Kon Tum food guide
Kon Tum starts the day with two bowls of phở khô, dry noodles in black soybean sauce with a clear broth beside them, around the market from about 6:00 to 10:00. Lunch or dinner is gỏi lá on Trần Cao Vân, a platter of forest leaves you roll around pork, shrimp, and pork skin. Out in the Ba Na and Xơ Đăng villages, the table is bamboo-tube rice, charcoal-grilled chicken, and jar wine through straws.
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Eat the morning at the market. Toss the dry bowl, then alternate a bite of noodles with a sip of hot broth. Save the leaf salad for later in the day, and if you are out at Kon K’Tu or a village festival, sit down to cơm lam and a whole grilled bird torn by hand. End the evening with coffee dripped through a phin, at a café over the Đăk Bla.
The wider highland table runs to bitter eggplant, pounded cassava-leaf soup, weaver-ant fish, and fried crickets. Up on the Măng Đen plateau and at Tu Mơ Rông below Ngọc Linh, the menu changes to hill pig roasted whole, sturgeon-head hotpot, and ginseng from the mountain.
Kon Tum specialties
Phở khô is the breakfast and gỏi lá is the platter on Trần Cao Vân. Cơm lam and grilled chicken travel as a pair from the Ba Na and Xơ Đăng villages, and jar wine belongs to the communal house at festival time, not to the morning.
Dry pho Phở khô
Breakfast comes as two bowls: sun-dried rice noodles tossed with meat and a salty-sweet fermented black soybean sauce, and a clear, sweet bone broth to sip between bites. Lime and chili add a sour, spicy lift.
Leaf salad Gỏi lá
A platter of forest and garden leaves that you roll into a funnel around boiled pork, shrimp, and pork skin, then eat in one bite. Each mouthful runs hot, sour, salty, sweet, astringent, and nutty at once.
Highland red noodles Bún đỏ cao nguyên
A red noodle bowl with field crab, cake balls, and boiled quail eggs, eaten with rau cần đước, bean sprouts, and scallion oil. One recipe builds a sour, sweet-nutty broth from tomato and cashew; another tops the bowl with crispy pork fat.
Weaver-ant fish Cá gỏi kiến vàng
A Rơ Măm dish of minced stream fish left under a weaver-ant nest for about half an hour, so the ants’ secretion works on the meat, then mixed with ant eggs. The fish is sweet and fragrant against the sour of the young ants, with heat from the leaves you wrap it in.
Bamboo-tube rice Cơm lam
Glutinous rice cooked in a green bamboo tube over charcoal and split open hot, its thin membrane still on. Ba Na and Xơ Đăng cooks serve it with grilled chicken and sesame salt.
Grilled village chicken Gà nướng
A small free-range bird grilled whole over charcoal, torn by hand and eaten with cơm lam. The skin turns golden and smoky, the meat stays firm and sweet, and a dip of green-chili salt or muối é brings a sharp heat.
Jar wine Rượu cần
Undistilled grain wine fermented with forest-leaf yeast in a jar and sipped in turns through bamboo straws. It is gently sweet, with a faint bitter edge from the yeast and the smell of fermented sticky rice.
Kon Tum coffee Cà phê
Highland coffee dripped slowly through a phin, often over condensed milk and ice as cà phê sữa đá. Some sources call the local bean Robusta and others arabica, and Măng Đen’s cup is light with a mild sour finish.
Shoots of le bamboo (Bambusa nutans), grilled fresh or boiled from dried shoots. They taste sweet and crisp.
Purple bitter eggplant from Ba Na villages, grilled whole over charcoal or cooked into a soup with pork. It starts slightly bitter and leaves a sweet aftertaste.
Cassava-leaf soup Canh lá mì
Young cassava leaves pounded in a stone mortar and simmered with bitter eggplant, eaten hot with rice and grilled dried fish. The thick soup starts gently bitter, with chili heat and the richness of pork or dried fish, then turns nutty.
Crickets fried and finished with lime, chili, and minced lemongrass, a plate found at many Kon Tum restaurants. They smell strongly of the fryer and taste nutty and rich.
Weaver-ant salt, one of the dishes Kon Tum city put forward at its 2023 food festival beside gỏi lá, cơm lam, and grilled chicken. Across the Central Highlands, ant salt is a familiar dip for grilled chicken.
Fish from the mountain streams, one of the dishes Kon Tum city put forward at its 2023 food festival beside gỏi lá, cơm lam, grilled chicken, and cassava leaves.
Beef with weaver ants Thịt bò nướng kiến vàng
Beef grilled with weaver ants, listed by the national tourism authority beside gỏi lá and grilled chicken with cơm lam as a dish that marks Kon Tum.
A Bana chicken curry with a thick sauce, strong turmeric and lemongrass, and the gentle scent of a forest leaf, eaten with white rice at Bana restaurants in Kon Tum city.
Regional dishes
Măng Đen, up on the Kon Plông plateau, cooks its own hill pig, sturgeon from cold-water farms, and Bana bird noodle soup. At Tu Mơ Rông, Xơ Đăng cooks bring ginseng from Ngọc Linh into salads and chicken pots, beside greens from the forest. Lá bép soup and the bamboo-tube soup are village pots from across the highlands around Kon Tum.
Măng Đen’s free-range hill pig, small enough to roast whole over charcoal with củ nén, sawtooth herb, lemongrass, and chili until the skin is golden and crisp. The meat is fragrant and firm, and Sedang cooks also grill black pig on skewers with chili salt and forest leaves.
A Xơ Đăng leaf salad made with Ngọc Linh ginseng, cooked by the teams at Tu Mơ Rông’s 2023 food festival.
Xơ Đăng chicken stewed with dây ginseng from Ngọc Linh, one of the dishes cooked at Tu Mơ Rông’s 2023 food festival.
Greens gathered from the forest, served among the Xơ Đăng dishes at Tu Mơ Rông’s 2023 food festival.
A clear soup of young lá bép shoots, also called rau nhíp, simmered with little seasoning and eaten hot with rice. It tastes clean, light, and sweet, the leaves gently chewy and nutty.
Lá nhíp, rattan shoots, bitter eggplant, and stream fish packed into a bamboo tube with spring water and roasted over charcoal.
Bana bird noodle soup Bánh canh chim
Bánh canh noodles cooked with bird meat, now from farmed birds, and le bamboo shoots. The bowl has a clean sweetness.
Sturgeon-head hotpot Lẩu đầu cá tầm
Sturgeon farmed in Măng Đen’s cold water, the head simmered in a hotpot with sour bamboo shoots, tomato, lemongrass, and chili. The broth is clean and sweet, with no fishy taste.
Casual dining
Two streets carry the city’s food. The market blocks are the morning noodles. Trần Cao Vân is the leaf salad.
Kon Tum market Chợ Kon Tum
Central Kon Tum, around the market
Two-bowl phở khô around the market and on the central streets, mostly from about 6:00 to 10:00. A bowl is about 20,000–33,000 VND, or up to 35,000 VND for a large one (Go Vietnam, 2025).
Trần Cao Vân, Kon Tum city
Phố gỏi lá, the leaf-salad street. Platters are priced per table: 100,000–150,000 VND for about 3–4 people (VietnamNet, 2023), about 300,000–400,000 VND for 6–8 (Vietnam News Agency), and 350,000–600,000 VND for 4–6 (Go Vietnam).
Breakfast
Order phở khô. The shops cluster around Kon Tum market and the central streets, including Phan Chu Trinh, Phan Đình Phùng, and Tô Hiến Thành, and most serve from about 6:00 to 10:00. A bowl is about 20,000–33,000 VND, or up to 35,000 VND for a large one (Go Vietnam, 2025).