There are no restaurants worth the name around the lake. Dinner happens on the wooden floor of a Tay stilt house, cooked by the family you are staying with, and it is one of the best meals in northern Vietnam if you order it in advance.
Work out what to eat in Ba Be National Park and you have solved most of the evening, because there is no restaurant strip here and no night market. The real meal happens on the polished wooden floor of a Tay stilt house in a village like Pac Ngoi, with the dishes set out in the middle, fish from the lake that morning and greens from the garden behind. The Tay are one of Vietnam's largest ethnic minorities and their cooking is its own thing: smoke, sour pickles, sticky rice and river fish. Here is what to ask for.
How eating works around the lake
You do not order from a menu. Your host cooks a set spread for the table, usually six or eight dishes shared between everyone, and charges roughly 120,000 to 200,000d a person, around US$5 to 8. Because there is no large market nearby, they shop for the number of guests confirmed that day, so meals need booking a few hours ahead. Breakfast is usually included or costs very little, and lunch on a boat day is normally a packed one.
Grilled lake fish
The first thing to try. Fish caught in the lake or the Nang River is cleaned, clamped in a split bamboo frame and grilled over charcoal, and the flesh is firm and sweet from cold water. Smaller fish get fried until crisp and are eaten whole, bones and all, dipped in ginger fish sauce or a green chili salt. If there are several of you, ask for a large fish to be grilled when you book, since it takes preparation time.
Tom chua, the soured shrimp
Tiny shrimp from the lake, cured with toasted ground rice, galangal and a leaf-based ferment in the Tay manner. The result is mildly sour, a little hot, and eaten with plain boiled pork or wrapped up with raw herbs and wild betel leaf. It is about as local as the region's food gets, difficult to find elsewhere in Vietnam, and the jar most visitors carry home.
Smoked sausage and smoked pork
Village pork is rubbed with ginger and mac khen, the citrusy mountain pepper of the northern uplands, then hung above the kitchen fire until the smoke has worked through it. The sausages are short and dense with a clear smoky edge, sliced after being fried or grilled again. The dried pork is torn into shreds and eaten with cham cheo, a rough dipping mix of salt, roasted chili and that same mountain pepper. Both are evening food, and both go with a drink.
Xoi Dam Deng, five-color sticky rice
Hill-grown sticky rice steamed after being soaked in juices pressed from forest leaves and roots, which turn it purple, red, yellow, green and white with no artificial coloring involved. It is faintly perfumed from the leaves, chewy rather than sticky, and traditionally made for festivals and full moon days, though homestays will cook it for guests. Eat it with sesame salt or alongside chicken.
Banh ngai, the mugwort cake
Sticky rice pounded together with young mugwort leaves, which gives the dough its dark green color and a faint herbal bitterness, then filled with black sesame and sugar. The texture is soft and stretchy and the sweetness is restrained. It is a Tay afternoon snack rather than a dessert course, and you will see it sold at the periodic markets around the region.
Mien dong, arrowroot glass noodles
This region is known across Vietnam for its glass noodles, made from canna arrowroot grown on the hillsides. They are slightly cloudy, springy, and unusually good at holding their shape in a hot broth instead of collapsing. Around the lake they turn up in soup with village chicken or stir-fried. Dry, light and long-lasting, they are also the easiest thing here to take home.
Greens, pickles and the things on the side
- Rau bo khai, a wild climbing green fried with garlic, with the faintly bitter edge that marks upland forest vegetables
- Pickled bamboo shoots with chili, sharp enough to cut through all that smoked meat
- Boiled chayote shoots and hill mustard greens, dipped in the fish cooking juices
- Cham cheo, the dipping salt of roasted chili and mac khen mountain pepper that goes with almost everything
Ruou ngo, the corn wine
Distilled from hill corn and fermented with a starter made from forest leaves, this goes down more smoothly than ordinary rice liquor, which is exactly the problem, because it is not weak. A bottle appears in the middle of the table at most stilt-house dinners and gets poured whether you asked or not. If you would rather not drink, say so early and cheerfully; nobody will push it.
The simplest way to eat well here is to message your host by early afternoon with how many of you there are and roughly what you want to spend per table. They will go to the market and cook whatever came in fresh that day. Turning up at seven in the evening and asking what is available gets you a thinner version of the same dinner.
What to eat in Ba Be National Park, and what to take home
- Arrowroot glass noodles: light, they keep for months, and they divide neatly into several gifts
- Soured shrimp: buy it in a properly sealed jar and refrigerate it once you are home
- Smoked sausage and dried pork: ask for it vacuum-packed if you have a long journey ahead
- Corn wine: buy through your host rather than from a roadside stall, and ask where it was distilled
- Tea and forest honey: sold at the Cho Ra market, which trades on set days of the week
