The restaurant’s ground floor, with capacity for 40 guests, is ideal for those seeking tranquility and a traditional Vietnamese culinary experience accompanied with the sweet melody of piano tunes. Meanwhile, the first floor, with capacity for 80 to 90 guests, is for diners who have a passion for Vietnamese ethnic music and musical instruments, with performance from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. everyday. The second floor is suitable for private parties or buffets, with capacity for 100 guests and featuring a conference hall.
Recently, the restaurant is offering gastronomes a “Gift from Lotus” menu featuring outstanding dishes made from lotus. The lotus flower is endowed with a simple and noble beauty. It is a familiar item in Vietnamese life and in cuisine can be made to delicious and nutritious dishes.
Taking advantage of the lotus flower the chefs at Vietnamese House have made unique and outstanding dishes with lotus, including pork, shrimp and lotus rootlet salad, steamed rice with chicken wrapped in lotus leaves, sticky rice wrapped with lotus leaves, steamed duck with lotus, lotus bulb soup with pork and lotus seed sweet soup.
The pork, shrimp and lotus rootlet salad is a harmonious combination of lotus rootlets with prawns, pork, vinegar, sugar, spices and aromatic vegetable. Lotus rice is a typical feature in traditional Hue Royal dishes, as it provides high nutrition and dispels stress.
Sticky rice wrapped with lotus leaves is another Vietnamese folk dish. Lotus leaves are cut into hand-wide pieces and soaked in warm water, filled with sticky rice, pork and fried onion and then wrapped and steamed for 15 minutes.
Lotus seed sweet soup is served as dessert. The nutritious dish is an antipyretic treatment in hot summer days.
The “Gift from Lotus” menu also introduces other popular fare made from lotus such as squid stuffed with lotus seed and steam chicken with lotus bulbs.
Vietnam Houses Restaurant is located at 93-95 Dong Khoi Street, Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1, tel: (08) 3829 1623.
(Source: VietNamNet/Viet Nam News, URL:http://english.vietnamnet.vn/travel/2009/03/838676/)
