Cuisine in Quan Ho land

Bac Ninh is the cradle of Kinh Bac’s culture with ancient villages, traditional festivals and sweet Quan Ho folk songs that attract many people. Cuisine in this land is, therefore, as charming and seductive as the charm of Quan Ho’s people.

Kinh Bac – Bac Ninh is not only known for its thousand-year-ago civilization with countless talented intellects but also loved by many for its special and impressive cuisines with more than 1,000 specialties, dozens of banquets (for wedding, celebration, Lunar Tet, festival, commune’s activities… and even competition), 39 types of cake, 25 types of sweetened porridge and steamed sticky rice, 12 types of drinks.

To cook dishes and prepare for different kinds of feasts, Kinh Bac people mainly use their self-supplied ingredients, making use of delicious and special breeds of rice and other native food products. However, the core of the cuisine lies in the cooking art and techniques which belong to Bac Ninh women. They are famous for both talents in trading, social activities and house work. Among those, women of Noi Due stand out as the best, like the folk sayings go:

“For long, girls of local village

Are both proficient in housework and most talented

Good at weaving, skilled at cooking

They also travel North-South to do the trading”

Setting your foot on every local villages of Quan Ho land, tourists easily see simple and ordinary dishes artistically prepared and cooked with unique and unforgettable flavours such as Phu The cake of Dinh Bang (specially used in weddings and symbolizing the bride and the groom), white wine of Cam Giang, freshwater-eel cassava vermicelli of Tam Tao, Chung and Day cake of Yen Vy (symbolizing the earth and the sun), Te cake of Cho (boiled rice flour mixed with pork, onion, ear mushroom), chicken of Ho, nem of Bui Xa (pork hash wrapped in banana leaf), tofu of Tra Lam, and ground bean sauces of Dinh To. Few places can have so many competitions of making steamed chicken sticky rice and vegetarian dishes in Lim, 3-layer banquet arrangement in Dao Xa, Chung and Day cakes in Yen Vy, various dishes of chicken for Gods in Lac Tho (Thuan Thanh), combinations of steamed sticky rice-cone-shaped rice cake- fruits for Buddhists in Dai Bi temple festival (Gia Binh), and rice-cooking art in Do temple.

Kinh Bac – Bac Ninh with its cultural and socio-economic development and other folk traditional festivals as well as abundant stores of original specialties will surely be an attractive destination for tourists.