Chau Doc Market in Chau Doc Town on the Cambodia border sells
hundreds of varieties of salted seafood. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran. 

An exquisite food festival will take place from February 13-16 in Chau Doc Town, considered Vietnam’s “capital of salted seafood”. 

To promote fish sauce and salted seafood as a leading cultural and culinary attraction, especially in southern Vietnam, 170 kiosks representing the specialties, with special focus on the Mekong Delta region, will participate in the exhibition.

The festival is organized by An Giang’s Centre of Promotion and Investment at Statue Garden, Nui Sam Ward.

Chau Doc in An Giang Province is located by the Hau River, a branch of the Mekong River flowing through Vietnamese territory, and Vinh Te canal. The town borders Cambodia and is about 250 kilometres (160 miles) west of Ho Chi Minh City.

Chau Doc Town has been praised as Vietnam’s salted seafood capital due to the wide variety of salted fish used and sold here, including snakehead, moustached danio, and snakeskin gourami.

Themed "Chau Doc – Southern Vietnam’s Capital of Salted Seafood", the exhibition will be divided into three sections. 

In the first, tourists could view images and sauce-making tools to better understand the traditional method of fish-sauce making in southern Vietnam.

In the second, visitors can sample different types of salted seafood, fish sauce and subsidiary snacks like dried fish.

Beside specialties of the Mekong Delta region, a wide variety of sauces from across Vietnam will also be introduced, such as northern Vietnam’s small-sized shrimp paste (Ninh Binh Province) and whole-body anchovy sauce (Hai Phong City); and central region's shrimp sauce (Thanh Hoa Province) and sour shrimp sauce (ancient town Hue).  

Finally, tourists could wrap up the day nicely with many local dishes using fish sauce, from fish sauce hotpot, spring rolls to daily stir-fried garden eggs with shrimp sauce and deep-fried fermented snakehead.