Food and drink in Hue

Hue City possesses a good number of specialties and it's well worth giving them a go.

Start at the Mandarin Cafe (12 Hung Vuong St) and try the banh khoai. Banh khoai is a corn yellow coloured fried pancake using egg and rice flour stuffed with shrimp, beansprouts, and pork slices, served with a sweet, salty peanut and sesame dip called nuoc leo if that doesn't do the trick try it at Lac Thien (6 Dinh Tien Hoang St) a restaurant famous for it's own take on Hue food. There it is a completely different beauty, packed full of fillings and served with the all important star fruit, green banana, lettuce and mint that cut through the oily taste. The greens aren't the only difference, the whole pancake was then wrapped in rice paper and dunked in a far superior version of nuoc leo.

Hue is rightly famous for it's noodle dishes so try my xao bo, crispy noodles with papaya and green beans or bun bo Hue, which is a soupy concoction of beef, pork, glass noodles, cabbage, bean sprouts, citronella, basil, and green beans with a good kick of garlic and chili and a bowl of bun bo at Lac Thien - pretty much the same as the bun bo Hue, minus the cabbage and with rice noodles instead of the glass noodles - really good stuff, with a nose wateringly powerful kick of chilly!

Another Hue speciality is a tea-time set of snacks, banh beo which consists of a small amount of steamed rice-flour dough topped with spices, shrimp flakes and pork crackling. banh nam, or banh lam is a similar dish but spread thinly in an oblong, steamed in a banana leaf and eaten with nuoc mam. Manioc flour is used instead of rice for banh loc, a translucent parcel of whole shrimp, sliced pork and spices steamed in banana leaf, but with a spicier nuoc mam. It consists of sticky rice dough one fried and one steamed to dip in a spicy sauce.

Coffee is of course a popular drink in Hue, but it's worth checking out che xanh dua (try a stall down an alley beside 29 Hung Vuong St), a drink concocted from green bean and coconut, fruit (che trai cay) or if visitor are lucky, lotus seeds (che hat sen).