Sui din - Chinese street food in Hai Phong food tour

Sui din, a familiar dish of Hai Phong people, is on the city's culinary map and is one of the dishes originating from the Chinese community that once lived here.

Visitors to Hai Phong food tour will know a dish with a rather strange name, sui din. This dish originated from the Chinese community living in Hai Phong, and is now popular and sold year-round on the streets in the city center.

Sui din is similar to banh troi, made from sticky rice flour, filled with black sesame and peanuts, eaten with molasses.

The sui din restaurant named on the culinary map of Hai Phong is Co Ut's restaurant on Cau Dat street, Ngo Quyen district.

The shop has two spaces on the street, with a total area of nearly 100 square meters, open from 3pm to 11pm every day. Customers can easily find it with the sign and the stall displaying sweet desserts in front of the door.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Ut, the shop owner, said she has been selling sui din for more than 10 years. Her stall sells many types of sweet soup such as black bean, green bean, lotus seed, and tofu pudding, but sui din is still the most well-known and loved dish.

According to Mrs. Ut, the cake crust is made from fragrant, large, round, even sticky rice. Before grinding the rice, it is soaked in salt water for a day, changing the water about 2-3 times to avoid sourness, then ground into a liquid powder, left to settle, and absorb moisture. The finished product is a dry, white, smooth powder, mixed with water in the right ratio to shape the cake crust.

The filling is made from black sesame, crushed roasted peanuts and grated coconut, gently simmered in a pan over low heat.

The finished sui din is similar to banh troi tau, with the dough evenly spread out, the filling placed in the middle and then tightly wrapped around the edges so that when dropped into the pot of water, the cake will not break. The size of sui din balls at Mrs. Ut's shop is about 2/3 of the size of banh troi tau balls in Hanoi .

Boiled su din is eaten with caramel-colored molasses water and shredded ginger. The broth is light, sweet but not too strong and has a strong spicy taste of ginger.

A bowl of sui din has 4-5 balls of rice noodles with sugar water, sprinkled with coconut, roasted peanuts, black sesame and a little shredded ginger, sold for 15,000 VND.

Manh Hung, 20 years old, from Ho Chi Minh City came to Hai Phong for a food tour on April 19. He was introduced to Ms. Ut's sui din restaurant by a friend. After enjoying it, Hung commented that at first glance, sui din looks quite similar to banh troi tau in appearance, both have sweet broth, ginger, and the cake crust is made from sticky rice. However, "the banh troi tau I ate had mung bean filling, sweet and rich, while the sui din filling is made from black sesame, less greasy, has a sesame scent, and is easier to eat," he said.

Although a familiar snack and sold all year round, Su Din is often enjoyed in winter. "There are days in winter when I sell out in 2-3 hours but people still come to ask for more, many people wait up to 30 minutes to eat a bowl of Su Din," said the shop owner.

In the summer, the number of customers coming to buy sui din is still there but not as much. The shop does not have a closed space to use air conditioning, and the parking area is limited.

Quynh Mai

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