KON TUM – Two strange dishes will help visitors warm their stomachs in the cold of the highlands.
Mang Den is a small town on the plateau, in Kon Plong district, Kon Tum province, about 60 km from Kon Tum city. This is one of the famous tourist destinations in the Central Highlands, considered by many as “the second Da Lat” thanks to its cool climate, cold at night, and vast pine forests.
In Mang Den, after hours of walking in the middle of the pine forest, or enjoying picking oranges on the hill, visitors should stop at a small shop not far from the center to “recharge”. Mang Den is small, there are not many shops, so if you go in the low season, you will have few options. It’s quite funny that here, you can meet all the people you’ve encountered before in some tourist spots. Many people still say “Follow the Internet” and with this restaurant, it’s a “not bad search result”.
The restaurant is not large, enough for more than a dozen sets of tables and chairs, the yellow light creates a feeling of warmth and closeness. It serves both lunch and dinner. The menu of the restaurant is quite simple, with a hot pot dish that almost every customer orders.
A dish that has just heard its name is spicy, but thanks to that, it is really suitable for the climate in Mang Den. According to the owner, the hot pot sauce has its own recipe, which is stewed from vegetables and fruits, along with herbs of Chinese origin such as goji berries and red apples. The broth is stewed for many hours to produce a natural and clear sweetness. The hot pot dish is a bit related to Sichuan hot pot, divided into two compartments with two different flavors, one of which is very spicy and the other is not spicy. To feel the best taste of the dish, one piece of advice is to try it once.
The shop also has a dish that you must try, very suitable for appetizers, which is dried bamboo shoot chicken salad. As the name suggests, the dish has two main ingredients: chicken and dried bamboo shoots, with peanuts, vegetables such as mint, onions, carrots… with a taste no different from any other kind of mannequin, sour and sour. Sweet sweet. However, this rather strange combination fits in a special way and creates a dish where you may have ordered one plate and will have to order a second because the “cup” is too fast.
Reference address: Mang Den Lu Quan: A hot pot costs from 250,000 to 350,000 VND depending on the number of people eating. A plate of mannequins costs 100,000 VND.