Local cuisine

Local cuisine a specialty at Red House

For those Da Nang city goers who have had their fill of seafood and want to try traditional food, the best advice is find out where the Vietnamese eat and follow them. Thanh Ha reports.

Da Nang is a popular summertime destination. This city in the central region offers not only sun, sand and sea but also seafood, which, in my opinion, is the best around.

However, after a week tasting the menu of the ocean, the traditional cuisine of rice, vegetables and pork was something ‘special' my family was craving.

Following a taxi driver's suggestion we came to the Nha Do (Red House) restaurant on Phan Boi Chau Street for a late lunch at 2pm. We were afraid that there would be nothing left, but behind the door, friendly and enthusiastic waiters were still serving fresh and delicious food.

While we waited for our orders to come, we were served sour and peppery-hot sliced cabbage and peanuts.

The pickles were refreshing, especially since we had just come back from the hot and sunny My Khe beach.

The sour and spicy tastes renewed us from the exhausting drive, while the peppery-hot flavours awakened our taste buds, making us surprisingly hungry.

We finished the small dish of pickles so quickly that we asked for a double next time.

The main course came only 10 minutes later, familiar dishes from home that nonetheless made our mouths water: a dish of fried sweet potato greens with garlic, a plate of sweet and sour ribs, a pot of pork braised with soybean jam and a bowl of basa fish soup with vegetables.

Each person got his own impressive clay pot of rice as well. The pots were a well-thought out idea of the owner; they could keep the rice warm longer and intrigued people with a unique design.

What's more, chay, the clay pot contained a crispy bottom crust of rice, which to many people, was a speciality.

In the time of electrical rice cookers, crispy crust is rare. It is mainly found only in families who cook rice in iron pots by electric or wood stoves.

Elders like my mother really enjoy the crispy crust. She could have it instead of rice and eat it with a bowl of fish sauce mixed with limejuice and chilli. This time it was ideal to have the crispy crust with the sauce from the pork braised with soybean jam.

The kids enjoyed taking all the chay out of the pot, although it took some time as it was firmly glued to the bottom.

Looking at the scene, I recalled that in Da Nang there was com dap. This special dish is of rice in another kind of earthenware pot. To serve it, the waiter must break the pot, completely surprising all.

Everyone waited anxiously for the food, and an exclamation of "OH" was released when they saw the waiter coming with the small pot. He juggled the pot using a bamboo cooking-pot holder and two large flat chopsticks. It could have been a circus performance.

It was not only the kids who forgot who they were for a full five minutes; the adults got lost in the show as well. The man then threw the pot high into the air and broke it with one hand while the other caught the rice that perfectly fell on the plate.

The attractive show received excited "bravos" from us and the other customers at surrounding tables.

Com dap is cooked in an earthenware pot submerged in a large fire to ensure the rice does not burn but still gets a yellowish crispy crust.

A waiter told me that the show is a speciality of the restaurant. There are only two to three waiters trained to do this. If we had come only a little later, we would have missed the com dap performance because that waiter's shift would have been over.

"We want to serve something different from the seafood widely offered in many restaurants here. We also want to create a home environment for those travelling far from their homes," said Vu Minh Han, manager of Red House restaurant chain.

"At our place, we have dishes with origins in the North and the South and in between. For example, we've got goby braised in clay pot, soup of field crab and malabar nightshade which goes perfectly with pickled eggplants," Han said.

"All our ingredients are bought from their original places and transported here everyday to make sure our customers are served the best food at reasonable prices."

The owner of the restaurant also pays attention to the decoration: bamboo and exposed brick in combination with wooden patterns.

A garden and fish pond is set up near the main entrance, creating a comfortable feel for visitors. It seemed to serve the definition of feng shui (the science of winds and waters).

"Our customers are mostly Vietnamese because we offer local food, but we occasionally have foreigners who also wonderfully praise our cuisine," Han said.

We left the restaurant after the satisfying meal of good food and an extraordinary service performance. The manager bid farewell with promises of all the specials waiting for us in the next visit. — VNS