Some dishes are so famous they are known and served the world over. From the cuisine, the country becomes well-known, and so does Vietnam. Vietnamese street food such as Pho, Banh mi, Banh xeo (crispy pancake), Banh cuon (steamed rice rolls),... are being enjoyed across the globe and the story of travelling dishes pleasing the whole world is amazing as the dishes are delicious.

Dishes are invented in every region of Vietnam and they can wow people worldwide by their looks, their tastes and even their origins. Dishes play as an ambassador introducing the region. Specifically, the cuisine of Ha Giang karst plateau shows how unique this land is.

Ha Giang is not only famous for its majestic and charming mountainous landscape, golden terraced fields in the ripe rice season, romantic buckwheat flower fields, brilliant with bright pink colours or unique traditional cultural identity, but also a convergence of diverse and rich culinary elites with specialties.

Ha Giang dishes such as five-colour sticky rice, buckwheat cakes, leaf-fermented corn wine, grilled stone moss, hunchback chung cake, sausages, Thang Co… are culinary quintessence originating from the living and working process of the community of 19 ethnic groups here which have many traditional dishes, with characteristic nuances of each ethnic group and unique processing ingredients gifted by nature to the northern mountainous region of the country such as: mac khen (zanthoxylum rhetsa), doi seeds, star anise, cardamom, honey.

Au Tau porridge

The bowl of porridge has a fatty taste mixed with a bit of bitterness from au tau, a delicious smell from chicken eggs and accompanying herbs. Au tau is a typical tuber of Ha Giang. The Mong people soak au tau in rice water, then simmer them for about 4-5 hours. Then puree, cook with bone broth and yellow flower sticky rice mixed with a little regular sticky rice. When the porridge is cooked, it will be scooped into a bowl and eaten with minced lean meat, salt, pepper and scallions. Au Tau is a nutritious dish that cures colds, aches and pains… During cold winter days in the rocky mountains, enjoying a bowl of hot, nutritious Au Tau porridge is definitely an unforgettable experience

Thang Co

Thang Co means meat soup, a traditional dish of the Mong people, made from horse meat with a very unique flavour. Nowadays, to suit tourists, the restaurant owner has replaced the ingredients with buffalo, cow, and pork meat. The essence of Thang Co is in the broth, simmered from bones and organs and mixed with 12 typical spices such as star anise, cardamom and lemon leaves... creating a fragrant pot of broth. The meat will be lightly fried and then placed in broth to simmer until soft. It is often eaten with Men Men, grilled corn cakes and corn wine.

Five-colour sticky rice

This dish appears in mostly all ethnic minorities in the mountainous regions of Northern Vietnam. In a nutshell, the thing that creates the colour of the rice is not chemical substance but the natural leaves. The five colours of the dish represent the five elements of life in the Vietnamese's belief: yellow is earth, green is plant, red is fire, white is metal, and black is water. People believe that the existence of these five elements create the well-being of heaven, the earth and humans.

Buckwheat cake

The tiny seeds were crushed into fine powder and then mixed with water, poured into a soft mould rolled into bread, simple but special. The taste will not be confused with any other cake.

Visitors to Ha Giang to experience buckwheat flower paradise should not miss the opportunity to enjoy specialties made from buckwheat seeds that are delicious, unique, and popular such as: All kinds of cakes, pho, beer, noodles, dry rice vermicelli, wine. Buckwheat is a flowering herb with many colours of white, pink, purple, and red, and has long been famous as one of the symbolic flowers of Ha Giang.

Hunchback chung cake

Hunchback chung cake is known as a famous dish of the Red Dao people in particular and the Ha Giang region in general. The cake contains upland sticky rice, small green beans, black pork raised mainly by local people, and galangal leaves to wrap. Hunchback chung cake is boiled for about 8-10 hours. Local people boil cakes using traditional wood stoves.

On the journey to explore the karst plateau, visitors can also enjoy other wonderful dishes such as: Dong Van steamed rice rolls, Dong Van egg steamed rice rolls, Bac Me bamboo-tube rice, dried buffalo meat, sour pho, corn pho, thang den (stuffed sticky rice balls)...