One of the best ways to earn tourists’ hearts is specialty food. Currently, cuisine is considered an important and indispensable tourism product which can not be overlooked. Phu Yen Food Culture Festival - 2017 has just taken place with the purpose of finding and making traditional food excellent with bold culture identities of Phu Yen, hence promoting and introducing them to tourists.

Super Chef Ly Sanh commenting on dishes at the cuisine festival

19 teams participated in Phu Yen Food Culture Festival-2017, including 10 teams of hotels (group B) and 9 teams of districts, towns and city (group A). The reason the organizers divided them into two groups was to delineate between professional and amateur chefs. In group of Culture and Information Divisions of districts, towns and city, semiprofessional chefs brought to the festival special cuisine with traditional dishes made from local materials. Especially, as for mountainous districts, chefs have taken a lot of investment in researching and caring for daily life food of ethnic minorities such as “boi” soup, anabas and yellow ants cooked with sauce, beef fried with cassava leaves...

Each team brought a menu with regional specialties in local aroma, making the judges discuss and give many criteria to decide the champion. "The teams have brought delicious and appetizing dishes. The organizing board must mark more contents of raw material processing, cooking process, hygiene and setting the table to evaluate" said super chef Ly Sanh, chairman of Sai Gon professional chef association cum chair of judges at Phu Yen Food Culture Festival - 2017. Finally, the team of Culture and Information Division of Son Hoa district is the winner at the festival.

While teams of districts, towns and city competed with their local dishes, the group of restaurants, hotels was a real competition of professional chefs. Each team had 1 hour for 3 main courses and desserts: appetizer, meat and seafood (encouraging choosing Phu Yen specialties such as ocean tuna, blood cockles, oysters, chickens and ocean tuna eyes) which have been recognized in Top Famous Vietnamese Foods by Vietnam Record Organization. As a result, Hung Vuong Hotel team was the winner with the menu: featherback fish and oyster with green pepper sauce, duck in lotus and fried ocean tuna eye.

Also joining the festival and enjoying the food, Miss Asia Beauty 2017 Nguyen Dang Tuong Linh let known: "This is the first time I have known and enjoyed so many home specialties. They are all delicious and appetizing. I will not forget the flavors of these dishes and will promote more about special cuisine of Nau land to friends and visitors”. Commenting on the dishes as well as skills of chefs, super chef Ly Sanh said: "The food at the festival have bold traditional identity and are raised into delicious and appetizing dishes which meet the high demands of enjoyment of gourmet tourists”.

Source: Phu Yen Newspaper

Translated by KHUONG THAO