Highland cooking is a different cuisine from the one you ate in Hanoi: more smoke, corn and offal, built for cold mornings outdoors. Here are the Ha Giang dishes worth ordering, what each one actually is, and where on the loop to find them.
Highland food in Vietnam is a different cuisine from the one you will eat in Hanoi or Hoi An: less herb and fish sauce, more smoke, corn and offal, built for cold mornings and long days outdoors. Ha Giang has a handful of dishes you will struggle to find anywhere else in the country, and after a day of mountain riding they land better than any restaurant meal. Here is what to look for, what each thing actually is, and where on the loop to eat it.
Chao au tau: the bitter night porridge
Cháo ấu tẩu is the dish Ha Giang is known for among Vietnamese travelers, and it is genuinely local: a thick rice porridge cooked with pork trotter and herbs plus the tuber of the aconite plant, which gives it a bitter edge that turns sweet at the back of the throat. The tuber is toxic raw and has to be processed for hours before it is safe, which is why this is a dish for a busy, long-established place rather than whatever is nearest. It is sold at night and treated as warming, restorative food after a cold day. Ha Giang town is the place to try it.
Banh cuon trung: egg-filled rice rolls
Bánh cuốn is a steamed sheet of rice batter rolled around a filling, eaten all over Vietnam. The Dong Van version cracks an egg into the sheet before rolling, so you get a soft, just-set yolk inside. The bigger difference is the dip: instead of the usual fish sauce, it arrives with a bowl of hot pork bone broth with sliced sausage and spring onion in it, which makes it a proper breakfast rather than a snack. Eat it early, in Dong Van, before you get on the bike.
Thang co: the market stew
Thắng cố is the traditional dish of the highland market: a big communal pot simmered all morning with meat, bones and offal, seasoned with cardamom and local spice, traditionally made from horse. It is ladled into bowls for men drinking corn liquor at the market edge, and it is, to be blunt, an acquired taste for most Western palates, strongly offal-forward and not remotely subtle. Try it if you are curious, at a market where it is clearly being cooked fresh, and order a small bowl to share.
Smoked buffalo and the meat dishes
Thịt trâu gác bếp is buffalo rubbed with mac khen pepper and other spices, then hung above the kitchen fire for weeks until it dries into dark, chewy, deeply smoky strips that you tear apart by hand. It is the standard thing to eat with corn liquor and the region's most popular edible souvenir. Alongside it you will see small hill-raised pig, lean and firm, usually roasted or grilled over charcoal.
- Smoked buffalo or pork: chewy, salty and intensely smoky, the regional souvenir
- Roast hill pig: lean and firm, nothing like lowland pork
- Grilled skewers and hotpot: what most homestays put on the table at dinner
- Xôi ngũ sắc, five-color sticky rice tinted with plant dyes, sold at the markets
Order dinner at your homestay in the afternoon, not at eight in the evening. Families shop for the number of guests they are feeding, and towns on the loop close early. Say yes to whatever they suggest, because that meal, eaten with the household around one table, is usually the best food of the trip.
Corn, in every form
Very little rice grows on bare limestone, so corn is the staple crop up here and it appears everywhere. Mèn mén is corn ground fine and steamed into a dry, crumbly meal, the everyday food of H'Mong households, eaten with soup or alongside thang co. Rượu ngô is corn liquor, distilled in the villages with a leaf-based yeast starter, poured into small cups and poured generously. And the buckwheat that colors the hills in autumn ends up as small dense cakes sold hot at market stalls.
Other things worth ordering
- Phở chua, a cold sour noodle dish with roast meat and peanuts, a border-country crossover that is good on a hot day
- Cơm lam, sticky rice cooked inside a bamboo tube over a fire
- Wild greens and mountain vegetables, whatever is in season and usually the best thing on a homestay table
- Shan tuyet tea, picked from old high-altitude tea trees in the region
What to carry home, and a few practicalities
Smoked buffalo, corn liquor, mint honey collected from bees working the mint-family flowers on the plateau, and shan tuyet tea are the classic things to take out of Ha Giang. Buy from a shop with obvious turnover rather than an isolated roadside stall, and pack dried meat properly if you still have days of travel ahead. Cash matters here more than anywhere else on a Vietnam trip, since card payment barely exists outside the towns.
- Prices are low: a market bowl or a homestay dinner typically runs around 50,000-150,000d (roughly US$2-6) as an estimate
- Vegetarians should say so when booking a homestay, because highland cooking is meat-heavy and kitchens are small
- Go easy on the corn liquor if you are riding a mountain pass in the morning
- Eat where there is a crowd, and especially so for the aconite porridge