Dong Nai prepares "ingredients" for digital culinary map

The judges score the dishes at the cooking competition during the Dong Nai Province Food Festival 2025.

The judges score the dishes at the cooking competition at the Dong Nai Province Food Festival 2025.

To complete the Dong Nai “digital cuisine” map, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has coordinated with solution providers, tourism businesses, restaurants, hotels as well as chefs to collect and create delicious dishes from local ingredients to update information on the digital cuisine map; at the same time, combined with updating information about landmarks, relics, destinations, etc. to promote Dong Nai tourism development.

One touch, many destinations

Nowadays, the trend of finding information about destinations, delicious food, quality hotels, etc. before taking a trip has almost become a habit of many tourists, especially young people. Therefore, to meet the needs of tourists and increase the quality of service as well as competition for destinations, the provincial tourism industry is promoting digital transformation solutions to quickly bring tourism to cyberspace.

Ms. Tran Thi Hong Hoa, a tourist from Ho Chi Minh City, said: Recently, through information on social networks, knowing about the Dong Nai Province Food Festival 2025 taking place at Buu Long Tourist Area and free entrance tickets for visitors, she and her friends searched for the location on Google Maps to go to the tourist area to attend, waiting for the moment when the chefs set a record for the largest fried sticky rice with cashew nuts in Vietnam. After this event, wanting to enjoy more delicious dishes of Dong Nai, Ms. Hoa continued to search for information online and went to famous restaurants such as: 5 Ri Shrimp Hotpot, Thu Ha Balut Eggs... to enjoy local cuisine.

The digital culinary map will help tourists easily access and search for dining places and specialty areas when coming to Dong Nai, contributing to the development of smart tourism services, enhancing the experience for tourists, promoting the unique cultural and culinary features of the province in particular and Vietnamese cuisine to the world.

According to Ms. Hoa, information about Dong Nai’s cuisine and places is still quite limited, especially delicious dishes. She hopes that when she has the opportunity to return, she can find many destinations as well as delicious local dishes on digital platforms before experiencing them in person.

According to the plan of the Dong Nai Province Chefs Association, in 2025, the province's chefs will complete a digital map of Dong Nai cuisine. To make the digital culinary map more attractive, with diverse dishes and destinations, the chefs are coordinating with communes and wards to collect and create typical dishes to promote to tourists, contributing to the overall development of tourism and cuisine in Dong Nai. It is expected that the province's digital culinary map will have enough local specialties, in order to create diversity in dishes to serve tourists.

Powerful tool for culinary discovery

Dong Nai culinary digital map is a powerful tool for tourists to explore the rich culinary treasure of the locality. The entire system of restaurants, eateries, and outstanding specialties are vividly displayed and can be easily searched by keywords. Users can quickly identify the nearest dining locations according to their personal needs, from eateries to famous restaurants and specialties. In addition, the digital map also provides full details of addresses, phone numbers, opening hours, menus, vivid illustrations as well as real reviews and comments from the community, helping customers have a basis for appropriate choices, while helping visitors enhance their experience with vivid images.

Introducing the feature related to the Dong Nai culinary digital map, Deputy Director of Viettel Dong Nai Dang Van Nhien said: Viettel Dong Nai is implementing the province's culinary digital map. For the tourism industry, digital transformation has a special meaning, helping to promote destinations faster and more widely, bringing tourists convenient, lively, attractive experiences, creating trust for businesses and the community. Digital transformation is the key to helping Dong Nai tourism catch up with new trends, improve competitiveness, and strongly integrate with tourism nationwide and internationally.

Following the direction of the provincial leaders, Viettel Dong Nai has researched and developed the Dong Nai Smart Tourism Portal. This portal is expected to be useful for both tourists and management agencies with outstanding features such as: a rich data warehouse from tourist destinations, accommodation, cuisine, entertainment to cultural activities. The digital culinary map integrates direct directions for tourists to easily explore local specialties, 3600 real-life experiences, allowing tourists to visit scenic spots and relics right in the digital space, bringing Dong Nai closer to tourists from all regions. This will be the foundation to make Dong Nai tourism a friendly, modern and attractive destination.

Provincial Party Committee member and Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism Le Thi Ngoc Loan said: the industry is promoting digital transformation in the fields of culture, tourism and cuisine to gradually form a shared database of the industry across the province as well as the whole country. Therefore, the construction and completion of the digital culinary map is one of the tasks and "orders" that the department has requested the Dong Nai Province Chefs Association to carry out, adding to the list of areas in which the cultural industry has carried out digital transformation (heritage, tourist destinations, landscapes, accommodation service systems, etc.).

Ngoc Lien

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/kinh-te/202508/dong-nai-chuan-bi-nguyen-lieu-cho-ban-do-am-thuc-so-f413004/