Being a true carnivore I got very excited when I saw horse meat in Sapa offered on the menu of the countryside restaurant I was visiting.
I thought that this may well be a one off treat, but I was later to discover that the Hmong in Sapa really do quite like horse meat and that you will see it a lot on the menus here. So, why do the Hmong of Sapa eat so much horse, how is it served? And well is it actually any good?
What the Sapa?
Located in the far north of Vietnam and quite literally in China, Sapa is a mountainous town occupied predominantly by the Hmong people. Its rather cold climate makes it popular with tourists and locals alike trying to escape the blistering heat and take in the scenic mountain views of the area.
And the views are pretty damb beautiful, which is a huge reason why the place is popular, like really stupidly popular. Yet while it is very touristy, I still feel that much like Dalat in the south it is still well worth a visit.
Oh and as mentioned they have some slightly more peculiar food habits, such as eating horse!
Why do they eat Horse Meat in Sapa?
Why do they eat horse meat in Sapa? Well being a town up in the mountains has always meant that horses were incredibly important with regards to moving goods to the place and well living in general. Therefore they are important to the Hmong to such a degree that they would only be eaten when they got to the end of their lives.
Well they seem to have certainly made the most of dead and dying horses as horse meat in Sapa is now not just a delicacy, but is served in a whole heap of different ways, often alongside or as an alternative to buffalo (which I will get into later).
Horse Meat in Sapa dishes?
There are actually a bunch of way to serve horse meat in Sapa, but my favorite, or at least the first time I tried it was as thịt ngựa xào (stir-fried horse meat). Here the meat is thinly sliced and cooked with onions, garlic, and local herbs. You can have this with rice or noodles, but also as is with some chopsticks. I had this in a really simple local restaurant and it was surprisingly good.
The other main way to eat horse in Sapa is through the thịt ngựa hầm, or horse meat stew. This is very much an Asian stew with it being filled with vegetables, onions and potatoes while served in a rich broth that is tangy rather than spicy. It is done as a stew (apparently) because older working horses are used meaning the meat is less tender than with a freshly killed young one. This dish was all over the Sapa night market and was pretty decent. Horse as well as buffalo jerky was also all over the market, although I personally felt that horse does not exactly make the best jerky.
Lastly they apparently also sell it as strips of meat which you then dip into various spicy, sweet and other sauces with this essentially being a bit of a beer snack. Alas I did not get to try this one, but hey its another reason to go back and visit Sapa.
Conclusion
Unless you have some kind of Black Beauty/My Lovely Horse sexual attraction to horses then you should really give this meat a try, at least once anyways. Is it any good? Well yes and no with me personally finding it to be a bit of a poor mans beef.
To be fair though the horse meat in Sapa, at least what I tried anyway was flavoursome and spiced to a degree to at least make it interesting. Will it change your life? Probably not, but still well worth a try.
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