Exploiting cuisine to develop tourism

Cuisine is not only a basic need but also an indispensable part of spiritual life, reflecting the customs, habits and lifestyle of a community. Caring for and preserving local dishes plays an important role in preserving and promoting cultural identity and is a bridge for cultural exchange with other countries.

Ms. Ho Thi Thanh Xuan's Quang noodles are loved by many diners because they retain the distinctive flavor of the local dish. Photo: DOAN HAO LUONG

The beauty of indigenous culinary culture

With the desire to create a unique culinary identity for Da Nang city, recently, the Da Nang City Culinary Culture Association (DCCA) in collaboration with Grab Vietnam (Grab) organized the announcement and awarding of the "Famous Restaurant" Award to 68 local restaurants and eateries.

Among them, there are 40 unique and distinctive restaurants honored in the "Famous Flavor" category such as: My Quang 1A, My Quang Ba Xuan, Banh Xeo Ba Duong, Bi My Cho Con, Bun Cha Ca Ba Lu, Bun Bo Ba Roi...

and 12 eateries and restaurants were honored in the "Most Favorite" category including: Trang Kitchen, Ngoc Chi Vegetarian Restaurant, Co Cao Kitchen...

In addition, in the "Growing Star" category, 16 units with impressive and flexible growth rates were recorded, such as: Hai Coi Restaurant, Banh Mi 365, Tuc Tac Tea...

Mr. Ly Dinh Quan, Chairman of the Danang Culinary Culture Association, said that this is the event marking the first activity in the 3-year cooperation memorandum of understanding between the Danang Culinary Culture Association and Grab to promote local culture and tourism through cuisine.

The units were selected and honored based on three main evaluation sources, including nominations from DCCA based on expert consultation, travel associations and tourist surveys; feedback data from GrabFood users in 2024 - 2025 and compliance with operational and legal regulations of each unit.

“The association represents culinary culture in building, promoting brands and creating value chains, aiming to promote trade and investment, forming culinary culture enterprises, forming a new economy in cultural industry, and the association has the task of connecting 3 houses (state - school - business).

Currently, culinary business models are still rudimentary and traditional, requiring professional, modern technology and human resources... to build value chains to build the Da Nang culinary brand," said Mr. Ly Dinh Quan.

Sharing her joy after receiving the “Famous Restaurant” Award, Ms. Ho Thi Thanh Xuan, owner of Ba Xuan Quang Noodles (77 Ha Huy Tap, Da Nang) said: “We feel honored and proud that the Da Nang City Culinary Culture Association paid attention to awarding the award and have more motivation to invest in improving the quality of dishes and expanding the restaurant.

The award of “Famous Restaurant” helps promote and introduce the restaurant to domestic and foreign diners. To meet the demand, in the near future, the restaurant will expand the space on the 2nd floor to serve tourists better and better.

After enjoying the food at Mrs. Xuan's Quang Noodles restaurant, Mr. Glenn (Australian, from Michelin) said that compared to some other Quang Noodles restaurants, Mrs. Xuan's Quang Noodles has a local flavor, suitable for tourists to explore local specialties. To properly evaluate the quality of the dish, we need to enjoy it many times to appreciate its deliciousness.

Forming experiential culinary areas

Although it was only established about 3 years ago, the Da Nang Culinary Culture Association has coordinated to organize many major culinary events, including: coordinating with the Vietnam Culinary Culture Association to organize the Ceremony to announce 100 dishes of 13 Central provinces in 2022; the event "Salty Da Nang" honoring Da Nang dishes such as Nam O fish salad, Nam O fish sauce, Tuy Loan rice paper...

A local culinary experience area (right) at the 2025 Carnaval festival in the Western An Thuong neighborhood. Photo: DOAN HAO LUONG

In 2024, the Danang City Culinary Culture Association coordinated with tea experts to organize a tea culture event to promote awareness of tea culture.

By 2025, the Grap association proposes 46 restaurants with indigenous and traditional cultural elements.

Sharing about Da Nang cuisine, Mr. Ly Dinh Quan said that currently, restaurants still have a lot of work to do such as protecting their brand, operating capacity, management organization, food hygiene and safety, long-term development strategy... Therefore, the association will continue to support and help entrepreneurs develop to new heights.

Along with coordinating with the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Department of Science and Technology to register intellectual property and trademarks for restaurants; coordinating with universities to train human resources; coordinating with the Vietnam Culinary Culture Association to honor Vietnamese chefs and artisans.

In the near future, the Danang Culinary Culture Association will propose that the city develop and implement a project to develop unique areas of Danang culinary culture, first of all, the An Thuong culinary area with about 28 stalls, including 8 Danang culinary stalls and 20 stalls of cuisine from 3 regions.

This culinary area will have an experiential space when organizing activities such as demo cooking, connecting and transferring indigenous cultural models and food tours to learn about local cultural dishes, thereby training indigenous cultural chefs.

In addition, there are also mini shows promoting local cultures such as Co Tu culinary culture, Cham culinary culture and integrating culinary experience stories.

According to Mr. Ly Dinh Quan, after merging with Quang Nam, the space and ability to realize the vision will be larger, there will be more resources for creativity, and opportunities to develop its big goals. A large space will create a large market, large resources, and the number of dishes will also increase. Thanks to that, cultural values, capacity, and resources will also resonate to increase.

“Our first wish is to inspire and promote indigenous culture and create an ecological chain of indigenous cultural values ​​in Da Nang to support livelihoods and start-ups, form culinary culture businesses, and create competitiveness to promote local economic development,” said Mr. Ly Dinh Quan.

Source: https://baodanang.vn/khai-thac-am-thuc-de-phat-trien-du-lich-3299943.html