Behind Ninh Binh’s famous mountain goat dishes is a decades-long journey of farmers, chefs and entrepreneurs transforming a local specialty into a national brand.
On busy holiday weekends in Ninh Binh, restaurants serving mountain goat specialties are often packed from morning until late at night.
Parking lots overflow with tour buses and private cars.
Inside, diners wait up to 30 minutes for a table while kitchens work continuously to keep up with demand.
Behind the province’s famous dishes lies a remarkable transformation - one that has turned a once-struggling livestock trade into a culinary industry worth tens of billions of dong each year.
At a restaurant in Hoa Lu Ward during the April 30 holiday, owner Vu Tri Thuc, born in 1991, served nearly 300 guests a day and processed around 20 goats daily.
His business now generates revenue approaching VND1 billion ($39,000) per month.
Few diners know that Thuc grew up herding goats across the limestone mountains of Ninh Xuan Commune near the Trang An landscape complex.
His childhood was spent following goat herds through rocky cliffs and forest paths while helping his parents survive an unstable farming life.
From herding goats as a child, Vu Tri Thuc has become the owner of one of Ninh Binh’s best-known goat restaurants.Thuc’s childhood was closely tied to herding goats through the limestone mountains of Ninh Binh.
Before 2008, Ninh Binh goat meat had not yet achieved the popularity it enjoys today.
Farmers regularly struggled with theft, disease and attacks from wild dogs.
When goats were finally ready for sale, traders often forced prices down to just VND8,000-12,000 ($0.31-0.47) per kilogram of live weight.
After expenses, many households earned almost no profit, while some even lost money.
Refusing to accept constant price manipulation, Thuc’s parents decided to open their own goat restaurant in 2008 to create a direct market for local meat.
The early years were difficult.
Sometimes it took two days to sell a single goat.
After finishing high school, Thuc trained as a chef and gradually developed new recipes based on traditional family techniques.
Drawing from years of experience selecting quality mountain goats, he experimented with new cooking styles including grilled goat slabs, steamed goat and stir-fried goat dishes.
As the menu expanded and food quality improved, the small family restaurant gradually grew into a chain of businesses employing around 30 workers with monthly salaries ranging from VND7 million to VND10 million ($273-390).
In 2023, Thuc’s signature dish, fried mountain goat with galangal, won second prize at a cooking competition organized by the Asian Farmers’ Association.
In 2023, Thuc’s fried mountain goat with galangal won second prize at an Asian cooking competition.
While Thuc represents a younger generation modernizing local cuisine, Nguyen Minh Duc, 65, from Tay Hoa Lu Ward, embodies the resilience of traditional goat cooking.
Duc began his career from scratch after leaving the military in the late 1980s.
Together with his wife, he traveled across villages buying goats from local farmers before slaughtering and preparing the meat themselves.
Without a shop, the couple carried cuts of goat meat on shoulder poles and sold them door-to-door throughout Ninh Binh.
That was when locals began calling him “Duc De,” or “Duc the Goat.”
Nearly four decades later, Duc now owns two restaurants known especially for their goat spring rolls.
He says many goat dishes can easily be copied, but making high-quality goat spring rolls requires precise preparation techniques and years of experience.
During peak holiday seasons, his family works around the clock to meet demand.
Each day, the restaurants sell hundreds of spring rolls priced at VND100,000 ($3.90) each.
Maintaining such large customer volumes requires stable livestock supplies.
Despite his age, Nguyen Minh Duc still personally prepares dishes for customers.Duc’s fried fermented goat have become a signature family recipe passed down through generations.
As demand surged, farmers in Ninh Binh gradually shifted from traditional free-range herding toward larger-scale farming models using herbal feed.
Nguyen Van Thien, director of Khanh Thanh Herbal Goat Cooperative, said goats naturally consume a wide variety of plants, including medicinal herbs.
Based on this characteristic, the cooperative leased three hectares of land in 2020 to develop barns and herbal-growing areas.
According to technical supervisor Do Van Nhuong, the cooperative currently raises between 800 and 1,000 goats per cycle.
The herd consumes roughly 1.5 tons of feed daily, including grass, corn stalks and large quantities of medicinal herbs.
The herbal diet improves disease resistance, reduces veterinary costs and helps create a more distinctive product.
The model has expanded beyond individual farms into broader community-based supply chains.
Herbal-fed goat farming models are rapidly expanding across Ninh Binh.
Bui Van Thao, director of the Ninh Binh Goat Farming Cooperative, said the organization now works with more than 50 households and supplies between 5,000 and 6,000 meat goats annually.
The cooperative has established a closed production chain covering breeding, herbal farming techniques and deep processing.
Products including goat spring rolls, goat glue extract, goat milk and smoked goat meat have all received Vietnam’s three-star OCOP certification.
Combined annual output now exceeds 10 tons.
Mountain goat cuisine has gradually become one of Ninh Binh’s strongest tourism identities, helping attract and retain visitors to the province.
Authorities officially registered the “Ninh Binh Mountain Goat” trademark in 2015 and have since supported centralized farming zones, traceability systems and modern slaughtering facilities.
Today, with annual production estimated at 60,000-70,000 goats, the industry supports thousands of households across Ninh Binh’s semi-mountainous areas.
What was once a vulnerable rural trade has evolved into a sustainable economic engine - one that has elevated both local livelihoods and Ninh Binh’s place on Vietnam’s culinary map.
Vietnamnet.vn
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