Cơm Lam Gà Nướng: Buôn Đôn Grilled Chicken with Lam Rice

Buôn Đôn grilled chicken is a dish visitors to Buôn Đôn shouldn’t miss. The chicken is raised in the garden and grilled by hand, with nothing added to it. People usually eat it with lam rice (cơm lam), chili salt and lime leaves.

Lam rice and Buôn Đôn

Lam rice comes from the long trips that local people in the mountains made into the forest. Today it is a specialty that draws tourists.

Buôn Đôn, in Dak Lak, has many other good dishes and drinks: hemibagrus sour soup, forest meat, Ama Kong wine. But the one people always mention is Buôn Đôn grilled chicken with lam rice.

How lam rice is made

One restaurant manager said that making good lam rice is not simple:

• First, choose a bamboo tube (“bamboo pine” in the original).
• The bamboo has to be the right age, so the rice takes on its flavour.
• Then find the right glutinous rice, ideally glutinous rice grown on the milpa.
• Wash the rice and “mash them in for hours” (the manager’s words as given; the exact step is unclear), then put it in the bamboo tube and grill it.
• Within the next hour, the rice is boiled.
• Wait until it is no longer hot, cut the bamboo tube open, and it’s ready to eat.

How to eat it

In Buôn Đôn, lam rice is eaten with grilled garden chicken and chili salt. If you drink, try it with Y Miên wine.

While you’re in Buôn Đôn, you can eat this dish, drink Cần wine, look out over the forest and listen to the Serepok. You may already know the taste of Vietnamese rice and chicken, but in Buôn Đôn they taste quite different, and I think much better.