In Hue, the traditional Lunar New Year “Tet” does not arrive with fanfare. It begins quietly in the kitchen, from a pot of banh tet (a cylindrical sticky rice cake with mung beans and pork) glowing over the fire, from the warm scent of ginger, from a jar of mixed pickled vegetables. Just by looking at these dishes, people in Hue know that Tet is very near.

Hue Ancient Capital is a paradise for vegetarian cuisine. On the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month, even restaurants that usually serve meat often switch entirely to vegetarian dishes. This is hardly surprising, given that Hue is one of Vietnam’s major Buddhist centers, a land steeped in spiritual traditions, where eating vegetarian food has become a beautiful cultural feature.

Along with pho, bun rieu, bun cha ca, banh canh, and others, bun bo Hue (Hue beef noodle soup) is one of the delicious Vietnamese dishes featured in the “Top 100 best soups in the world” list, recently announced by the renowned culinary website Taste Atlas.

These are 6 of 121 Vietnamese culinary dishes that have just been honored by the Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA) as typical national dishes in phase I of a project titled "Building and Developing Vietnamese Culinary Culture into a National Brand Name”. All of these 6 dishes, including: Hue beef noodle soup, glutinous rice dumplings stuffed with roasted pork in sweet soup, mussel rice, banh loc (glutinous rice dumplings), vegetarian fig salad, and lotus-leaf-wrapped steamed rice; all are close to the gardens and paddy fields of the land.

Located 5 kilometers away from the center of Hue City to the North, Duc Buu village (Huong So Ward, Hue City) specializes in producing famous specialty dumplings of the ancient capital land, including: banh beo, banh loc goi (the Vietnamese clear shrimp and pork dumpling wrapped in banana leaf), banh nam, and banh ram it, etc.