With approximately 2,700 dishes from 54 ethnic groups, Vietnam is an ideal address for domestic and foreign connoisseurs of food. How to preserve and develop the traditional culinary art is an important issue for the tourism sector. To do this, it is imperative to train skilled chefs to promote the image of Vietnamese dishes around the world.

Nguyen Thanh Phong, principal of the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism and Hotel Services School, said Vietnam needs a professional training programme, including basic and follow-up training, for chefs to develop Vietnam’s culinary art on a par with international standards.

Ha Kim Vong, head of the Khoi Viet Foreign Language and Tourism Services School, shared the view and said chefs must have a good command of foreign languages, apart from their cooking and performing skills.   

Trieu Thi Choi, who is a good cook and has written a lot of books on Vietnamese dishes, pointed to the fact that Vietnam has yet to organise such a course to train top chefs. In her opinion, chefs are normally trained in a professional way in Vietnam, who will be regularly recognised as master chefs in the long run.

Dr Han Nguyen Nguyen Nha said that chefs should have performing skills besides cooking skills. 

“Customers like to watch chefs perform during the cooking process and see how the dishes are made,” said Mr Nha. “If they are trained in that way, I think they make excellent chefs”.

Students from the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism and Hotel Services School wondered how to train these chefs while most chefs in top-notch restaurants and hotels are Europeans.

Do Kieu Lan, head of the Saigon chef club, most five-star hotels in HCM City offer European dishes and they need European chefs. He expressed his hope that Vietnam will have restaurants and hotels of similar size where Vietnamese chefs can perform their skills.