5 delicious dishes for your vacation in Tam Dao

Beef with ant bites

This dish is prepared in a very strange way: hanging a hot piece of beef on a tree trunk, right in front of an ant nest for the ants to sting, then washing it with diluted salt water and grilling it over charcoal. Each type of ant brings a different flavor to the beef, so every time you enjoy it, you will find this interesting dish strange.

The dipping sauce is made from corn sauce, bean sauce, minced ginger and sugar. When eating, cut the meat into bite-sized pieces and sandwich it with green bananas and Vietnamese coriander. This dish is available in specialty restaurants, priced at around VND350,000/kg. Photo: citinews

Grilled clay-wrapped hill chicken

The free-range chickens and bantam chickens raised on the mountains have firm, chewy, sweet meat. They are processed into steamed chicken, roasted chicken, honey-grilled chicken, but the most attractive dish is grilled hill chicken wrapped in clay.

Clean the chicken, wrap it in a layer of lotus leaves and then a thick layer of clay, grill it over charcoal until the clay turns black and starts to crack, then the chicken is cooked. Shred the chicken while it is still hot and dip it in salt, pepper and lemon, the chilly evening in Tam Dao mountain town will become much warmer. Photo: kenhdulich

Wild boar meat

If you travel in a group or with family, you can order a tray of wild boar with many ways of preparation: steamed, stir-fried, grilled, or with plum sauce... Wild boar grows up on wild vegetables, so the more you chew, the sweeter the meat becomes. There is nothing more enjoyable than eating it while sipping on rice wine.

You can also visit the market and order some skewers of hill pork, grilled and eaten on the spot for about 15,000 VND/skewer, add a tube of grilled bamboo rice and you have a perfect dinner. Photo: btrip

Rice rolls

This simple dish in Tam Dao is often called "banh cuon". There is not much difference compared to banh cuon in the plains, but the flour is milled from upland rice grown on the mountain, so it is much more fragrant. The cake also has minced pork and wood ear filling. The unique point is the side dish, the most suitable is grilled skewered hill pork. In addition, Tam Dao people also eat banh cuon with fried eggs, chicken soup, boiled meat. Photo: 24h

Black sticky rice

The ethnic people in Tam Dao cook sticky rice with water from the leaves of the lau xau tree and the crushed banh te leaves, creating a natural, dark green color. The delicious sticky rice is soaked for 2-3 days so that the grains swell and become round, fragrant and soft. Black sticky rice is good for digestion, replenishes blood, and cures headaches and illnesses, so it is not only a dish but also a medicine.

In addition, in Tam Dao there are also five-color sticky rice made from rom fruit, gardenia fruit... Photo: dulichtamdao

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