Moc Chau eats differently from the rest of northern Vietnam because it farms differently: dairy herds, cold-water fish and temperate vegetables. Here is the local food worth ordering, what each dish actually is, and what to take home.
Vietnamese food changes with altitude, and Moc Chau is high enough to eat differently from the rest of the north. This is dairy country, which almost nowhere else in Vietnam is, and cold streams here raise fish that would die in the delta. So what to eat in Moc Chau is not another round of the noodle soups you have had in Hanoi. It is fried veal, fresh milk, smoked meat and mountain greens, and it is one of the better reasons to give the plateau a couple of nights.
Bê chao, the dish everyone comes for
If you order one thing here, order this. Bê chao uses veal from milk-fed calves, cut into bite-sized pieces and thrown briefly into very hot oil with ginger and lemongrass, so the surface browns and crisps while the middle stays soft and sweet. It arrives golden in a shallow dish with a ginger and fermented soybean sauce alongside, and it is meant to be shared over rice with a group. Portions are generous, so two people ordering one plate and a vegetable dish will eat well.
Milk, yogurt and everything made from them
The dairy herds are the reason the plateau looks the way it does, and the products turn up everywhere from farm gates to bus-stop kiosks. Drink the milk cold at a farm or warm at a stall on a foggy morning. The yogurt is thick, set and slightly tart, sold in small pots and eaten by the handful.
- Fresh pasteurized milk, sold at the farms and in every shop in town
- Set yogurt in small pots, the single most popular thing visitors take home
- Milk cakes and chewy milk candy, sold in boxes as gifts
- Milk curd and other dairy sweets that appear seasonally at market stalls
Cold-water salmon and sturgeon
The cool climate and cold spring water let farms here raise salmon and sturgeon, both unusual in Vietnam and both firm-fleshed. The standard treatments are a bubbling hotpot at the table, thin slices served raw with herbs and a dipping sauce, or simple grilling over charcoal. A hotpot on a cold plateau evening is genuinely one of the best meals in the northwest, and it is a proper sit-down dinner rather than a snack.
Smoked buffalo and the highland table
Like much of the northwest, Moc Chau makes thịt trâu gác bếp, buffalo meat rubbed with spices and hung above the kitchen fire for weeks until it dries dark and smoky. You tear it into strands and eat it with a drink rather than as a course. Pork gets the same treatment. Alongside it you will meet vegetables that grow well in the cool air and rarely reach the lowlands.
- Cải mèo, a slightly bitter highland mustard green, stir-fried with garlic or dropped into soup
- Bắp cải cuốn nhót, cabbage leaves wrapped around a small tart fruit with herbs, a genuinely local oddity worth trying once
- Grilled skewers at street stalls in town after dark, which is how most evenings here end
- Rượu ngô, a strong clear corn spirit, poured in small glasses and refilled whether you want it or not
Ask what things cost before you order, especially fish and anything sold by weight. This is normal here rather than rude, and it is the one habit that keeps a mountain dinner from surprising you. A three-day trip typically runs an estimated 600,000-1,000,000d, roughly US$24-40, for food and entry fees combined, and fish hotpot is the item most likely to push you past that.
Fruit, tea and the things worth drinking
Moc Chau grows temperate fruit that struggles elsewhere in Vietnam. Plums ripen through May and June, sold by the basket at roadside stalls and in the orchards themselves, and crisp persimmons follow later in the year. The tea that covers the hillsides is sold loose in town, including the prized old-tree variety grown on the high slopes. Local honey is a common gift, and the coffee culture you found in Hanoi is here too, just quieter.
Where and how to eat
Most restaurants worth eating in cluster along the main road through the town, and they are plain rooms with plastic chairs and a menu heavy on the same handful of local dishes. Homestays out among the tea hills usually cook dinner for guests, which is often the better meal and needs to be requested earlier in the day. Nothing runs late: kitchens on the plateau start closing not long after dark, so eat at Vietnamese hours rather than European ones. Breakfast is usually a bowl of noodle soup at a stall near the market, eaten standing in the fog before the tea hills, and the roadside stops on the pass up from Hanoi sell grilled corn and sticky rice that make a decent second breakfast.
What to take home
- Yogurt and milk candy, the standard gift and the reason half the cars leaving town have a cool box in the back
- Loose tea from the plantations you have just walked through, sold by weight in the town market
- Smoked buffalo meat, vacuum packed and stable enough to survive the rest of your trip
- Local honey, and plums by the kilo if you are here in early summer
What to eat in Moc Chau, in order of priority
- The fried milk-fed veal, on your first evening, shared between two or more people
- Fresh milk and set yogurt, ideally at a dairy farm rather than out of a fridge
- A salmon or sturgeon hotpot on the coldest evening of your stay
- Smoked buffalo meat with a glass of corn spirit, as something to pick at rather than a meal
- Highland greens with whatever else you order, because they are better here than in the city
- Plums in May and June, straight from an orchard you have just walked through
