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These zingy leaves and shreds are common ingredients in Vietnamese cuisine.
Question 1: What are they?
Separately they are utilized in a variety of ways but in their raw states above, there is one street snack with which they are synonymous in Hanoi.
Question 2: What is it?
Enter your answers to the zing quiz in the comments. The prize? Virtual kisses and kudos from us, self-satisfaction for you and status as the inaugural Stickyrice Zing Quiz Champion! What more could you want?
The daily coffee hit was had in unfamiliar territory yesterday. I'd spotted this caffeine cave a few days earlier and ear-marked it for further investigation. Not sure what exactly attracted my attention. The fact that a coffee shop is full is usually what does it but there was something else about this one. It definitely wasn't the chic decor nor any flash merchandising or signage. This place was clearly train station canteen design and boring as bat crap signage, with not a single painting adorning the walls nor a wailing Vietnamese Madonna blaring from a television.
So what is the allure of a cafe is the million dong question.
Here, I think it might just be the clientele. Having a good gawk at one's fellow caffeine addicts is all part of the fun, particularly if the majority of one's hits are consumed alone. It's the fragments of conversation, the looks, the shared observations or smiles with strangers, imagining the relationships, guessing the orders and, of course, pondering the meaning of life which steal these twenty minute sessions in my life.
I worked this blokey establishment out pretty quickly. It's essentially old boys black lottery obsession, stories of the one that got away, the one missing number, a new system that will work. Money is borrowed and paid back, numbers are methodically scrawled in little books or on the backs of Vinataba cartons and dreams of what will be done with the big prize are exchanged. One of life's modern tragedies.
Coffee is on the periphery here, just a bit player in the wider scheme of dreams. If the lady proprietor had 500 dong for every hard luck story she'd heard over the years, she'd be running her own book.
The Numbers
One cafe den da (iced black coffee), one nuoc chanh (lemon juice) - 10,000VND (USD62c, AUD88c)
Vietnam announced last week that it has been free of bird-flu outbreaks for three whole months.
They're still issuing health warnings though. I thought this billboard was a sensible and necessary general message to create awareness about personal hygiene and food handling as it is most commonly seen, like the cauldron of boiling chicken poster, hanging in market vicinities.
However, it's bird-flu specific: "To avoid bird flu, wash your hands with soap."
If you've just been for a pee, or played marbles in the dirt, changed a nappy, blown your nose with your hand, handled dirty dong or any kind of food scraps, it seems that water alone or no washing at all will suffice.
La Salsa sits on Nha Tho Street, arguably one of the most expensive streets in Hanoi. This strip is all home furnishings, handbags and hot coffee and has been on the high end ever since the French occupation. A beautiful French Catholic Church still stands at one end and amazingly this Church managed to avoid any damage from the heavy bombing in Hanoi at the time of the American War. It still majestically overlooks all the present-day action on the avenue. The main attraction to this restaurant is the balcony that allows you to peek out at the street and we’re looking for a tasty relaxed brunch.
Upstairs this place is mustard and stucco red walls, solid wood tables and wrought iron chairs. A huge tree taps at the edge of the balcony and a hum rises from the street below- ok so it’s a little bit more than a hum, I’m immune to traffic noise now, or deaf. Today we are on a Tapas mission and first up is Chorizo sautéed with onion. Now this ain’t no showstopper. The chorizo is mild, spell that b-l-a-h, there shouldn’t really be any mule in a chorizo but it sure should kick like one, and this one kicks like a slug. We move on to the Patatas Bravas and things get better. Good little cubes of spud, golden brown and smothered in a tasty mayonnaise. The mushroom dish is served cold which is a little surprising but it works as the oil and chilli spiced marinade blends well with the firm mushrooms. The clams come steamed in a white wine and parsley broth and are cooked tender as a Juliet’s heart. The free bread plays Romeo to this Juliet, a dark sultry figure who soaks up the broth well as the clams are slurped down. The calamari unfortunately blows the show, the battered bits of octopus are a little disappointing and it is already luke warm when it is given to us, the Hanoi winter rapidly assists it in becoming cold.
Meatballs that turn out to be pretty tasty save the meal. They’re succulent, they’re juicy, just right in fact. The sauce is a rich mix of tomato, onion and herb sauce, really it is just one hell of a meatball. Looks like Cinderella is going to the ball after all. We've ordered some Sangria and it is filled with flavour, just not filled with fruit. In fact there is no fruit at all which seems kind of crazy in a city so chockablock with fruit. This restaurant must have people walking past at least fifty times a day selling fruit so I guess the lack of it is a conscious decision but it’s hard to fathom nonetheless.
The lamb stew is ordered from a specials board by one of us who is a bit under the weather and not up for the tapas. This is truly a let down as it comes as more of a soup than a stew and is in actual fact mutton dressed up as lamb, just like the expression. Not good, and not worth the money. So that’s it really. Did we catch them on a bad day? Are restaurants that charge these prices allowed to have a bad day? There is a continual argument amongst some that street food is the only way you should eat in Vietnam because the food tastes better, but I think that’s crap. There are loads of fantastic, delicious tasty restaurants in Hanoi and there are loads of bad ones just like everywhere else. Then there are restaurants that are comparatively expensive with food that’s just a little dull- all very well and nice, but just no cigar. Maybe La Salsa should have given us a cigar.
The Rub
All of the above and two Halida Beers, two lemon juices - 588,000VND (USD$37.15, AUD$52.25)
La Salsa
Nha Tho Street
Hanoi
This is 'tell it like it is' dining. Believe it or not, food was prepared and consumed above. The dish is bun cha, grilled pork served with herbs and noodles, a northern specialty that is compulsory on the Vietnam cuisine itinerary.
That is, unless it is being served up here in this greasy, muddy pit alongside the Dong Xuan market. The barbeque's caked with blackened congealed grease, the used-to-be-bright-green bag contains the necessary bun cha seller's equipment: the hand fan for firing up the embers and a few wire grilling frames for caging up the pork. The vendor's shot through, the melted red dish is bare and the bowls are busted in the mud.
It's a bun cha graveyard.
If a soup could be a hangover cure, my van than would be it. A decent hunk of pig, thinly sliced and a quarter wedge of boiled egg do not equal bacon and eggs as such but, along with a fistful of fresh egg noodles, a huge fried dumpling, a protein hit of liver, a few steamed pork wontons and negligible greenery, the ingredients are not far off the mark. It's a satisfying and slightly healthier alternative with the added bonus that the soup helps to keep the fluids up.
I've blogged about this soup bowl before at a night time location a block away. This my van than shack is better - killer big crunchy fried dumplings being the number one attraction. Open for day time feeds, it gives me good light for close ingredient examination. It's a pokey corner establishment where I'm in the way just be standing up so I cast my beady eyes around the food tarmac between the lunchtime waves of noodle munchers filing in the two doors. I keep away from the arc of the ladling hand. Don't want to get barked at!
Over against a side wall are half a dozen steps. There's no getting up them this lunchtime! Step one has a huge colander of leafy greens on it. Step two has on it a tray atop which is a mountain of the thin slices of pork. Step three is steamed wonton territory. Step four is cracking under the strain of four or five big pig livers, grey and whole. Metal pails of light brown pork stock from out back replenish the mother pot out front.
But the mighty dong takes centre stage in the assembly zone. A hundred bowls sold and the proprietors are dong millionaires. Judging by the crew of folk crouching on stools amongst the motorbikes on the pavement and the load of prep done for the rush hour, I'd hazard a guess that they might just be dong multi-millionaires.
The Deposit
Two bowls of my van than, one of sui cao tom tuoi (another soup, loads of meat and dumplings but sans noodles) - 35,000VND (USD$2.20, AUD$3.05)
My Van Than
22 Hang Phen St
Old Quarter
I'm trying to find a positive here. I snapped this shot in the old quarter in a lane called Phat Loc. The irony is that this blue basket full of animal internals was resting directly opposite a tofu stall, not that this would be an odd juxtaposition for the locals. However, I can just picture the vegetarian, desperate to find some meat-free street tucker, striking the jackpot with the tofu and then stumbling into this grey nightmare.
I wasn't all that enamoured of it myself. Fully aware that I've chewed and swallowed the odd thin slice of heart and liver sparks a mad volley of questions in my head. Was this what I ate? Why does it have to be grey? Why can't it be dyed a more eater-friendly shade? If you cook anything long enough, will it always end up grey? Why do the parts that keep a body functioning look so bloody terrible? Which of these street food eateries that I frequent regularly was going to take ownership of these bird spare parts?
Best not to know that answer. I took off. Didn't look back! Couldn't see me for dust!
I sat in a proper chair to eat the other day. Usually my bum's a foot off the ground on a plastic stool, my elbows between my knees, chopsticks clicking in one hand, bowl in the other - in the street level squat position. I've adapted well to that. I'm ergonomically flexible. Big chair, little stool...whatever...what are we eating!
That day, in the big chair establishment, it was small food.
Of the Hue persuasion.
Hue is one of the old capitals of Vietnam, located on the central coast, famous for its unique cuisine. Hue history has it that one of the kings, Tu Duc, who reigned in the 19th century, was a fussy bastard who summoned chefs from all over the country to create an imperial cuisine where no dish was to be served twice in a year. As fussy as the monarch was, however, I suspect the cooks might have eventually got the upper hand. It seems that much of this lofty nosh was dollied up in various guises - fancy dress costumes really - dragons, peacocks and turtles, elaborate garnishes carved out of vegies- to amuse the king. Surely, though, it was the chefs, peering through those swinging doors to the kitchen, who were having a right royal laugh at the king and his court, gasping and whooping at cucumber ears on pate elephants!
This royal toy food is not on the menu at the Song Huong (Perfume River) restaurant. It's the traditional cuisine, cooked today by the women of Hue, which lands on the table. Discs of banh beo are camouflaged on tiny white ramekins, abstract sculptures of prawn dust, pork crackling and spring onion starkly flung on top. Bite size parcels of banh loc, steamed kudzu flour embedded with a baby shrimp and a bit of pork, are tricky to unwrap with the chopsticks.
Thus, on my big chair, I find myself doing the fiddle with miniature food that doesn't even touch the sides. To be completely honest, without the dipping sauces, these flour-based tidbits are supreme-o-blando, the banh loc so sticky I reckon it could put blutack out of business! But I'm being unfair! This lot is easy on the eye, exotic, historic just unfortunately microscopic. I'm hungry and I want the menu for big people!
From this smeared laminated pink document, a feast befitting my throne is procured. Mustard leaves, in which we wrap tender beef, slivers of ginger, chili and lemongrass along with cucumber, pineapple and young banana, are dipped in wasabi and soy. Extraordinarily punchy sinus busters they turn out to be! A double claypot order, one beef, one pork arrives on the same tray as the ricocarbo and the standard lunchtime leafy green of water spinach and garlic. A sour fish broth coloured bright with okra, pineapple, tomato and spring onion follows.
So, it is with a swish of the menu that we depart the finicky courtliness of Hue and land smack bang in the heartland of Vietnam, soon sufficiently sated.
Cheap Feast
All of the abovementioned plus two bottles of fizz - 100,000VND (USD$6.30, AUD$8.70)
Song Huong Restaurant
Nguyen Huu Huan St
Old Quarter Hanoi
"Making pho can't be that difficult, can it?"
"Nah....it's just a broth, few bones, water, bit of this, bit of that."
My first attempt at it started with me talking to myself. Then I wrote a shopping list, shot down to the market and picked up some pig bones, some this and some that.
Back in the kitchen, I filled up the pot with water, dropped the bones in, fired up the gas cooker and started messing about with the other bits. I bashed the ginger up, bruised the lemongrass and, along with the star anise, nutmeg and cinnamon sticks, half an onion and a bulb of garlic, they took a synchronised dive. Bloody simple!
The broth boiled, I skimmed the scum, turned down the flame, took to my book and drank two cans of Bia Hanoi. Two hours and one nap later, I returned to the kitchen for the moment of truth. The aroma was intriguing.
I put the spoon to my mouth.
It had a pungent herbal wallop that would kill a brown dog.
I'm going to follow a recipe next time.
This little nuclear reactor of a creme caramel blew my socks off today. Before it slid down, I admired it for a full five minutes, from every angle, its shape and sheen, the buildings opposite reflected in its glassy brown, the ridges on the red plastic like ripples on a still lake. This truncated cone of custard had me mesmerized. It had me re-writing my personal definition of perfection. It had me thinking I was stoned! I almost couldn't eat it.
And then I stabbed it with the spoon, it bled caramel and was remorselessly spaded in.
A cold, clinical end, no doubt, but OH MY GOD that wobbly dessert thing was the finest of its ilk to ever pass my lips. Served at room temperature (how does that work when you're seated outside?), the silky texture and subtle burnt caramel flavour had me seduced. So, too, did the pavement position, backs to the wall of an old temple and across from a row of cake shops of a different kind.
The cake cabinet in front of this creme caramel cave was being delved into with regularity, bags being filled with iced sponges, log jam rolls and little eclair-like imposters. A cup of fresh yoghurt could be had, too. I'm not sure how the creme caramel got to be so good in Hanoi but it possibly had something to do with the French. As for this place, I'm pretty sure it isn't the schoolboy helpers who concoct this fine example, yet they can be sure that I'll be back for more.
The Drum
Three creme caramels (2000VND each), one yoghurt (3000VND) - 9000VND (USD55c, AUD75c)
Duong Hoa Kem Caramen
29 Hang Than St
