by Bảo Ngọc

Buôn AKô Dhông is a well-known community tourism village located in Buôn Ma Thuột City, Đắk Lắk Province, and often referred to as Cô Thôn Village by taxi drivers for ease of remembering.

The village's name means "upstream" in the language of the Êđê ethnic minority in the Central Highlands, since it was created upstream of six river flows.

It was established in the 1950s by the wise village chief Ama H'rin, who encouraged a group of M’Đrắk residents to move here. Today, as the province continues to develop, this area has drawn lots of people from big cities to invest and operate business. However, there are still Êđê and M'Nông indigenous people who live here, keeping their identities and establishing businesses based on their traditions.

H'linh Niê, the owner of Yang Sing hotel and restaurant, is one of the Êđê people who made it big with business concepts based on local culture.

After a career in medicine, H'linh Niê said that it was her passion for her people's culture that led her to start the eatery.

She went to great lengths to explain to us that her restaurant was a labour of love, as she had aimed to provide customers with an authentic experience of her ethnic culture.

From the exterior, the restaurant appears to resemble a typical Êđê wooden home. The two wooden ladders in front of the property are a popular attraction for tourists. The Cái (female) staircase, carved with two breasts, is the entry to the house for ladies and visitors, while the smaller Đực (male) staircase is on the left for the men in the household.

The restaurant resemble a typical Êđê wooden house from the outside. Photo courtesy of Yang Sing

According to H'linh Niê, this detail represents the supremacy of women in the Êđê people's matriarchy.

Large wood tables and chairs fill the interior, and the walls are decorated with a collection of traditional musical instruments. The restaurant's dining area has a recreation of an Êđê home kitchen and plenty of documentary photographs.

Most of the food on the restaurant's menu are the Êđê people's customary dishes. Despite this, the choice of dishes is broad.

For the first course, we opted to go with H'linh's recommendation and get the bitter courgette salad as well as the stir-fried forest veggies. Bitter courgette originally flourished in the wild, but the Êđê people domesticated it for use as a food by planting it in gardens.

The bitter courgette, which looks like a little egg but has a green skin with white stripes, contains numerous tiny spines all over its stem. The name of this vegetable gives away its distinctive bitter flavour, which is delicious both raw and when cooked in a variety of tasty ways such as braised, stir-fried, or in a salad.

The Êđê consider leaves and hot peppers to be essential seasonings for preparing the bitter vegetable. These are the typical spices that add flavour to the bitter dish.

Bitter courgette salad, Yang Sing's signature dish. VNS Photo Bảo Ngọc

Stir-fried vegetables from the forest provide a pleasant and fresh flavour for visitors to take at the restaurant.

Next up, we were delighted by the excellent taste of the grilled chicken and bamboo rice we ordered for the following courses.

The chicken has a satisfying crispiness to its skin, was juicy inside, and the seasoning spot on. The wait staff recommends seasoning this meal with salt and pepper before eating it on its own, or with fried rice for an extra burst of flavour.

Yang Sing Grilled Chicken is the perfect choice for dinner. VNS Photo Bảo Ngọc

The restaurant also offers a selection of beverages, including soft drinks and home-brew wine.

A local singer and dancer performance may also be ordered by customers for an additional cost of roughly VND800,000 to add to the ambiance of their dinner.

In Êđê, "Lač jak" means "thank you very much", which is precisely what H'linh Niê said to us as we were finishing off dinner.

If you've spent the day seeing Buôn Ma Thuột City and Akô Dhông, Yang Sing is a great place to get dinner, try some authentic Êđê dishes, and mingle with the locals who are working to improve the Central Highlands' image as a top destination. VNS

Yang Sing Hotel & Restaurant

Address: Buôn AKô Dhông village, Buôn Ma Thuột City, Đắk Lắk Province.

Phone: 091 940 17 17

Price: 100,000 - 300,000 VND/dish