From Food Expert Suong Thi Bui: From the
last two seasons most contestants use Vietnamese spices. In the next season,
the preliminary round will have a theme called “Hometown Taste”, so its
contestants should use only Vietnamese spices. The second round will have a
theme called “Golden Dish”, which allows the teams to showcase the signature
dishes from the outlet they represent. It may very well be a Western styled
dish, so this is an opportunity for cultural exchange. There are many
restaurants that will prepare Vietnamese food, but will still use foreign
spices. The theme of the final round is “The Secret Black Box”, in which the
ingredients will mainly come from Vietnam. We tried to limit as much as
possible the ingredients that come from Europe. Wines are usually the bulk of
these.
The key objective of the contest is to
honor Vietnamese cuisine, so we are very concerned about this. We can control
this and also expect that the Vietnamese spices used not only be fresh, but can
also be dried or preserved. Realistically this is how international diners and
chefs will come across and utilize such Vietnamese spices.
Mr.Sang Huy Ly: A perfect example to answer this question refers to coffee.
Vietnamese coffee is very well known, but it is not an indigenous ingredient to
Vietnam. It originates from France. If we insist only on using Vietnamese foods
then would alienate ingredients like coffee.
That is about Vietnam,
but it considers other countries. Take Italy, for instance. If Italians do not
accept imported dishes from other countries then they wouldn’t have the Italian
noodle which originated in China. If we don’t accept new and strange dishes,
then the Italian noodle would have never become a culinary symbol of Italy. So
we think that we should honor what we have and improve or upgrade them to be
better.
Therefore if we don’t care too much about
the words we use and see where they come from then we will go further. I
believe that by continuously improving things we should open our door to
welcome new and good things as well as maintain them to make them become our
own products.
Followed by M.K
Ambassador of Vietnamese products