Vietnam, Discovered Across the Table: Marriott Luxury Dining Series in Phu Quoc
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- 9분 분량
A great culinary experience is, in itself, a journey.
Where you ate and who you shared the table with; where the food came from and how it connects to the culture of that place; even the conversations that unfolded before and after the meal—all of these elements come together to create the experience of dining. Perhaps this is also why luxury hotels today are placing such importance on gastronomy: food has the power to offer a more meaningful way of experiencing a destination. Over several days at JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa, Marriott International’s Luxury Dining Series turned that very idea into a celebration.
Now in its third edition, the Luxury Dining Series is a culinary initiative by Marriott International’s Luxury Group, connecting some of its leading luxury hotels and resorts across Asia Pacific. The theme for 2026 is “Across the Table.” Beginning at JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay Resort & Spa from 5 to 9 August, the series continues to The Naka Island, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, Phuket; The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort; Mandapa, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Bali; and The Ritz-Carlton, Kyoto, before concluding in October aboard Luminara, The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. Each of the six destinations creates its own narrative rooted in local food and culture, yet the overarching idea is ultimately a simple and universal one: bringing people together across a shared table.
Even in format, the programme felt distinctly different from the conventional “star chef gala dinner.” It was divided into a series of individual experiences: Chefs [At The] Table, bringing guests closer to the chefs and the stories behind their food; Heirloom AM and PM, exploring local traditions and ingredients; The Grand Banquet, bringing multiple chefs together for a collaborative feast; Spirited Social, centred on mixology; and Journey To Exceptional Taste, offering a closer encounter with provenance, craftsmanship and technique. In Phu Quoc, these were complemented by experiences exploring Vietnamese breakfast culture and home cooking, seafood, cacao, cocktails and French pastry. The programme unfolded from morning until late at night, yet what struck me was how distinctly each experience retained its own character and left a vivid impression. Over the course of several days, it felt less like attending a succession of dining events and more like travelling through Vietnam and Phu Quoc from different perspectives—gradually getting to know the place, its culture, and the people who had gathered there around the table.
First, I met one of the grande dames of Vietnamese cuisine. Regarded as an important custodian of the country’s culinary heritage, Madam Ánh Tuyết has long run Anh Tuyet Restaurant in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, dedicating much of her career to preserving and passing down traditional Vietnamese recipes and the stories embedded within them. What made this particular experience especially meaningful was its setting: an open and accessible breakfast buffet, where not only the media gathered for the Luxury Dining Series but regular hotel guests could experience authentic Vietnamese cooking together. Watching traditional breakfast dishes—from freshly prepared rolls to steaming bowls of noodles—being made right before our eyes brought a wonderful sense of energy to the morning, almost like stepping into a local market.
Madam Ánh Tuyết also joined JW Marriott Phu Quoc’s Chef Nguyễn Hải Hưng to present the Vietnamese Heritage Dinner, an evening that offered a deeper taste of Vietnam’s traditional cuisine. Before us, Madam Ánh Tuyết demonstrated a salad centred on banana blossom and shrimp, tossed with fresh herbs, roasted peanuts and a traditional sweet-and-sour fish sauce dressing. Chef Nguyễn, meanwhile, presented grilled beef tenderloin as the main course, accompanied by a sauce generously seasoned with locally grown Phu Quoc pepper. What made the collaboration particularly compelling was the way two chefs of different generations and experiences approached the shared theme of Vietnamese home cooking. Rather than placing elaborate reinterpretation at the forefront, the dinner invited us to look anew at flavours that Vietnamese people have known and loved for generations, now presented within the setting of contemporary hotel dining. Traditional performances accompanied the meal, adding another dimension of Vietnamese culture to the evening.
For much the same reason, one of the experiences that stayed with me most vividly was an early-morning meal at a local restaurant, after visiting a Phu Quoc market as part of an experience curated by the JW Marriott team. Vietnamese food is already deeply familiar in Korea, but spending several mornings in Vietnam encountering a different breakfast each day gradually reveals just how many distinct regional identities and ways of life exist within the seemingly singular category of “Vietnamese cuisine.”
Among them, the most fascinating was bún quậy, one of Phu Quoc’s signature dishes. Made with ingredients such as shrimp and fish, freshly prepared noodles and piping-hot broth, it is a quintessential local noodle dish whose experience extends beyond the bowl itself. As the word “quậy”—to stir or mix—suggests, part of the pleasure lies in mixing your own accompanying dipping sauce before eating. As much as I enjoyed the meticulously crafted dishes of the fine-dining chefs, as a traveller, it is sometimes a humble bowl of everyday local food like this that brings you closest to the true character of a place. Simply being able to wake up each morning and enjoy delicious Vietnamese food, both inside and outside the hotel, made those few days in Phu Quoc particularly happy ones.
Nor can one speak of the food of Phu Quoc without speaking of the sea. At Red Rum, the beachfront restaurant overlooking Khem Beach, Chef Cường Nguyễn, Chef Patron and co-founder of An’s Saigon, joined Chef Nguyễn Hải Hưng of Sheraton Phu Quoc Long Beach Resort to offer their respective interpretations of Phu Quoc’s fresh seafood and seasonal ingredients sourced from local markets. The pairing itself felt perfectly aligned with the spirit of the series: one chef working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s largest metropolis, and another based here in Phu Quoc, working closely with the island’s ingredients, creating a menu together while looking out over the same sea. Eating seafood in such a relaxed, picture-perfect setting, with the ocean stretching out directly before us, made the idea of “local ingredients” feel far less like an abstract phrase from a menu or a marketing narrative, and far more like something tangible—inseparable from the landscape unfolding before our eyes.
The French pastry experience was equally memorable. At French & Co., Rémy Gaulé, Executive Pastry Chef at The St. Regis Hong Kong, part of Marriott International’s Luxury Group, presented an afternoon tea that felt almost like a miniature reflection of Vietnam’s history of cultural exchange with the West. Building on the precise techniques of classic French pâtisserie, he incorporated ingredients from the JW Garden and drew inspiration from Phu Quoc’s tropical landscape, weaving in local produce—most notably the pepper for which the island is renowned. It was fascinating to encounter distinctly Vietnamese aromas and ingredients within such quintessentially French forms as pastries and petits fours. Rather than attempting to create “Vietnamese desserts,” Gaulé retained the language of French pâtisserie that defines his craft, while allowing the flavours of the destination to enter and reshape it.
Another afternoon offered a different way of encountering the flavours and ideas of Vietnam: through chocolate. Journey To Exceptional Taste’s Bittersweet Chocolate Masterclass, led by the artisan team from Bittersweet Chocolate Factory, invited us to learn about—and experience firsthand—the process of transforming cacao into chocolate. We explored the key stages of chocolate making, from fermentation and roasting to conching and tempering, compared single-origin and blended chocolates, and eventually created our own. Rather than simply tasting the finished product, we were able to hear directly from the people who make it and experience the process behind it. In that sense, it was one of the programmes that most clearly embodied what the word “Journey” in the Luxury Dining Series is intended to mean.
And, of course, no evening would be complete without cocktails. Spirited Social was a bar takeover led by Marco Dongi, Mixologist and Bar Manager of Bar Sathorn in Bangkok—a bar I have long been particularly fond of. His cocktails translated Phu Quoc’s tropical fruits, local botanicals and the aromas of the island into the language of mixology. It is easy to think of a hotel’s culinary programme as something centred primarily on chefs and food, but the nights spent in a bar can be just as important to the memory of a great journey. After a full day of events, there was something especially fitting about watching people from entirely different backgrounds gather over a drink and fall naturally into conversation. It felt perfectly aligned with the theme of “Across the Table.” After all, whether what sits on the table is food or a cocktail, what ultimately matters are the people gathered around it. That night, over more than a few cocktails, I found myself talking with so many different people—and was reminded once again that, in the end, it is people who truly complete our memories of dining.
The highlight of the Phu Quoc programme was The Grand Banquet: Vietnam in Celebration, staged in the resort’s grand ballroom. The evening brought together three chefs with distinctly different perspectives: French Michelin-starred chef Olivier Elzer; Summer Le, Founder and Executive Chef of Nén, the first restaurant in Vietnam to receive a Michelin Green Star; and Chef Cường Nguyễn of An’s Saigon. Elzer is the Chef-Founder and Creative Director behind Pink Pearl by Olivier E. at JW Marriott Phu Quoc, approaching classical French technique through the lens of local culture and ingredients. Summer Le and Cường Nguyễn, meanwhile, are contemporary Vietnamese chefs who, in very different ways, demonstrate just how far the language of modern Vietnamese cuisine can evolve. Coming from three distinct starting points, the chefs gathered around a single table to interpret Vietnam’s regional traditions and local ingredients through their own culinary languages.
Yet it was not the food alone that made the evening so memorable. The long communal tables, countless flickering candles and performances unfolding throughout the space came together to create a scene in their own right. Live performances punctuated the dinner, with music created using bamboo and ceramics, alongside contemporary interpretations of traditional Vietnamese bamboo dance. What I particularly appreciated was that tradition was not presented as a straightforward reproduction of folklore. Instead, it was translated into a performance that felt beautiful, sophisticated and entirely relevant to a contemporary audience. Food and wine, music and performance, space and light all flowed together into one long, immersive evening. Sitting amid the glow of candlelight, listening to Vietnamese music and sharing dishes created by chefs from different backgrounds, I felt as though this moment had become the most symbolic finale to the entire series of experiences that had unfolded over the previous days.
More than anything, the programme made me reconsider the role that gastronomy now plays within the world of luxury hospitality. For a global hotel group, food has become as important as beautiful rooms, spectacular swimming pools and an exceptional spa in shaping the way guests experience a destination. And the next step goes far beyond simply bringing a celebrated chef or restaurant into a hotel. It means visiting a local market, listening to the stories of those who preserve traditional recipes, discovering how a pastry chef interprets the island’s pepper, learning how cacao becomes chocolate, and ending the night with a cocktail infused with the fruits and botanicals of the place itself. When these seemingly different experiences are woven together into a single journey, a hotel becomes more than somewhere to stay. It becomes a curator—one that helps travellers interpret, understand and ultimately remember the destination.
There is no question that the experience felt even more special because it unfolded at JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay. Bill Bensley’s resort, built around the elaborate fiction of “Lamarck University,” is a place where stories are already embedded in every corner. Moving through these spaces over several days—encountering Vietnamese breakfasts and home cooking at Tempus Fugit, tasting the sea of Phu Quoc at Red Rum overlooking Khem Beach, exploring French pâtisserie and chocolate at French & Co., drinking cocktails after dark, and finally stepping into the spectacle of a grand banquet—made it feel as though the entire hotel had become one vast culinary stage. The programme and the setting never felt separate; instead, each enriched and completed the story of the other.
And even after the event came to an end, its resonance remained. There was, of course, plenty of delicious food, and many impressive chefs. But what stayed with me most was the sense of connection that gradually formed through the simple repetition of sharing meals each morning, talking with chefs, making things with our own hands, and gathering around the same table again when night fell. We talked about Vietnamese food and culture; at other moments, we made ceramics together or harvested pearls from oysters. Somewhere along the way, “Across the Table” stopped feeling like the title of a dining series and became something we had actually experienced. Across those tables passed countless conversations, encounters and memories. It was a special event that reminded me of something both simple and fundamental: gastronomy, ultimately, connects people. And perhaps that is why it remains one of the purest expressions of hospitality.
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