Enhancing the practicality of Vietnamese cuisine.

Cultural festivals, along with the Mid-Autumn Festival taking place consecutively this past weekend in many European countries, provide an ideal opportunity for Vietnamese food businesses abroad to continue solving a new problem: how to make Vietnamese dishes both delicious and convenient, appealing to international diners?

Delicious and convenient

Attending the Embassy Festival 2025 in The Hague (Netherlands) recently, we were surprised to see a large number of diners patiently queuing to enjoy Vietnamese pho and fresh fruit. The booth organized by the Vietnamese Trade Office in the Netherlands showcased a variety of flavors, such as Vietnamese pho (made by the WE LOVE PHỞ branch in Belgium and the Netherlands), fried spring rolls, fresh spring rolls, and many other agricultural products.

The FruitRepublic company markets Vietnamese fruit in the Netherlands. Photo: Lam Van

The fruit corner is run by a group of Dutch people wearing traditional orange shirts. They offer juicy green pomelos, sweet fresh coconut water, and trays of jackfruit and papaya with fragrant tropical flavors. Two young boys, a woman, and a middle-aged man nimbly open boxes, prepare straws, and select the softest coconuts to serve customers.

They looked like a family. Upon inquiry, it turned out that the mother and her two children were there, and the other person was a friend who had come to help because the father was in Vietnam running The Fruitrepublic (TFR) – a Dutch company that has invested in Vietnam since 2009, specializing in sourcing dragon fruit, pomelo, seedless lemons, and other produce from various growing regions, and is one of Vietnam's leading exporters of fresh agricultural products. TFR's European distribution center is located near the port of Rotterdam, where it receives fruit containers from Vietnam.

TFR not only sells Vietnamese fruit but also enhances its practicality. Trays of pre-peeled fruit, priced at 10-15 EUR per tray, are expensive but still enthusiastically purchased by Dutch consumers. This success is largely due to the efforts of the Vietnamese Trade Office in the Netherlands. Three years ago, many Dutch people knew about green pomelos but didn't know how to eat or cut them. In reality, it's difficult to sell a pomelo and claim it's delicious without peeling it and examining the segments. This year, at the request of the Trade Office, TFR imported trays of ready-to-eat fruit, peeled and prepared by Vietnamese workers in Can Tho following standard hygiene procedures.

"One-and-a-half-minute" pho that meets Halal standards.

Vietnamese pho is a delicious dish, but it also requires considerable logistical effort when marketing it at outdoor festivals. The challenge for food vendors is finding a type of pho noodle that softens quickly, absorbs the seasoning well, and still retains its firmness so that it doesn't become soggy when blanched.

"We want the entire process, from the moment a customer orders to the moment the bowl of pho is ready to be served, to take only a minute and a half," a Chinese restaurant owner in the Netherlands shared with Ngo Le Diem Le, sales manager at Miss Linh - a B2B e-commerce platform specializing in Vietnamese food products in the Netherlands.

To solve this one-and-a-half-minute recipe, Diem Le worked with three pho noodle manufacturers in Vietnam and selected the optimal product. These pre-packaged pho noodles, each containing 10 small portions (equivalent to one bowl of pho), were soaked in water to soften, drained, and brought to the fair where they could simply be added to pho broth to soften and absorb the flavor in just one minute.

Introducing Vietnamese pho to diners in the Netherlands. Photo: LAM VAN

What about Halal (food according to Islamic standards)? Many European diners often ask: "Is this dish Halal?" or "Do you have vegetarian pho?" These are frequent questions and also represent a significant demand from the vegetarian and Muslim communities when encountering Vietnamese cuisine. To have to shake your head with a regretful smile means missing out on the needs of a considerable number of customers.

Halal isn't simply about asking, "Does this dish contain pork?", but relates to the entire Halal standard. Without certification, many Muslims wouldn't consider a dish Halal, whether it's beef or chicken. To serve spring rolls to Muslim customers, Diem Le always keeps her Halal certification ready to present when needed.

Currently, many European markets have imported vegetarian pho broth from Vietnam. However, many local diners queuing to enjoy pho at food fairs still wonder: "Does the pho broth packet contain meat?" This seemingly simple question poses a new challenge for Vietnamese food businesses. At the same time, it serves as an impetus for Vietnamese dishes to enhance their practicality, convenience, and ability to integrate into the international market.

HUONG KIEU

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/tang-tinh-thuc-dung-cho-am-thuc-viet-post816393.html