Quang Tri specialties are delicious and unique, not to be missed.

Buffalo meat with leaves

Buffalo meat is a familiar dish in daily meals, however, if you have the opportunity to travel to Quang Tri, you should not miss the buffalo meat dish made with Trong leaves. Trong leaves are familiar to the people of Quang Tri, but very strange to many tourists. This is a type of leaf that often grows in mountainous areas, the leaves are hard and have sharp thorns on the back veins and edges of the leaves. To have a delicious Quang Tri buffalo meat dish with Trong leaves, the cook needs to know how to choose the ingredients.

The combination of buffalo meat and leaves brings an extremely attractive flavor to the dish. These two ingredients can be processed into many different flavors, the best of which are stir-fried and grilled dishes. If you want a strong flavor, enjoy stir-fried dishes, but if you like a sweet and soft taste, eat with green pepper, mustard greens and chili sauce.

Mai Xa mussel vermicelli

Mai Xa mussel vermicelli is one of the delicious dishes of Quang Tri, the vermicelli dish is named after its birthplace - Mai Xa village, Gio Linh. Eating Mai Xa mussel vermicelli is not only enjoying a delicious dish of Quang Tri, but also enjoying the whole flavor of the homeland in each strand of vermicelli, each drop of broth, even the faint aroma of the bowl of mussel vermicelli.

Although it is called mussel vermicelli, the main ingredient of this vermicelli dish is not mussels but the “chắt Chàt” (clam). The “chắt Chàt” (clam) is a family of mussels, but much smaller, black in color, and has a special sweet taste.

Tapioca dumplings

Banh bot loc is a very popular dish in Quang Tri, but the most delicious and famous is Banh loc in My Chanh (National Highway 1 through My Chanh village, Hai Chanh commune, Hai Lang district often has many people selling Banh loc). Some people sit right on the sidewalk to sell conveniently, others open shops for customers who want to eat. Here, diners can watch the process of making the cake from start to finish.

The cake is made entirely from locally available ingredients. The filling is the secret to making this specialty cake. The filling includes shrimp and meat. The meat is taken from pigs raised in the garden, the freshwater shrimp is very fragrant and sweet, marinated and simmered with spices: fish sauce, salt, MSG, pepper, sugar... so the finished product of shrimp and meat is both orange-red, firm, shiny, and very delicious to look at.

The Banh Loc here is wrapped in banana leaves instead of dong leaves like many other places. The extra layer of banana leaves tied on the outside makes the boiled cake shiny with grease and fragrant. When enjoying this dish, visitors will feel the unforgettable aroma, deliciousness, and richness of the hot, chewy, well-cooked Banh Loc, and the filling with its savory and seductive flavor.

Banh khoai

If you just look at the picture and guess the name of this dish, 90% of the answers will be "banh xeo". Because the crust is golden yellow, and there are shrimp, meat and bean sprouts. However, this is actually banh khoai - one of the popular snacks in Quang Tri. Only those who have enjoyed this dish can clearly see the difference.

While Southern Vietnamese pancakes have a large and thin base, about 40cm in diameter, Banh Khoai's base is thick, about 15cm in diameter. While Banh Khoai dough is often mixed with duck egg yolks to both create color and make the dough spongy, with Banh Xeo people create color and a characteristic smell with turmeric powder.

The filling is quite flexible. In addition to the three ingredients mentioned above, the baker can add some mushrooms, onions or seafood depending on the taste of the diner. And sometimes just a few thin slices of pork can also be used as the filling.

Bed sheet porridge

Called porridge, but in terms of appearance, this dish is not as smooth as when cooked with rice flour, nor does it expand like when cooked with rice grains. In fact, bed sheet porridge is long strands of flour, looking like bamboo bed sheets (bed sheets), which is why the dish has such a unique name.

Bed porridge is cooked with fish, the best is the fresh snakehead fish from Hai Lang - Quang Tri. Because the fish here are very thick, living in a natural environment, the meat is very firm and delicious. In addition, snakehead fish is also often used by local people for processing.

The fish is very skillfully prepared, the bones are removed and set aside, the meat is placed aside. The bones are minced, the water is filtered to make broth. The fish meat is marinated with spices, stir-fried with fragrant fried onions.