Hue Cooking and Royal Dishes

Hue cooks in small portions and a great many of them, a habit left over from court kitchens where a meal meant dozens of dishes, each a mouthful, arranged rather than simply served. The everyday version is a table of banh: banh beo, steamed rice cakes in individual saucers topped with dried shrimp and crackling, banh nam pressed flat in a leaf, banh loc of clear tapioca wrapped around a whole shrimp. The famous bowl is bun bo Hue, a beef and lemongrass broth sharpened with fermented shrimp paste and served with pork knuckle and thick round noodles. Com hen, rice with tiny clams and their broth, is the cheap local breakfast.

What you actually see

• Banh beo - rice cakes served in stacks of small saucers, eaten with a flat spoon.
• Bun bo Hue - lemongrass beef broth with thick round noodles, fiercely spiced.
• Com hen - cold rice, tiny clams, herbs and crackling, the clam broth served alongside.
• Temple vegetarian food - com chay cooked in Hue's pagodas on lunar full moon days.

When to go

Spring, February to April, comes before the summer heat and well clear of the autumn rains, which are heavy here. Com hen is a breakfast dish; the banh shops open in the late afternoon and evening. On the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month much of the city eats vegetarian, and the pagoda kitchens and vegetarian shops are at their busiest.

Honest expectations

Bun bo Hue is genuinely hot and the fermented shrimp paste is pungent enough to defeat some people at the first spoonful. The saucers of banh are tiny and the bill adds up faster than it looks. Royal-style banquets with staff in court costume are aimed squarely at tour groups and cost many times what the same food costs in a shop.

Nearby

Dong Ba market on the north bank sells the same dishes from stalls on its upper floor.