A team of students from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hà Nội has made the finals of a Vietnamese reality TV competition with a project that could appeal to anyone who travels for food. Their idea, fronted by student Lê Hoài Nam, aims to rescue the childhood snacks and local dishes that are quietly vanishing from Vietnamese towns — and to document them on a digital 'Living Food Map' of the country's culinary heritage.
The vehicle for this is season four of New Generation Students, a game show airing on Việt Nam Television from October 17. This season pushes contestants harder than before: every project has to grapple with a genuinely practical problem, whether that is farming, developing craft villages, promoting culture, protecting the environment or improving livelihoods. Each entry also has to grow out of a real story from the students' school, hometown or local community — which is why the culinary project talks about doing more than existing on paper, and about creating economic opportunities for the people who actually make these dishes.
There is real money and reach behind the format. Prize money totals up to VNĐ350 million (about US$13,500), and a new online contest opens the competition to students nationwide this year. Hosts Khánh Vy and Sơn Lâm front the show, while influencers including actress Bảo Hân and Miss Việt Nam Global Tourism second runner-up Phạm Hoàng Thu Uyên join teams on fieldwork. It is co-produced by VTV3 and the Ministry of Education and Training, with sponsorship from Herbalife Việt Nam, and airs Saturdays at 9.30pm. The first three seasons racked up 99.2 million views and two million interactions online.
For travellers, the interesting thread is the Living Food Map. Vietnam's regional street food and home-style specialities — the dishes that rarely appear on restaurant menus aimed at visitors — are exactly the kind of heritage that disappears when younger generations move to cities. A student-led, digital map of where to find them, built with community benefit in mind, could become a genuinely useful tool for planning an eating-focused trip beyond the phở-and-bánh-mì circuit. Watching the show is also a decent way to pick up ideas about which provinces are worth detouring for before the guidebooks catch on.
It is niche, admittedly: a Saturday-night student competition rather than a travel documentary. But if your idea of a good holiday involves tracking down a grandmother's recipe in a craft village rather than a rooftop bar, this is a programme worth knowing exists — and a sign that Vietnamese students are thinking hard about how food heritage can pay its way locally.
