Soc Trang Specialties

First, it is a must to introduce pia cake (specialty in Vung Thom), a cake of Chinese community.

The most special is pia cake with sweet taste and pure scent of durian. It is one speciality of the rivery South. Pia cake has a round and flat shape with many thin covers surrounding the inside of green peas (or taro, jams), pork fat, the yolk of salted duck egg etc. Soc Trang pia cake is not as dry and rigid as other pia cake in other places.

Chinese sausage

Though Chinese sausage is not a rare dish, tourist from afar often buy it for relatives’ and friends’ gifts because of its first or second high grade and special taste.

Me lao cake

Me lao cake is made of glutinous rice flour, taro, malt, sugar and sesame.

You will feel a pity not to have My Xuyen bun nuoc leo (rice vermicelli with sauce) when arriving in Soc Trang.

A bowl of bun nuoc leo has its own special taste because the way the sauce is processed. The sauce is made of coconut milk and salted trichogaster pectoralis flavour. The sauce pot must be transparent though it has salted trichogaster pectoralis flavour. The salty flavour and smell of salted trichogaster pectoralis adhered to the sweet flavour of coconut milk not sugar as some eateries often do now. This is also the secret of sauce pot for sousing on rice vermicelli. On the top surface of a bun nuoc leo bowl is spawn of ophiocephalus maculates which should not be integral in creating a fatty special taste and a nice yellow. Therefore, in dry season when ophiocephalus maculates have no spawn, bun nuoc leo bowl reduce its half delicious taste.

Grilled flattened rice

Grilled rice, a common dish, is also a dish associated with culture and beliefs of Khmer community in the South.

In order to have this dish, Khmer peasants have to go to rice field to select rice which just turns to enter ripe stage (common people call it “dot dot”) on the tenth month of lunar calendar. The rice then is good because it still keeps its smell and is soft. This rice is brought home and put into a pan for roasting and then put it into a mortar for pounding until its husk is peeled. Because the rice is not ripe yet, it becomes flat. That’s why it is called grilled flattened rice.