurant when I am hungry, I can "smash" all 10 cups of duckweed cakes.
Photo: @Pam, Internet
You can spend a full day enjoying all 4 of the above dishes if you don't have much time in Hoi An. Grilled chicken and stingray rice is suitable for lunch/dinner, while the afternoon snacks are duckweed cake and stir-fried mussel smashed cake.
Synthetic Migo