Wham Bam Thankyou Mam!

Bun Bo Nam Bo (Beef Noodles from the South) in Hang Dieu Street is another 'Wham Bam Thankyou Mam' dining experience. There's little room for polite conversation. It's shunt in, shunt out dining, lots of shouting - typical Hanoian 'ambience'.

This eating hole is a long, deep narrow one, smeared stainless steel tables and wooden benches to sit at and carpets of discarded banana leaves to kick at underfoot. The upstairs section is for dwarfs and skilled crouchers only. A Tigress may try to foist a beer upon you as you perch and wait.....

....the few moments for your bursting bat (bowl) of Asian flavour. Here's the drum from the bottom up: a decent fistful of lettuce and herbs, the essential noodles, a scoop of beef and bean shoots sauteed with garlic, and the one, two, three of crushed nuts, dried shallots and thinly sliced triangled pickles of young papaya and carrot. A ladle of warm, sweet sauce is tipped over to finish this fine noodle nosh off.

The side fare is Nem Chua, which is a pressed, cured pork sausagy thing spiced up with pepper and rolled up in a pass the parcel whack of banana leaves. Dip those in a chili garlic sauce. You can round up the juice in the bottom of your noodles with a sweet day old bit of banh my (bread roll). It's wicked!

This joint is open for lunch and dinner.

How many dongs?

Noodles - 15000VND (USD94c, AUD$1.23), Nem Chua - 2000VND each (USD12c, AUD16c)

Bun Bo Nam Bo, 67 Hang Dieu Street

A traffic jam causing mia da (sugar cane juice) cave is five doors down. It's the glug of choice in summer.

Comments

[Oh, The Joys]

We ate there EVERY DAY after we discovered it. YUM. What I wouldn't give for a bowl right now.