Editor’s picks: Four culinary menus worth trying this season

As the menu moves into the plains, the memories shift with inventive interpretations. Pork cheek croquettes echo the traditional fake dog meat dish, now wrapped in a crisp shell and filled with velvety béchamel. A smoked crab salad, light and crunchy, recalls breezy afternoons on Nha Trang beach. Pan-fried scallops with coconut foam and Vietnamese coriander reimagine the rustic Southern favourite of coconut-fried snails, elevated yet true to its roots.

The experience reaches its crescendo with dialogues between local ingredients and global techniques. Seng Cu rice risotto with grilled oysters and goat belly mushrooms is a meeting of mountain and sea. Chawanmushi with shrimp broth, sautéed gourd and smoked tiger prawns conjures a Hanoi summer, with the hum of bamboo fans and the scent of home kitchens. Each dish holds a fragment of memory, reborn through contemporary methods, like a familiar story retold in a new voice.

Dessert concludes the journey with playful nods to childhood. Tropical fruit mousse paired with roasted ant salt and light beer evokes the wild outdoors. Caramel sticky rice cake with ginger mousse and macadamia brings back the taste of che lam. Banh da ke, crafted with care, is crisp yet sweet, returning diners to the flavours of home.

“Vi Du” is not ostentatious. It wins diners over with sincerity. Each dish is a destination, each flavour a landscape, showing how Vietnamese cuisine can be rewritten in a language at once familiar, fresh and brimming with creativity.

Set within a French villa on Nguyen Van Huong Street, Sono unveils Tales & Tastes, a menu composed like a script told through food. Chef Kien Phan draws on childhood memories and Vietnamese folk tales, expressed through French techniques, while local ingredients take the leading role. The eight main dishes form eight chapters, each smoothly guided by produce and method.

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The story opens with Cay Tre Tram Dot. Sweet, firm Phuoc Hai crab pairs with Tan Trieu grapefruit and finger lime, layers of sourness tinged with light bitterness, with sweet and savoury notes interwoven as fresh as the first page of a book. Then comes Mai An Tiem: grilled watermelon infused with charcoal, accompanied by feta, cucumber and lemon leaves. Opposing elements blend the creamy saltiness of cheese, the ripeness of fruit and the cool lift of citrus oils into a composition that is simple, clear and enduring.

The climax arrives with Son Tinh Thuy Tinh. Silky cod wrapped in perilla leaves meets green banana mousse, crisp beans and a tomato broth. Layers of contrasting flavour recall the fabled battle, though the finish is one of balance. Soon after, Thach Sanh grounds the journey once again. Long An duck, wind-dried for 14 days, offers rosy meat beneath a crisp skin, served with mango salsa, chilli, and rice fried in duck fat and doi leaves. It is here that luxury and familiarity meet most vividly.

Before the finale, Hon Truong Ba, Da Hang Thit provides a pause, soothing the palate. Then But Than Ma Luong appears, inviting you to paint your own dessert plate with chocolate, fruit and edible colour. The moment turns the meal into your personal story, leaving a mark that cannot be repeated.

Tales & Tastes is not merely a menu. It is storytelling through flavour, a journey that lingers in memory like a work of art.

For a culinary journey that feels like travelling across Vietnam, there is the vegetarian feast at Hum Signature. The collection Tu Dong Bang Den Non Cao is more than a menu; it is a philosophy of life embodied in each dish, making vegetarian cuisine an experience that nourishes both palate and spirit.

The opening plates draw their hues from the plains: Da Lat carrots infused with Cai Be orange, crisp rice paper filled with Son La millet and Ninh Thuan green apple, or fresh soybeans paired with Tien Giang watermelon. These compositions paint a bright picture of the countryside, familiar yet surprising enough to captivate the curious.

The menu then rises into the midlands and mountains. Spring shoots mixed with Lao Cai ginkgo bring calm, while kohlrabi and Northwest lak le retain their rusticity, delicately prepared to support one another. Thanh Tri mugwort with young Cu Chi banana stems offers an unexpected harmony, aromatic yet warming. Elsewhere, Northwest doi leaves, Hue figs and Soc Trang brown rice connect three regions in a single dish, a chord resonating from memory into the present.

As the menu approaches its central notes, Ha Giang buckwheat, Ta Nung pear and Thai Nguyen deer antler mushroom distil the essence of the Northern highlands, strong, pure and resonant. To close, Tac Cau pineapple, Tay Nguyen Konia seeds and Ben Tre coconut sticky rice wine offer a sweet finale. A final cup of Hue white lotus distilled water, delicate and clear, leaves the aftertaste lingering in quiet completeness.

At Hum Signature, the menu is not a simple interplay of ingredients but an exhibition of flavour. Each dish carries the story of its land, its crops and its people, lifting botanical cuisine into the realm of art charged with emotion.

“If you allow yourself to drift, you will realise that some lights can only be seen once all the outside noise is silenced.”

So shares Chef Hoang Tung about The Lighthouse, the new menu at Å by Tung. Built from seemingly modest ingredients, including late-season vegetables, distant-caught fish, wild fruits and winter herbs, the menu takes its cue from the image of a lighthouse on a tranquil sea. Each dish is a fragment of memory, glowing softly to awaken hidden layers of feeling in the diner.

Comprising thirteen courses, The Lighthouse is a journey through shifting waves of memory and flavour. It begins with The First Ray of Light: oysters, amaebi shrimp and tuna belly with perilla, pear and green mango, serene as the dawn tide. The chapter titled Guiding draws the diner closer to the ocean and the fields through octopus, pork and parmesan mingled with spring onions and lemongrass.

In Memories, pho and shrimp are reimagined with herbs and curry, evoking the familiar yet expressed in a contemporary idiom. The climax, Crest of the Wave, brings scallops, toothfish and Satsuma Gyu beef, heightened with spices like coriander, turmeric and mac mat, a powerful surge that awakens every sense.

Finally, like the steady light guiding a vessel home, Wharf closes the experience with sweet potatoes, tamarind and tofu, paired with brown butter, eggs and strawberries as a playful yet gentle ending, preserving the echoes of the journey.

Like its namesake, The Lighthouse does more than guide with flavour. It leaves behind a quiet radiance, illuminating memory and lingering long after the table has been cleared.

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