Vietnam will host the World Food Festival for the first time in the southern coastal city of Vung Tau in July, providing a great opportunity for the country to promote its traditional cuisine.

The festival, co-organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the People’s Committee of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, are expecting more than 80 countries and territories to attend the festival which will feature cuisine, culture, festival, shopping and entertainment.

Vietnam will spotlight a range of special dishes from all three regions. Being a nation with many diverse cultural identities, Vietnam is known as an “eating and drinking heaven”. Philip Kotler, the father of modern marketing, said that food may be Vietnam’s national trademark after he visited the country and enjoyed numerous traditional dishes.

The Head Chef at the Metropole Hanoi Hotel, Denis Groison, added that Vietnam has a huge range of culinary heritages.

Many foreigners enjoy Vietnamese dishes and also want to learn how to cook them. Over the past ten years, the Anh Tuyet Cookery Centre at 25 Ma May Street, Hanoi has welcomed many foreigners from the UK, the US, France, Germany, the Republic of Korea and Spain.

According to culinary experts, Vietnamese food is popular with foreigners because of the balanced mixture of spices. It is not as fatty as Chinese food and not as spicy as Thai food and many of the ingredients and spices in Vietnamese dishes have medical properties.

At present, besides the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism’s activities to promote the Vietnamese foods and drinks in ASEAN countries, China, France and Germany, the Institute for Vietnamese Gastronomic Research has recently launched a programme entitled “Creating a Vietnamese kitchen for the world”.

The programme will set standards for restaurants on 100 Vietnamese dishes, encourage foreign tourists in Vietnam to learn how to cook Vietnamese foods and speed up the export of cooking appliances as well as promote Vietnamese cooking overseas.