Rice grain has played an important role in the meals of Asian people. Also, rice dishes are always varied and play a significant role in Vietnamese cuisine.
Rice grain is regarded as the pearl of heaven and is a necessary ingredient in Vietnamese family meals, representing the wet rice civilization. The image of white rice grains has gone deep into the human subconscious through family meals. A simple and comfortable meal makes us think of “coming home” or “going back to mom”.
Going back to the legend of the Hung Kings, we cannot forget the story of Banh Chung and Banh Giay. A rustic sticky rice cake made from simple glutinous rice helped the poor prince get the throne. And Thach Sanh in the fairy tale treated other country’s envoys with a bowl of rice to praise the richness of Vietnam.
At Gia, we always appreciate and wish to recreate rice dishes that are harmonious in both taste and emotion. Interspersed with traditional values are completely new taste experiences that we strive to discover ourselves every day, through exploring rich local ingredients and bringing them into our menu.
- ST 25 Rice
Grown in Soc Trang and grown by people here on saline soil or rotated with rice-shrimp fields. ST25 is a rice variety that converges the “quintessence” of other aromatic rice varieties. It is not only a high-quality rice variety with high yield, but also a rice variety with extremely high tolerance to saline soils
ST25 rice has a characteristic aroma of pandan leaves mixed with the aroma of young rice which is easy to smell even when the rice is still raw. This is the special feature of this rice. Moreover, rice cooked from ST25 rice has dry, and soft with an aroma and a sweet flavor, even when cooled, it does not dry out.
- Seng Cu Rice
Seng Cu Rice is white, thin and long, reasonably aromatic and the chalky kernel percentage of under 10%. To get good Seng Cu rice grains, people have to grow them on high mountains, so the yield of rice is not high. Therefore, the output of Sengu rice is not much and is always in a state of scarcity when supplying to the market. Although the rice yield is not high, the quality of rice here is excellent, it is difficult to compare with any other region.
The natural conditions of these areas include an altitude of 500 – 1,400 meters, low temperature at 20 – 25oC on average, high variation of temperature between day and night, sunny during the day, and misty during the night. Nowadays, rice has become a specialty of Lào Cai province specifically and all the Northwest region in general.
Vietnamese family transition from traditional to modern has been influenced by many factors, both objective and subjective. But because the wet rice civilization has been attached throughout history, rice is still the main food and cannot be absent in Vietnamese meals. Despite being busy with many daily messes but in the mind of Vietnamese people, there is always a certain respect for family meals.
And for Gia, from day one, the journey to find local ingredients has been a great inspiration for us to create food at Gia. We always treasure each ingredient and believe that each of them has a core value, a voice of its own.