It’s really strange when hearing a dish named lemongrass steamed chicken for the first time. The owner presents us the Cu Lao hotpot (a typical dish in the South-Western part of Vietnam) with clear broth, large pieces of chicken, white radish, peanuts, white pepper, lemongrass inside and a plate full of spinach and mustard greens. Rather than a boil, it’s probably a stew. According to the cook, the chicken will be more savory if we boil it (with lemongrass and radish) no less than 1 hour.

After the soup is fully boiled, we put mustard greens with spinach to sweeten the soup. To enhance the flavor, we can eat the boiled chicken with spicy chili fish sauce or Vietnamese green seafood sauce. This combination can warm the hearts of those who return to their homeland from afar sitting and watching the rainfall in the river in an afternoon. However, this dish is not for hungry travelers who hastily gobble up a piece of chicken because they will not be able to fully enjoy the sweet, crunchy, and chewy of the "defeated hero" meat. This dish is similar to the lemongrass steamed snake which is about to be lost due to snakes being captured for food in restaurants in cities.

The phrase "the defeated hero", created by the deputy head of the police department of Tan Loc commune, refers to the roosters who lose to the cockfight and are unable to recover.