Enjoy Ha Long seafood

Visiting Ha Long Bay will provide you a chance to enjoy the beauty of one of World’s Natural Heritage but aside from this, you will also be impressed by a variety of tasty seafood that will melt even the hardest of appetites. It is said that seafood in Ha Long Bay is more delicious than the other coastal places in Vietnam. This comment is true as many rock islands and coral reefs in Ha Long Ba provide nutrients to make seafood in the cliffs and coral reefs tasty and abundant in species.

Counting on economic conditions and the convenience of the trip, you can try many ways to enjoy Ha Long seafood by yourself. Here is one way which most residents in Ha Long Bay usually enjoy and offer their guests.

If you visit Ha Long, I can invite you to my house or a restaurant in Bai Chay, or visit  “snail supermarket” in Cai Dam or simply go around Ha Long for its well-known places like Huong Duyen restaurant in Tran Hung Dao Street or Cai Xa Cong in Ha Tu ward. You can even enjoy seafood on the tourist boats….. Some appetizers like hotpot an appealing and delicious way of enjoying seafood are also available for taste testing. Varieties of oysters, snails, crabs, squid, shrimp, fishes that are baked, boiled, fried or steamed will make your mouth watery. These kinds should be prepared in a moderate amount to enjoy many other local dishes. Next, some typical sour but inviting soups can be served like mussel or fish soup together and some other dishes like barnacle cooked with bamboo shoot, “Bong Thua” with kohlrabi, or squid or cuttlefish with celery leaves and fresh garlic are always available. Finally, rice can be enjoyed with a sunny fried mackerel. If you need vegetable dishes, water spinach or collard greens sauted with garlic are ready to serve. If hotpot is chosen, seafood choice relies on your favorite. Moreover, hotpot soup has the kind of sour taste   made from tamarind, star fruits, tomato and many kinds of green vegetables such as water spinach, broccoli, fresh onions, celery, cauliflower, tofu ….can be served. Rice noodles or instant noodles can be ordered at the end of meal.

One kind of drink that can be considered as a particular specialty of Ha Long is Ruou Ngan (a kind of local seafood like clam dipped in wine), which is quite suitable to serve with seafood. There are three ways of making Ruou Ngan; the first one is  shelling out 3 live intestines of Ngan and putting them into a big cup and then chopsticks in opposite directions are used with trashed hands to poke, hold down and hit until guts get soon crushed finely, dilate and turn into dark red. White wine is poured into it and a glass of fresh rosy wine suddenly appears in front of us. Another way to make, Ngan which is not too old or too young is to tie cleaned shells to boil, then shell out for putting 2 or 3 guts and their water into the cup, depending on drinkers’ taste. Wine is poured into it and chopsticks are used to gently poke two sides and make their liver bladder rupture. As a result, we can enjoy a light pink or bluish glass of wine depending on the way of cooking Ngan. The third way is putting from 3 to 5 bowels into a small aluminum pot, then pouring wine and boiling again. Finally, a hot drink is ready to serve.

Ruou Ngan tastes tangy and slightly salty when tried for the first time, but then its fragrance effuses at the tip of tongue and suddenly makes our body incredibly warm. This kind of alcohol can be addicted if used regularly.

Tran Giang Nam