Cao Bang Cuisine

Cao Bang is also a land of cuisine, with the distinctive taste of the mountain and people’s warmth. Hot rice roll soused with bone broth and sour noodles are some examples of Cao Bang’s cuisine. Rice roll and noodle in Cao Bang have typical tastes that are different from those in other areas. The rice roll is leathery and has delicious smell because it is made of Cao Bang’s high quality rice; it is also mixed with the bone broth cooked with chili, bamboo shoot, Vietnamese curry and cardamom fruits. Sour noodle is more difficult to make, because it is a harmonious mixture of noodle, cassava vermicelli, sweet potatoes, ground pork and some pork fat, fried pig stomach shredded into small pieces; the dish is then soused with chili vinegar and peanut.

Cao Bang cuisine is also famous for dishes made from pork, such as pork marinated with sour rice flour in Bao Lam and Bao Lac, grilled pork or pork rolled in Vietnamese curry leaves in Quang Uyen, roast duck, and roast pork stuffed with Vietnamese curry leaf. The Cao Bang people skillfully combine diverse sources spices from the forest to create many special delicacies such as bees fried with bamboo shoots, sour fish hotpot, aromatic black diamond-shaped sticky rice, fried Tau Quay “stone moss”, chestnut green sticky rice, sweet short cake etc. These dishes are often enjoyed with Lau Pang wine of Ha Quang district (the wine is distilled from the powder of perennial arenga pinnata on limestone mountains, fermented by agarwood fruit. The powder is kept underground for a month, and when autumn comes, it is taken out to be coated in the dew before being distilled).

Hot rice rolls soused with pig bone broth

Sour noodles

Trung Khanh chestnut

Diamond-shaped sticky rice

Marinated roast pork

Sweet short cake