One of the great pleasures of a trip to Vietnam is exploring the full and exotic range of Vietnamese food. At the top end of the eating spectrum is Vietnam's finest and most sophisticated style of cooking, Hue Food, comprising a series of small, carefully balanced and expertly presented dishes that is told, were once only served for the royal family.

At Nghi Xuan, a boutique Vietnamese Restaurant, the atmosphere of the room in which the meal is served is just as important as the food; you'll sit on carving chairs and waitress in ao dai or waiters in traditional costumes will serve each course on beautiful local ceramic and lacquerware.

Many recipes for Hue food at Nghi Xuan embody a subtlety of flavour and mixture of texture rarely found in Western cuisine, and the presentation is often so exquisite that it feels an insult to the chef to eat what has been so beautifully crafted.

Banh beo, is one of the typical Hue Food, the bloating fern-shaped cake with pounded shrimp fried with fat and dried onion and mixed with salt, pepper which is enhanced by a mixture of garlic, capsicum, and fish sauce or bun bo Hue (noodle with beef and grilled chopped meat), which is a combination of white vermicelli, rare beef, grilled chopped crab, grilled chopped meat, well-done lean meat, etc.

Cooked rice with mussels is also a Hue speciality that Nghi Xuan mesmerizes its customers. Comprising 21 materials such as mussel, capsicum, chutney, capsicum dipped into fish sauce, roasted salt, peanut, sesame, crumbed grilled girdle cake, fried pork skin, fat, scrap, cooked rice, fresh vegetables of various kinds, banana inflorescence, mint leaves, garlic, sugar, fried onion, ginger, etc.

The main dish, bo nhung dam (beef bathed in vinegar) has always been Nghi Xuan’s stand-out dish. Joined by an accompaniment of fragrant herbs and rice paper, the beef is served raw and finely sliced. A communal dish, everyone around the table takes their own piece of meat and bathes it in the steaming vinegar enriched broth, according to their own particular taste for bloody or well-cooked beef. These morsels of steaming meat are then rolled up with the herbs in the rice paper to make a hot tasty little package which is dipped in a spicy anchovy mam (fermented paste).

Coming to Nghi Xuan, gastronomes requiring not only delicious foods but also looking for a combination of sophistication brought by a haute cuisine, a beauty of decoration and high standard of service to give them a fine-dining experience from a traditional cuisine in Vietnam.

The Restaurant is open for lunch and dinner. The price ranges from 48,000 per dish and many choices of set menu.

Nghi Xuan Restaurant 5/9 Nguyen Sieu, Dist. 1, Ho Chi Minh City Tel: (848) 3823 0699 - Fax: (848) 3827 9397 Email: dining@nghixuanrestaurant.com Website: www.nghixuanrestaurant.com Opening Hours: 11h00−22h00 4-course set lunch @8.50usd++ per person 7-course set dinner @ 29.00usd++ per person, including 2-hour free flow of wine 7-course set dinner @ 24usd++ per person, including 1 soft drink