Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - A Vietnamese Cuisine Day in France will be heldin Perpignan, France this week.

This is the first event co-organised by the Foreign Ministry’s CultureDiplomacy, UNESCO and the Vietnam Chefs’ Association in the area.

Nguyen Thuong Quan, chairman of the association, said there will be around 500guests representing politics, enterprises involving cuisine, tourism, hotels,French chefs, along with members of the Vietnamese community in France andother European countries.

The event will feature art performances and cooking featuring delicacies fromthree regions.

A workshop on eight UNESCO recognised heritages in Vietnam and Vietnameseculinary art will also take place.

“Five chefs from Vietnam, who will cook dishes of different regions, will showoff their talent at the event,” Quan said. “Some will be making decorativedishes using vegetables, roots and fruits. We would like to tell a culturalstory and advertise destinations in Vietnam to locals.”

Tran Duc Long, born in 1993 in Ninh Binh, is the youngest artisan at the event.He said he is proud to introduce Vietnamese culinary art to internationalfriends.

Long will carve fruits and roots to decorate meals and make an edible sculpturefrom the food.

“It will look like a beautiful landscape of mountain and river with a pair ofpeasants, flowers and other birds,” he said.

Long’s creation will use lotuses cut from various roots, fruits and vegetableslike carrot, pumpkins, papaya and red chilly.

“I’d like also learn something from French cuisine,’ he said.

Artisan Truong Thi Dinh, from Hue said Hue has been longed compared as acapital citadel of cuisine.

“Hue’s dishes are simple but reveal delicacy and complexity in flavour and waysof processing,” she said.

“Beside Huong River, Ngu Mountain and the relic system of the ancient citadel,culinary art plays an important luring power to tourists,” she said.

“I hope I can help more foreigners want to explore Vietnam and Hue through theevent,” she added.

She will prepare six dishes including banh khot (fried shrimp rice pancake), banhdau xanh (green bean cake), che khoai tim (sweetened porridge), and banh botloc (rice flour dumpling with shrimp).

Some materials are brought to the site from Vietnam while some fresh materialswill be bought at Vietnamese market in Paris. The event will be held on October17 and 18./.