Banh Tet La Cam: Can Tho's Purple Tet Cake

Can Tho makes a version of "banh tet" that stops people mid-bite: the sticky rice is purple. Not food-coloring purple — a deep, natural violet that comes from a leaf most visitors have never heard of. It tastes different too, in a subtle way that's worth understanding before you eat one.

What La Cam Leaf Actually Does

The color comes from "la cam" (Peristrophe roxburghiana), a small-leafed plant common in southern Vietnam (베트남 / 越南 / ベトナム)'s gardens and markets. Locals boil the leaves and steep the glutinous rice in the extracted liquid before cooking. The result is a striking blue-purple hue that deepens as the cake cooks. It's not a flavoring agent in the way pandan is — the taste contribution is mild, slightly herbal, a faint earthiness in the background — but it transforms what would otherwise be a plain white cake into something that actually looks like it belongs at a Tet table.

La cam also has a mild cooling property in traditional Vietnamese medicine, which is part of why older generations in the Delta associate it with festive food rather than everyday cooking.

The Filling: Mung Bean and Pork Belly

Strip away the color and the structure is classic southern banh tet (뗏 (베트남 설날) / 越南春节 / テト): a log of glutinous rice packed around a central filling of split yellow mung bean paste and a thick slice of pork belly. The mung bean layer is cooked soft and slightly sweetened. The pork belly — ideally with a good fat-to-lean ratio — is marinated in fish sauce, sugar, and black pepper before being sealed inside.

The whole thing is wrapped tight in banana leaves and boiled for four to six hours. When you slice it, the cross-section should show clean concentric rings: purple rice on the outside, pale yellow mung bean, and the pork belly at the center. A good slice holds together without crumbling. A bad one — usually from a cake that was underpacked or rushed — falls apart when you cut it.

Some vendors in Can Tho add salted egg yolk to the filling, which pushes it richer and saltier. Worth trying once, but the plain mung-bean-and-pork version is the standard.

North vs South: Cylindrical vs Square

If you've spent time in Hanoi, you'll know "banh chung" — the northern Tet cake, which is square, wrapped in dong leaves, and carries a different cultural weight (the square shape represents the earth in Vietnamese cosmology). Southern banh tet is cylindrical, wrapped in banana leaves, and tends to be longer and thinner. Same core logic — glutinous rice, mung bean, pork — but the shape, the leaf, and the proportions differ.

Neither is a derivative of the other. They developed in parallel, and Vietnamese families tend to be quietly firm about which one is correct. In Can Tho, you eat banh tet. The la cam version is a regional point of pride on top of that.

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Best at Tet, Available Year-Round

The peak season is the two to three weeks running up to Tet (late January or February, depending on the lunar calendar). Households make their own — wrapping parties the night before cooking are still common in the Delta — and the markets fill up with vendors selling them by the log or by the slice. During this window, the la cam version is everywhere: wet markets, roadside stalls, outside pagodas.

The rest of the year takes more effort, but it's not difficult in Can Tho.

Where to Buy in Can Tho

Cai Rang Floating Market (about 6 km south of the city center) has vendors selling wrapped cakes from boats in the early morning, roughly 5:30–8:00 a.m. The banh tet here is usually plain white rice rather than la cam, but it's worth asking — a few boats carry the purple version. Prices run around 15,000–25,000 VND per slice.

Xuan Khanh Market (Ninh Kieu District) has a reliable cluster of dry-goods and specialty stalls that stock la cam banh tet year-round, sold whole (one log) for 50,000–80,000 VND depending on size. The vendors near the entrance on Mau Than Street tend to be the most consistent.

Ninh Kieu Night Market along the riverfront is a reasonable backup for visitors who miss the morning markets. Quality varies — some of what's sold here is mass-produced and the rice can be gummy — but you can usually find a decent slice for 20,000 VND alongside the other Delta specialties on offer.

For a whole log to bring home, the specialty food shops on Hai Ba Trung Street in Ninh Kieu District vacuum-pack them for travel. They'll keep two to three days at room temperature, longer refrigerated.

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How to Eat It

Sliced cold from the fridge, banh tet la cam is dense and chewy. Room temperature is better — the rice softens slightly and the fat in the pork belly becomes less waxy. Some people pan-fry thick slices in a little oil until the outside crisps up, which is genuinely good and worth doing if you're eating it at home rather than at a market stall.

It's a heavy food. One or two slices is a meal.

Practical Notes

Can Tho is roughly 170 km from Saigon — a three-hour bus ride or two and a half hours by car. The la cam version is specific enough to the Delta that you won't find it reliably in Saigon or further north, so if you're in the region around Tet, it's worth seeking out. Outside of the festival window, call ahead to Xuan Khanh Market vendors if you're making a specific trip — stock can be irregular in the off-season.