Bringing cooking into poetry is something the people of old time once did. And I, drawing from the treasure trove of proverbs and folk verses my mother passed down, have learned many rustic yet profound lessons about cooking.

The communal house faces a field, so in this season of the year it’s pervaded by the aroma of ripe rice. I’m standing at the gate of the Van Xa communal house (Huong Van Ward, Huong Tra Town) beholding the yellow paddy field admiring our ancestors who chose this place for the house. Twice a year, the ancient communal house reflects itself on the field, forming a very beautiful rustic sight.

The natural-colored paintings of pressed flowers and leaves under the hands of Vo Thi Quynh, a former literature teacher at Quoc Hoc Hue High school for the Gifted, bring viewers innocent and rustic emotions.

Once the sous chef of a five-star hotel in Hue and a multiple award-winning chef, Tran Huy Cuong took an unexpected turn in his career, venturing into entrepreneurship in his 50s. Driven by the desire to “turn simple things into specialties,” he chose the figs as the starting point for his journey to bring Hue’s traditional culinary products to Vietnamese dining tables and beyond.

In the midst of urban life, many busy people still want to find the taste of home-cooked meals, returning to rustic dishes imbued with the breath of their homeland in an unfamiliar yet comforting place.

I remember the first time I tried this dish was at the Thuy Bieu Thanh Tra Festival in 2022. Walking amidst the shimmering green and golden-yellow stalls of this special local fruit, I picked up a small bag of candied thanh tra peel before heading home. To this day, the flavor of that simple yet rustic treat lingers in my memory.

“Aside from the theme of Hue's cultural heritage, what impresses and moves me most while creating artistic photographs in this land is its people. Hue's people are simple, rustic, and have their identity,” shared photographer Hoang Quoc Vinh (born in 1986, Gia Lai), who was recently honored with an award for the outstanding artistic work about Hue for his photo collection “ Complex of Hue Monuments”, in an interview with Thua Thien Hue Weekly.

“I have written about everything from the rustic to the elegant aspects of Hue with all my heart, so that readers, once they have loved Hue, will love Hue even more,” shared Ms. Hoang Thi Tho, a journalist, about her two upcoming books, “Remember to visit Hue tomorrow” and “Please go from childhood.”

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.

A Roang is a border commune of A Luoi district, which is about 90km away from Hue city center. People living here are mainly the Ta Oi people. Being located at the foot of the majestic Truong Son Mountain, A Roang was once a poor and extremely difficult place to travel to. However, it is now an attractive destination for visitors who love the rustic beauty of people and villages in wild mountains and forests, or immersing themselves in waterfalls and lakes in the middle of mountains and forests.