Hue Culinary Tour At Night

Overview

The Nguyen Dynasty contributed a lot to Vietnamese culture during their 143-year rule in Hue, but arguably none more so than in the realm of food. The untold wealth of Vietnam’s 13 different kings, along with their general love for extravagance, meant that chefs in the Imperial Citadel of Hue were provided with ingredients and allowed free reign for anything that they wanted to experiment with. The Hue Night Culinary Tour takes you through some of the eventuating creations, ones that have become popular at street level in Hue and around the country.

We take you through the history of Hue’s food culture, discovering foods that once graced the tables of the royal court. We take a guided tour by cyclo around Hue, stopping at various restaurants and street carts on the way and trying some of the fantastic offerings they have here. Between crispy fried pancakes, pork with lemongrass, clam soup with noodles and a sweet coconut dessert, you will be sure to find something that tickles your taste buds, just as they were in the Imperial Citadel 200 years ago.

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Places you’ll see

Hue

Highlights

Exploring the gorgeous city of Hue by cyclo at night
Eating our way around the ancient capital, discovering some of the food enjoyed by the dynastic kings of the 19th and early 20th centuries
Learning of the local food culture from our guide, as well as some demonstrations on how to prepare some dishes

Itinerary

Activities: Touring around several restaurants, trying Bánh Bèo, Cơm Hến, Nem Lụi and chè amongst many other nationally popular dishes that originated in Hue.

Our guide will pick you up at 18.00 pm via cyclo and take you to the first stop of your Hue Night Culinary Tour, Hang Me. This is a restaurant specializing in some of the special cakes historically served as finger food in the royal court, including bánh bèo, bánh ram ít, bánh ướt and many others.

Climb back into the cyclo to head to Hen Island, a long spit of land in the Perfume River famous for clams rather than chickens (hến is the word for baby clams). We will enjoy some of Hue’s signature clam dishes here, namely clam rice (cơm hến) and clam noodles (bún hến).

We head down the riverside, along Le Loi Street, where we can find several examples of Hue’s popular coconut milk dessert that quickly found an audience around the entire country. Chè can be any combination of tapioca, jelly, mung beans and fruit sitting in sweet coconut milk, and it provides the perfect ending to any royal banquet.

After tucking into a bowl of chè, we head down Dinh Tien Hoang Street and discover some of Hue’s most social food offerings, Bánh Khoai and Nem Lụi. The latter of these involves rolling your own meat in rice paper, along with vegetables, and dunking it in the peanut or chili sauce.

Our tour ends with a final cyclo ride in the romantic evening atmosphere that befalls Hue each night. We will head past the Imperial Citadel and the Trang Tien Bridge, looking out for Hue’s iconic souvenirs to buy, such as conical hats, Vietnamese dresses (áo dài), sesame sweets and Minh Mang wine.

The cyclo will pull up to your hotel at about 22.00 pm and your Hue Day Trip will finish. Thank you so much for joining us on this romantic night exploration of Hue’s fantastic culinary offerings. We very much hope to see you again on another one of our tours in the future!

Meals: Dinner