Their kitchen, not a cooking school
This is not a class in a demonstration kitchen with numbered workstations. It is a morning in a working family kitchen in Cua Can, with a cook who has been feeding people for thirty years and has opinions about how you are holding the knife.
At a glance
- Duration
- Five and a half hours, 08:30 - 14:00
- Group
- Maximum 6
- Starts
- Hotel pick-up, 08:00 - 08:30
- Ends
- Back at your hotel by 14:30
- Difficulty
- Easy, mostly standing
- From
- USD 46 per person
What you cook, and why these four
Four dishes, chosen because they teach four different techniques and because they are what this family actually eats rather than what a tourist menu would list.
| Dish | What it teaches | How hard |
|---|---|---|
| Goi ca trich - herring salad with coconut | Curing with acid, balancing fat and sour, knife work on onion | Easy |
| Ca kho to - fish braised in a clay pot with caramel | Making caramel from sugar without burning it, the hardest step of the day | Medium |
| Canh chua - sour soup with pineapple, okra and tamarind | Layering sour, sweet and salt, and when to add each herb | Easy |
| Banh xeo - crisp turmeric pancake with prawn and beansprout | Batter, pan heat and the wrist movement that makes it crisp | Medium |
The caramel for the clay pot fish is where the morning is either interesting or humbling. Sugar goes from clear to amber to burnt in about twenty seconds and there is no rescuing it. Roughly a third of groups burn the first one. The cook keeps a second bowl of sugar ready and says nothing.
You cook in pairs at two gas rings, with the cook moving between you. Everything is weighed by eye and taught by taste, which is frustrating for people who want grams, and we send a written recipe card with actual measurements by email afterwards so you can reproduce it at home.
The market first, which is half the point
We start at Duong Dong market at 08:45, which is late by market standards and exactly right for buying: the early trade is done, the fish that did not sell at six is being discounted, and the sellers have time to talk.
You buy the ingredients. Not symbolically - the cook gives you a list and a share of the cash, and you go and find herring, pineapple, okra, tamarind, herbs and a bag of the black pepper that everybody on this island has an opinion about. Your guide interprets and stops you from paying the tourist price, which exists and is roughly double.
The useful part is not the shopping. It is standing at the fish counter while the cook explains how to tell a herring landed this morning from one landed yesterday, which is the gill colour and the eye, and then watching her reject two before buying the third.
Day by day
Duong Dong market, then a kitchen at Cua Can
Pick-up between 08:00 and 08:30 and straight to the market. You will spend about an hour and fifteen minutes there, of which perhaps thirty minutes is buying and the rest is looking at things you have never seen, asking what they are, and being offered small pieces of them.
Cua Can is twenty-five minutes north, where the river comes down to the sea and the island is still mostly gardens. The house is a single-storey family home with an open kitchen at the back, a pepper trellis, a mango tree and about forty chickens. You cook where the family cooks, on their two rings, with their pans.
Lunch is at their table at about a quarter to one, and it is the four dishes you made plus rice, plus whatever the grandmother decided to add that morning, which is usually something you did not cook and is usually the best thing on the table. This is the part of the day that runs long and we build the schedule to let it.
Prices
| Group size | Shared, per person | Private, whole group |
|---|---|---|
| 1 traveller | USD 78 | USD 78 |
| 2 travellers | USD 62 | USD 132 |
| 3 - 4 | USD 52 | USD 208 |
| 5 - 6 | USD 46 | USD 278 |
The family takes one group a day and no more, which is why this is the trip that sells out first in December and January. The prices page explains what a kitchen day costs us and why we do not run two.
What the price includes
- A guide for the whole morning, in English, who interprets in the kitchen
- Hotel transfers within Duong Dong, Long Beach, Ong Lang and Cua Can
- All ingredients, including the market money you spend
- Two hours of instruction from the cook, at two rings, in pairs
- Lunch at the family table with tea and fruit
- A written recipe card for all four dishes, emailed afterwards
- The flat fee we pay the family for the kitchen and the day
What it does not include
- Alcohol - the family does not serve it and you may bring your own
- Travel insurance
- Anything you buy at the market for yourself
- Tips
- Pick-up beyond the standard zone, USD 8 per person
Gallery
Who this day is not for
- Anyone who wants a professional teaching kitchen with a station each. This is a domestic kitchen with two gas rings and you will be sharing them.
- People who need precise measurements to learn. The teaching is by taste and by eye. The recipe card afterwards fixes this, but the morning itself will frustrate you.
- Groups above six. The kitchen physically holds six at the rings and a seventh person stands in the doorway watching, which is not what you paid for.
- Anyone with a serious shellfish or fish allergy. Three of the four dishes are seafood; a fully vegetarian menu exists but a shellfish-free seafood menu does not.
- Travellers on a tight afternoon schedule. Lunch runs to about a quarter to two and we are not going to rush a family off their own table.
Questions travellers ask most
Is there a vegetarian version?
Yes, at the same price, and it is genuinely good rather than an apology: banh xeo with mushroom and beansprout, canh chua with tofu and pineapple, a green mango salad and morning glory with garlic.
Tell us when you book. The family shops the evening before and cannot switch on the morning.
Do we really buy the ingredients ourselves?
Yes, with the cash and the list, and your guide interpreting. It is the difference between a market visit and a market walk-through, and it is where most of what you learn about ingredients actually happens.
If a stall tries the tourist price your guide will say so out loud, in Vietnamese, and the price will change. That is worth seeing once.
Can children take part?
From about eight. There is hot oil and a caramel pot, so under-eights sit at the table with the grandmother and shell prawns, which they seem to enjoy more than the cooking.
Children under twelve are half price on the shared rate. Say their ages in the booking form.
Will we be able to cook these at home?
Three of the four, yes. Canh chua, banh xeo and the clay pot fish work with supermarket ingredients if you can find tamarind and fish sauce.
The herring salad does not travel. It needs fish landed that morning and fresh coconut, and every version we have heard about made in Europe has been a disappointment. We would rather tell you now.
Read next
Tell us what you want out of the island
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.