Phu Yen Province along the central coast offers a variety of unique and exotic dishes like Hoa Da girdle cake, dit leaf sour soup, ocean tuna and fresh seacooking from O Loan lagoon.

Homemade food

The Hoa Da girdle cake is made and sold to other parts of the country from An My Commune village in Tuy An District. About 30 percent of households here live by making girdle cakes.

Steamed giant perch

Delicious cakes are thick, uniform and well dried in the sun. The cakes are very fragrant when they are grilled on hot charcoal and not sticky when dipped into water.

Local people here make many kinds of delicious dishes but the best is girdle cake rolled with boiled pork and raw vegetables picked from the village fields and dipped in fish sauce made from East Sea fish.

Hoa Da girdle cake is also a popular gift that people usually give their friends and relatives.

In the mountainous communes of Tuy An and Son Hoa District, they prepare a special sour soup with dit leaves, growing abundantly in these areas.

Glutinous rice steamed with dove meat

Dit leaves can be cooked with fish, crab and jungle birds to make various kinds of sour soups. The most favorite method is to cook with fresh chicken and serve with a mixture of fish sauce and chopped forest chilies accompanied with a strong drink.

The sourness of dit leaves and the greasy sweetness of chicken combined with hot forest chilies create an unforgettable flavor.

An Dinh Commune of Tuy An District is well-known for its tasty and healthy dish of steamed glutinous rice cooked with young dove meat.

Fresh seafood

O Loan is a beautiful part of Phu Yen Province offering various kinds of seafood like fish, crab, shrimps and oyster.

Mai fish salad

Oyster is a specialty here with local residents diving to catch oysters all year round. Oysters are most delicious and numerous at the end of spring and the beginning of summer, when they are found clinging on to coral reefs and stones under the water.

The outer appearance of an oyster looks like a stone but the meat inside is delicious. To marinate you immerse them in vinegar, simmer with unripe banana and cook with red beans to create an unforgettable taste of this well-known Phu Yen food. During the season, O Loan oysters are sold throughout the country.

Besides, O Loan lagoon has the mai fish, found between March to July. An unique dish made from this fish is fish salad.

The fresh fish heads and womb are cut-off. The fish meat is then soaked in salt water to marinate for a while. Spices are added to make the fish salad including lemon, roasted peanuts, basil, coriander, green tomatoes, green banana and star fruit.

Tuna fish fried with citronella and chilly

Phu Yen is also the capital of ocean tuna, which is cooked into many kinds of grilled dishes dipped in mustard, fried with chilly and citronella. The fried tuna is very delicious as it tastes crisp, greasy and fragrant and has a sweet flavor of fresh fish.

In Tuy Hoa town, many chem fish (giant perch) are found in caves in the brackish waters of river mouths, canals and lagoons especially in shrimp breeding lagoons.

Visitors never forget to enjoy steamed chem fish with spring onions when they come to Tuy Hoa. The fish is mixed with spices and put into pots on a mini gas oven to cook until it boils, then added with scallion, vermicelli and water dropwort.

Steamed Chem fish would be most delicious when served hot with girdle cake and raw vegetable.

Source: Thanh Nien