Dak Nong food guide

A M'Nong soup of forest greens cooked inside a bamboo tube and stirred or mashed with a stick until everything softens. Expect lá bép, palm shoots, and bitter eggplant with stream fish or pork ribs, and in some kitchens a few termites and mole crickets.

Bep leaf cooked with canned fish, a restaurant plate made from the older highland cooking.

Rice from Buôn Choáh in Krong No, grown to VietGAP on volcanic soil with mineral-rich water. The grain is fragrant, sticky, and deeply sweet.

Tay fish mam, kept in Tay kitchens beside the sour fish.

Tay sour fish, kept beside the fish mam.

A Tay soup of chicken drumstick cooked with ginger and turmeric.

Dao chicken stir-fried with ginger.

Dao meat soured with salt, the third Dao specialty beside ginger chicken and rượu hoẵng.

Mong corn wine, distilled by hand from mountain corn and leaf yeast, heavier or lighter depending on how much the distiller draws. Buy it at the Sunday market in Đắk R'Măng.

Rice wine cooked from the germ of glutinous or ordinary rice and kept for the new year and for weddings.

Meat or poultry grilled mostly without a marinade, on a skewer over the coals or inside a lồ ô tube, then dipped in chili salt. It is the meat that goes with cơm lam.

Red-tailed catfish from the Serepok, wrapped in a forest leaf, grilled over charcoal, and dipped in salt made with lemongrass, green chili, and forest leaves. Eat it with cơm lam in Krong No and Cu Jut, where the river runs.

A M'Nong soup of forest greens cooked inside a bamboo tube and stirred or mashed with a stick until everything softens. Expect lá bép, palm shoots, and bitter eggplant with stream fish or pork ribs, and in some kitchens a few termites and mole crickets.

Rice wine fermented in a jar with yeast made from forest leaves and bark, then drunk through one bent bamboo straw passed from host to guest. Left two to six months, it turns thick like honey and brown-yellow.

A Ma dish of chicken stir-fried slowly with bamboo shoots soured in a salt jar for about two weeks, until both are soft and the shoots turn fragrant. Crushed forest pepper goes on at the end.

Gói quả núc nác is an Ede dish of wrapped núc nác fruit, one of the plates Ede families still cook in the province.

A salad of bitter eggplant and dried fish, one of the older highland plates that stays on restaurant menus in the province.

Bep leaf cooked with canned fish, a restaurant plate made from the older highland cooking.

Palm shoots (đọt mây) stir-fried with bep leaf, another highland pairing that restaurants serve.

Large, round, plump peppercorns from Đắk N'rung with a strong fragrance. White pepper comes packed to carry home as a gift.

Dried macadamia, prized for its aroma and taste, from orchards that skip herbicide, chemical pesticide, and heavy inorganic fertilizer. More than 1,000 hectares grow at Quảng Trực in Tuy Đức.

Butter avocado from Đắk Mil with thin, smooth skin and ripe yellow-green flesh that is sticky, fragrant, and free of fiber.

Rice from Buôn Choáh in Krong No, grown to VietGAP on volcanic soil with mineral-rich water. The grain is fragrant, sticky, and deeply sweet.

Fragrant, fatty-sweet durian from the red-basalt orchards of Đắk Mil and the Gia Trung farm in Gia Nghia, mainly Ri 6, Út Thủy, and Monthong. The tourism portal puts the harvest from April to September.

Quýt đường, the sugar mandarin grown beside the cam sành at Quảng Phú and given the same 4-star provincial OCOP rating. You taste it in the same garden.

Five-colour sticky rice, a Tay dish cooked by families who settled in Dak Nong from the north.

Tay roast pork seasoned with mắc mật.

Tay fish mam, kept in Tay kitchens beside the sour fish.

Tay sour fish, kept beside the fish mam.

A Tay soup of chicken drumstick cooked with ginger and turmeric.

Rượu hoẵng, one of three Dao specialties alongside ginger chicken and salt-soured meat.

Dao chicken stir-fried with ginger.

Dao meat soured with salt, the third Dao specialty beside ginger chicken and rượu hoẵng.

Mèn mén, a Mong staple from the same kitchen as thắng cố and corn wine.

The Mong pot on the Sunday stalls at Đắk R'Măng, sold beside corn wine. You can also find it at the market in Đắk Som.

Mong corn wine, distilled by hand from mountain corn and leaf yeast, heavier or lighter depending on how much the distiller draws. Buy it at the Sunday market in Đắk R'Măng.

A Mong cake you can eat at the markets in Đắk R'Măng and Đắk Som.

Rice wine cooked from the germ of glutinous or ordinary rice and kept for the new year and for weddings.