Western visitors treated with Vietnamese food
These days, at the Alabino training ground which hosts the Field Kitchen contest in the Army Games 2020, audiences often gather in front of the places where participating Field Kitchen teams display their products and offer samples of traditional dishes from their respective countries.
    |
 |
|
Vietnamese cooks serve visitors with traditional dishes. |
At the Vietnamese Field Kitchen team’s pavilion, more and more visitors come to witness cooks from the Vietnam People’s Army process food. They also savor typical foods with Vietnamese flavors.
According to Colonel Pham Van Khao, who led the Field Kitchen team of Vietnam at the Army Games in 2019, and now 2020, the Vietnam People’s Army sent a field kitchen team to the Army Games 2018 for the first time. As newcomers to the games, the Vietnamese team members prepared just 100 spring rolls and numerous bowls of Pho Hanoi and did not know that foreign visitors would like to try different Vietnamese foods.
Learning lessons from the previous games, in 2019, Vietnamese cooks prepared more than 350 spring rolls, a hundred servings of Hanoi rice vermicelli noodles and grilled pork, beef stew in wine sauce, egg coffee, Thai Nguyen tea, Hai Duong green bean cakes and more to serve visitors and competitors. Their delicious dishes received high marks from international friends.
This year, two Vietnamese dishes, including net seafood spring rolls and banh rom – a kind of glutinous rice cake, were selected by the games’ organizers to serve high-ranking delegations from the Russian Ministry of Defense. “Vietnamese food is good,” hailed Russian officers while tasting them.
Visitors love Vietnamese food
The Vietnamese Field Kitchen team’s pavilion welcomes a lot of visitors throughout the day. Visitors include the organizing panel of the games, foreign peers, service personnel at the Alabino training ground, and Russian people.
|
|
 |
|
The Vietnamese Field Kitchen team's pavilion is always crowded with visitors. |
Other guests of the Vietnamese pavilion are from foreign media agencies. They filmed the food-cooking process of the Vietnamese cooks and did not forget to ask them for the recipe. They also did not miss the opportunity to enjoy Vietnamese dishes. A Russian reporter who was impressed by the Vietnamese food said that processing Vietnamese food is so sophisticated and the food is made with a mixture of diverse ingredients to create unique flavor.
During the opening ceremony of the Army Games 2020, the pavilion also hosted numerous overseas Vietnamese in Russia. To treat their compatriots, Vietnamese cooks made 600 net seafood spring rolls, 20kg of roasted pork, 20kg of beef stew in wine sauce, shrimp-chips, vegetable pickles, banh rom, glutinous rice balls, and sticky rice sweet dumplings. In just one hour and a half, all of the dishes were finished and many visitors regretted missing the chance to enjoy Vietnamese food.
Apart from dishes, other made-in-Vietnam products such as green bean cakes, coffee, peanut brittle have left deep impression on Russians.
“The compliments of the visitors to the Field Kitchen team of the Vietnam People’s Army is the motivation for us to prepare more delicious foods for the closing ceremony of the Army Games 2020,” said Colonel Pham Van Khao.
Translated by Mai Huong