"Saigontourist Group Food Culture and Delicious Food Festival 2023" organized by Saigon Tourist Corporation (Saigontourist Group) will take place for 4 days, from April 20 to 23, 2023 at Van Thanh Tourist Area, Ho Chi Minh City. Last year, more than 30,000 visitors attended the Saigontourist Group Food Culture and Delicious Food Festival 2022 at the end of August 2022.

Mr. Pham Huy Binh, Chairman of Saigontourist Group, head of the program's steering committee, shared: "We are very honored that the Saigontourist Group Food Culture and Delicious Food Festival 2022 has been voted by the World Culinary Awards as "Asia's Best Culinary Festival 2022". Building on the success of the 2022 festival, the 2023 festival will return on a larger and more impressive scale, both in content and form. This is one of the key activities of Saigontourist Group to contribute to promoting the attractiveness and uniqueness of Vietnam's diverse and rich cuisine to domestic tourists as well as friends around the world. Through this event, we also hope to promote Ho Chi Minh City as a destination that converges many attractive factors, including cuisine and culinary cultural events".

The space of the Saigontourist Group Food Culture and Delicious Food Festival 2023 will be arranged into 3 areas: North, Central, South, gathering 40 food stalls from 40 units of Saigontourist Group nationwide, 10 more than last year. The festival ensures serving over 6,000 seats at the same time. In addition, the organizers also arrange mobile carts selling street food, a new feature of this year's festival.

The Saigontourist Group Food Culture and Delicious Food Festival 2023 continues to be a place where the culinary quintessence of the three regions converges. Member units representing 4-5 star hotels, resorts, and restaurants of Saigontourist Group in Ho Chi Minh City and other localities will bring to the festival over 350 regional dishes and drinks, expressed through the talents of experienced chefs along with the quintessence of traditional crafts associated with cuisine. Diners will enjoy dishes prepared by chefs of 5-star hotels in Ho Chi Minh City or 4-5 star luxury hotels and resorts of Saigontourist Group in provinces and cities across the country.

In addition to 40 units of Saigontourist Group nationwide, this year's festival also has the participation of units from Ben Tre, Tay Ninh and Vietnam Airlines. Representatives from Tay Ninh will introduce special vegetarian dishes of the locality. Ben Tre will bring to the festival delicious specialties of the coconut land. Vietnam Airlines will bring unique dishes for passengers on long-haul flights.

This year's festival is also carefully designed, with increased investment in image design for the regions. The representative image of the Northern region is the village gate, decorated with conical hats. The Central region impresses with the Hoi An lantern gate. The identifying image of the Southern region is decorated with a cluster of rice branches, an image reminiscent of the fertile Mekong Delta, known as the number 1 rice granary of Vietnam. In particular, in the Southern region, this year's festival will have a cluster of spaces of 20 old Saigon houses, with a counter serving filter coffee, a unique coffee-drinking style of the old Saigon people.

Introducing to the public, diners and visitors attending the festival, the festival organizers this year continue to research and select dishes that combine both typical elements, "standard" regional flavors, dishes that evoke memories of a time, and "comfort" dishes. Diners who want to enrich their culinary experience can also find at the festival "unique, strange" delicacies, only available in a land or locality as attractive highlights on the overall picture of the "Vietnamese culinary map" rich and diverse in flavor, taste and color. This year's festival will have a vegetarian booth serving vegetarian food lovers with many special vegetarian dishes. In addition to using food and drinks on the spot, guests in need can bring them home to use or give to relatives and friends.

Although the main element is culinary, the festival also integrates many special activities such as art performances, cultural exchanges, folk games, and reenactments of traditional craft villages for visitors to enjoy. Quan Ho performances, Hue singing, Don Ca Tai Tu, monkey dances, Chhay Dam drum performances by Khmer artists, Then singing from the Northwest region, etc. will make the festival space more bustling, with diverse cultural nuances of the regions.

Joining the festive atmosphere are folk games that evoke childhood memories. Guests with families and children will surely be extremely excited when participating in games such as blindfolded pig beating, fish fighting, coconut leaf tying, ball dropping, ball throwing, dart throwing, bottle ring throwing, coin throwing. Adults can participate in bingo, chess, chess, and gourd shaking.

This year's festival will feature 10 traditional craft villages, typically making wine, tofu, vermicelli, rice paper, candy, folk cakes, bamboo weaving, conical hat weaving, sedge mat weaving, and pottery.

Saigontourist Group's 2023 Food and Drink Culture Festival will open from 4-10pm daily for 4 consecutive days: April 21, 22, 23, 24, 2023. Of which, on April 23 and 24 (Saturday and Sunday), lunch will be served from 10am to 2pm. To participate in the festival, visitors must buy an entrance ticket with a coupon attached to use the service, with a total ticket price of VND 200,000/adult, children under 1.4m tall will be free. The organizers apply attractive incentives for visitors who buy tickets early.