A Taste of Holiday

Vietnam and Thailand feel like a distant memory but it’s amazing how food can take you back. After a long, sunny (but freezing cold) bike ride around London, we popped out of a street right opposite a Vietnamese restaurant that my companion had been wanting to try for an age. The idea of noodle soup warming our cold bodies was just too much to resist!

Deptford is a part of London on the up, and Eat Vietnam (whilst not imaginatively named) is one of many little gems in the area. Our delicious bowls of Bun Ga Hue, a hot and spicy vermicelli soup with chicken, warmed both body and soul. The fragrant, lemongrass scented broth and abundant herbs took me straight back to the streets of Hanoi.

Having started my holiday food reminiscence, I decided that I should continue with a little creation of my own for dinner. Yum Som-O is one of my favourite Thai dishes. A spicy pomelo based salad, it’s fresh and delicious. I won’t even pretend that I created a dish that could bear the same name, but I did make a pomelo salad with a Thai dressing!

Getting to the flesh of a pomelo (a large citrus fruit with a flavour somewhere between an orange and a grapefruit) requires a little patience. Even once you’ve pulled away the thick, styrofoam textured peel you need to take the flesh out of each individual segment to really enjoy it at its best. But the effort is worth it and what you’re left with is a bowl of firm, juicy fruit.

I made a simple dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic and chilli, mixing it through the pomelo with a few herbs and some shredded chicken. Topped with crushed toasted peanuts and served with steamed rice, I have to confess that I was delighted with the delicious (and January health-kick friendly) result.

I will make this again!

Cha Ca La Vong

This food stuff deserves a post all of its own, not least because it’s utterly unlike anything else I’ve ever eaten in Asia, mainly due to containing vast quantities of fresh dill.

Despite the fact it’s firmly on the tourist trail, we decided that we’d head to the 100 year old restaurant that’s famed for serving Cha Ca La Vong. In fact, restaurant and dish share the same name, which you can’t really miss from the neon signage! Electric table top stoves now replace the charcoal burners of the past and the restaurant definitely isn’t cheap by Vietnamese standards, but none of that could detract from how utterly delicious I found this meal.

A partially prepared pan of turmeric marinated cat fish, dill, morning glory and green onion is brought to your table top stove where it’s left to sizzle for a little longer before a member of staff comes and adds the remaining vegetables. The staff member expertly tosses the contents of the pan with a pair of chopsticks, before leaving you to build your own bowls of the dish using the ingredients you’ve been given: rice noodles, roasted peanuts, a sweet chilli sauce, a shrimp paste based sauce (not for those with a sensitive nose!), white vinegar and soy sauce.

You just take some noodles, add quantities of the condiments to your taste and then top it all off with the fish and vegetables from the pan. I can’t even tell you how good it tastes! It was all a little too “green” for the husband, but he was happy avoiding the vegetables and just eating sauced noodles and fish.

I’d happily eat this again and again. It’s just beautiful. And the dill really does make it utterly different. Having a little theatre in the creation of your food always makes it more fun in my opinion too!

Pho of the (mainly) Chicken Variety

Of course we were going to eat Pho whilst in Vietnam, and in fact we have done so several times, particularly as it’s served at any time of day. All of the Pho we’ve eaten so far has been of the chicken based variety, but even within this there has been huge variation of flavour.

You might say our first Pho experience was the most authentic, perched on the tiny little plastic stools you see all over Hanoi. Sitting on these stools reminds you somewhat of visiting a nursery school, and I’m not convinced that dining with your knees around your ears is great for digestion, but then this street furniture was designed for rather smaller people! On this occasion, I went for a mixed chicken and beef Pho and the husband had just chicken.

After several days of fairly rich food, the light, fresh broth was just what the doctor ordered. Piled with rice noodles, herbs and green onion besides your chosen meat, it’s hard to explain what makes Pho so delicious besides its simplicity! Flavoured to taste with lime, lightly pickled garlic and chilli, it’s like having a lovely warm hug.

The Pho served at breakfast in the hotel is much more pungent with sweet spice. I recognise the flavour of star anise but the exact formula is a mystery.

And then again today, another chicken Pho and yet with a totally different flavour again, this one more subtle and that built in depth as you ate.

I suspect that there will still be more Pho to come this trip as I think I am an addict. And this is definitely something that I’ll be trying to create my own version of at home, as I have done with my Thai-style noodle soup. If anyone has a favourite Pho recipe then please do let me know, and I’ll obviously be looking for guinea pigs to sample my attempts too!

Heading Upmarket

Having spent most of our time in Hanoi so far exploring the Old Town, we decided to head beyond the Hoan Kiem Lake today, and into the southerly end of the district that the lake lends its name. This decision was based, in part at least, on the knowledge that the road immediately around the lake is pedestrianised at the weekend, and we fancied seeing this scooterless sight! The atmosphere in the area was fantastic and we were very amused to find that, in place of the scooters, an entire street at the bottom end of the lake was devoted to electric vehicles for children.

Our primary reason for heading to this area, however, was to visit two museums of interest – The Vietnamese Women’s Museum and The Hao Lo Prison. Each provided a fascinating insight into Vietnam and its history, but there are others far better qualified to go into detail on that than me! Needless to say, I found reference to food in both places fascinating. The role women play and have played in the agricultural economy of the country shared in the first museum, and the absolutely vile rations fed by the French to the Vietnamese inmates in the second!

Of course, we’d also done our research on the food front when it came to finding lunch, at a restaurant that also gave us opportunity to see some of the stunning villas that are prevalent in the area. Many are in a terrible state of repair, but our lunchtime haunt, Nha Hung Dao, has linked two villas by means of a glorious covered courtyard, and serves a wide range of dishes at tables throughout.

It was the grilled beef with chilli and salt that I’d read about in advance which had tempted me to come. And it was beautiful! Tender chargrilled meat with a squeeze of lime, dunked into the chilli salt by means of chopsticks.

We tried to pick some other things that we hadn’t eaten before. The fried rice with salted egg, prawns and chicken wasn’t a huge success, having a strange powdery coating that we couldn’t quite place. But the pancake with shrimp, pork, mushroom and beansprouts was a revelation (once the waitress had stepped in to show us how to eat it!). The answer was to wrap the omelette-like stuffed segments inside the still crisp pancake papers, along with lettuce and herbs, before dunking the whole lot into the sweet dipping sauce, which softened the pancake. It was divine. So simple and yet so incredible.

We also had another variation on bánh cuốn, which we’d had on our food tour, this time with grilled ground pork. It is definitely a food stuff that warrants repeated eating!

After all that eating, a further stroll was in order – back north around the opposite side of the lake and into the crazy familiarity of the Old Town.

Craft Beer from a High Perch

Hanoi seems to have joined much of the rest of the world in getting a taste for craft beer. It’s not the cheapest thing to drink in the city, but its availability has already provided us with two excuses to sample some ale from a high perch while watching the world below. And some of the local brews are very good too.

I should highlight from the off that my taste in beer is not everyone’s cup of tea! I adore anything super-sour or salty. So walking into Pasteur St Brewing to find a draft dragon fruit gose beer, aptly named The Salty Dragon, made me very happy indeed! In truth, I should have stuck with it because it was my favourite beer of the several we tried there.

Watermelon wheat beer sounded right up my street but it lacked any kind of complexity and I’d rather have just had a watermelon juice! Passion fruit wheat ale was rather more successful but it still didn’t live up to the gose. Now, before you think I was probably too sloshed to judge given all the beer, I should point out that after the first drink we moved on to a sampling flight, the husband’s side of which was made up much more of traditional IPAs and the like. His main problem was the strength that these came in at, with anything under 7% proof seeming mild compared to the rest! We spent several enjoyable hours watching the activity below, which ranged from the passing of traditionally dressed traders to the police seeming suddenly interested in parking rules, from the beautiful roof terrace.

Our second craft beer outing was the result of a fortuitous glance up as we passed through the street that was to become the Night Market. We were rather early for trading to have begun and were pondering how to entertain ourselves when I spotted the very cheerful looking Peachy bar overhead. It seemed only right that we give it a go since it also provided the perfect vista to watch the market come to life.

Another day, another beer flight, this time served by a very cheerful Glaswegian. Sadly there were neither sour nor salty beers on offer, but the IPA was lovely and mellow, and the Hanoi Saison was delicious! The lemongrass beer was tasty but I can’t say that the taste particularly struck me as lemongrass at all!

There are several more crafty offerings in the city so I’ll just have to see if the opportunity arises to sample a few more! Of course, after a few Vietnamese beers it was strictly necessary to soak up some of the alcohol with a crispy Banh Mi on the way home!

Honking Hanoi

I’ve always thought Bangkok was chaotic but it’s not a patch on Hanoi. From the second you walk out of the airport you are surrounded by free flowing traffic, with most drivers honking their horns continually, and often for no apparent reason! Once you hit the old town the craziness increases further with scooters, often laden with the most insane quantity and variety of goods, whizzing in every direction.

But somehow as you get used to it, unlikely as it may seem, the apparent chaos reveals some kind of order and the crazy appears more systematic. You have to re-learn how to cross the road though, something everyone is keen to make sure you understand. The best explanation I’ve heard is to imagine that the vehicles are ants and that you are free-flowing water. If you keep moving at a steady and continual pace, the traffic will just avoid you. And it works! Well, as long as you preserve enough wits about you to be aware of the random directions things are coming at you from and don’t step out straight under a tyre!

Keeping your wits about you is easier said than done though because there are just so many things to look at! Every inch of street (and most of the pavement just to add to the road navigation fun) is packed with fascinating things: traditional hatted hawkers; stalls laden with stunning fruit and veg, brimming with dried mushrooms, or even piled high with plastic chickens!; shops overflowing with scarves, paper products or lacquerware; tiny off-lead dogs or fluffy cats on leads; snaking cables; sign covered surfaces – you get the idea!

After an hour of navigating the streets, we decided the best thing to do was settle down with a beer and just watch the world go by. Happily, we happened upon Beer Corner, whose name alone demonstrates its suitability as a location for the task at hand. Saving Bai Hoi (street beer) for another time, we sat back to sample a couple of the Vietnamese bottled brews, relaxing in the relative calm and quiet (until they turned the techno on!) to take it all in through a well placed door.

With so much to see even when static, I’m happy we’ll be in Hanoi for a while to try and see all the incredible city has to offer. I’ve not even started talking about the food yet, but I think it’s safe to say I’m going to like it here!