With a rich flavor, Hue cuisine always leaves many impressions in the hearts of tourists. Besides the famous Hue beef noodle soup, crab cake soup is also a favorite dish of both tourists and locals. Walking around the ancient capital, visitors can easily see many places selling crab cakes, ranging from big shops to street vendors. Banh Canh shops are decades old, or just a few years old, but each place has its own flavor.

A bowl of hot crab cake soup, eaten in the summer weather of Hue, will make you sweat and still hold on to many tourists. Photo: Ngan Duong.

For Hue people, this dish is often enjoyed at breakfast, and is also an attractive night dish. Banh Canh yarn is made from rice flour, selected from the finest, best rice grains to make. Sellers knead dry flour with warm water to form a flexible dough, roll the dough and then cut it into small strands about 10-12 cm long, about 1 cm thick. Because there is a manual way, the noodles are very soft, fragrant and not sour like industrial flour.

The soup broth is not boring, sweet but delicious. The crab is simmered for 2 hours, then the seller will taste the spices. When the broth has reached the “standard” level, the seller adds the rice noodles to cook, in addition, sprinkles a little more rice flour into the broth to create a consistency. When the dough is cooked, the seller starts the crab ball and drops it into the pot. The crab balls have a characteristic aroma and are chewy in each fiber. With a sweet, fatty taste, it is made from pureed crab meat with raw ham, shrimp, and pork skin. According to Ms. Butterfly, who has been selling for 20 years, the crab cakes in banh chung will be more sophisticated than the crab cakes in Hue beef noodle soup. With banh chung, crab cakes need to mix many ingredients to make the ball delicious and fragrant, because it is the “soul” of the dish. As for Hue beef vermicelli, crab balls only add to the embellishment, usually made from raw ham and crab meat.

With a crowded restaurant, selling from 15:00 to 1 o'clock at night can run out of 15 pots of soup

With a crowded restaurant, selling from 15:00 to 1 o’clock at night can run out of 15 pots of soup

After the customer ordered the dish, the shopkeeper skillfully scooped the soup into the bowl. With a large ladle, the seller just glided around the pot and scooped up all the bread, broth, crab cakes, and quail eggs. It looks simple, but only a skilled person can do it so quickly and smoothly. If you are not smart, when you scoop up the long noodle soup, it will fall back into the pot, only getting the broth, but stirring many times in the pot will cause the fibers to be crushed.

With only simple seasonings such as salt, pepper, and cilantro, it makes the bowl of banh chung more delicious

With only simple seasonings such as salt, pepper, and cilantro, it makes the bowl of banh chung more delicious

Then those nimble hands quickly spread over the bowl of cake soup pieces of fat, colored chili, cilantro and a little pepper to make the dish more flavorful. A bowl of hot, smoky, delicious soup from the aroma of cilantro mixed with the richness of the broth. Try a spoonful, visitors will feel the sweet taste, the chewy taste of the crab cakes, and the pleasure when the soft noodles slip down the throat. And when it comes to Hue dishes, it’s impossible to mention the spicy taste of chili, so the guests just ate it, both enjoying it and having to stir. In the past, when life was still difficult, many working people in Hue also dipped broth with bread to make sure their stomachs were firm.

Crab soup cake is one of the dishes that should not be missed when traveling in Hue. Each bowl of crab cake in Hue costs from 10,000 to 20,000 VND. The taste of hot soup cake in the middle of the ancient capital makes many visitors come here impressed. “The feeling of sitting on the sidewalk and in front of a huge bowl of soup makes me satisfied. The noodles are soft and chewy, served with eggs, rolls, and crabs, which are very full and cheap,” shared Phan, a tourist from Da Nang.

Some suggested addresses:

  • – Banh cuon o Butterfly at the foot of Gia Hoi Bridge, City. Hue
  • – Banh cuon on Nguyen Khuyen street (opposite the Redemptorist Church), City. Hue
  • – Pancake soup on Pham Hong Thai street, TP. Hue

You can enjoy Hue cuisine by our motorbike tour:

Read More: https://danangmotorbikeadventure.com/tour/hue-countryside-tour/