Festival to honour Vietnamese national dish of phở

Taking place in Nam Định City from March 15 to 17, the event aims to honour the traditional craft of cooking phở, and at the same time to provide an opportunity for tourists and locals to learn about and savour the flavours from different regions of the country.

A festival dedicating to phở, the quintessence of Việt Nam’s cuisine, will take place in Nam Định Province, regarded as the birthplace of this famous noodle soup.

Taking place in Nam Định City from March 15 to 17, the event aims to honour the traditional craft of cooking phở, and at the same time to provide an opportunity for tourists and locals to learn about and savour the flavours from different regions of the country.

According to organisers, the Nam Định Province’s Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the provincial Association of Gastronomic Culture, the event is expected to contribute to promoting the cultural value of the dish, establishing phở as a national brand. The festival will also help to spread appreciation for phở, allowing it to reach a wider audience and showcase the culinary excellence of Việt Nam.

“The heritage journey of phở will be recreated through a line-up of activities taking place during the festival,” said artisan Lê Thị Thiết, chairwoman of the Nam Định Association of Gastronomic Culture.

To launch the event, a writing contest themed “Nostalgia of Phở” and a photo competition have been launched by the organisers. The best photos will be selected to go on display during the festival.

So far, 35 popular phở brands in Nam Định and across the nation have registered to participate the festival to showcase their own distinctive phở flavours.

Phở Thìn, a famous Hà Nội’s brand that has restaurants in Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney, will also join the event.

Alongside the popular phở, visitors will have chance to taste vegetarian phở, ginseng phở, artichoke phở, and lotus phở.

“Festival-goers will have chance to taste phở with the noodles made from green banana powder. This unique phở is just available in the remote mountainous A Lưới District in the central province of Thừa Thiên Huế Province,” said artisan Thiết.

Visitors can enjoy different flavours using the coupons offered for free by the organisers. During three days of the festival, organisers will give between 15,000 to 20,000 coupons, each worth 15,000 đồng.

Alongside booths of phở brands, there are also booths displaying other major ingredients of phở, including fish sauce, salt, and spices, among others.

Culinary experts and phở artisans will gather to discuss about the origin of phở and its development through the time during a talk on the theme Con Đường Phở Việt và Sợi Phở (Journey of Vietnamese Phở and Phở Noodle).

Demonstrations of how to create the phở flat rice noodles will also presented, offering an opportunity for visitors to learn about an important step of cooking phở.

Tour to Vân Cù village, where is considered as the "cradle" of Nam Định phở brand, also is available for festival-goers.

Vũ Ngọc Vượng, owner of Phở Ngọc Vượng in Hà Nội, which is in the list ‘Top 10 Most Popular Phở Brands’ in 2020 voted by Tuổi Trẻ (Youth) newspaper readers, is also a native of Vân Cù Village.

Through the festival, the organisers will progress towards the preparation of a dossier to submit to UNESCO for the recognisation of Vietnamese phở as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

To prepare for this step, according to deputy director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Đỗ Quang Trung, since the last year, the department has collaborated with relevant agencies in other provinces to create a dossier to submit to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to recognise phở as National Intangible Heritage.