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Mekong Delta Hotspot Serves Up Perfect Soup

Lunchtime attraction: Serving up delicacies from around the Mekong Delta at reasonable prices, Ngoc Dung Hu Tieu My Tho attracts not only the local crowd, but also foreign residents and travellers.

Ngoc Dung Hu Tieu My Tho dishes out the flavours of the Mekong Delta to Vietnamese and foreign fanatics in HCMCity. Vo Le Hong samples a bowl of the legendary hu tieu.

Kim Chieu’s hands fly through the air as she prepares another delicious bowl of hu tieu. You can catch the chef at her restaurant Ngoc Dung Hu Tieu My Tho, which has an airy feel to it given the high ceiling and open view onto a big alleyway.

Hu tieu, a dish with flat rice noodles, pork, shrimp and pork-flavoured broth, comes from Chieu’s hometown of My Tho two hours south of Sai Gon in Tien Giang Province in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta.

When you order a bowl of hu tieu at VND12,000 the owner swirls a handful of dry noodles into a bamboo-handled ladle and plunges it into a huge pot of hot water, stirs for half a minute, then tosses the noodles in the air before putting it into a bowl. She adds slices of spring onions sauteed in oil and mixes well. The noodles are soft and shiny. She adds dried shrimp and slices of pork that were separately simmered in soy sauce. She drowns it all in broth whose flavour comes from hours of simmering pork bones and tops it off with fresh green onion.

The hot smoke rising from the bowl says it all.

You can garnish your bowl with bean sprouts, a squeeze of lemon juice and fresh red chili. This mix of fantastic flavours make hu tieu a distinct dish of My Tho.

The noodle is both soft and slightly tough because it is made from fragrant rices named Nanh Chon, Nang Huong and Cho Dao.

But the most important component of an exemplary bowl is the broth, which is cooked with pork bones, white radishes, dried shrimps and cuttlefish. The soup here is so delicious that diners never fail to slurp up every drop unlike at other eateries.

Hu tieu My Tho is Chieu’s specialty.

She also serves other kinds of noodles such as pho bo, (beef noodle soup) pho ga (chicken noodle soup), bun bo Hue (Hue-style beef noodle soup) and mien cang cua (crab vermicelli). The cheapest dish is pho bo at VND11,000 and the highest is bun ga at VND15,000.

Additionally, the restaurant serves rice lunch dishes for VND10,000. They include sweet pork, mam chung (sauteed fish), fried chicken, fish and pork and duck eggs cooked with coconut milk. The restaurant delivers boxed lunches upon request.

"My wife and I come here every day. Our office is just a few steps from the restaurant. I love Vietnamese food, especially the hu tieu and beef pho here. The view from Ngoc Dung is nice. Sitting here we can watch the traffic and the people busy shopping. The restaurant is nice and clean. Its food is delicious and cheap," said Professor Piers Allbook, an Australian consultant for overseas study. Allbook and his wife are regular diners of Ngoc Dung.

Ngoc Dung’s customers include not only Vietnamese, but also tourists, expatriates and foreign students. The owner says she often tells customers how pronounce the dish name and to eat the food, even how to squeeze lemon juice and to enjoy nuoc cham. Japanese and Korean customers are particularly keen to eat the dish as locals do.

Pictures of food hang from the walls. Foreigners who don’t know Vietnamese can order by pointing to a picture of the dish they want. — VNS

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