Stickyrice

Good Bird Soup

 

The Spot: North-west of the Old Quarter, within spitting distance of Truc Bach Lake and just up from the Chau Long market, this fine exponent of bird soup is directly opposite the Hanoi Cooking Centre (which incidentally had its official launch late last week). One of my favourite coffee hangouts is nearby...in fact so near I wheel my motorbike there afterwards. Nothing quite like good pho followed immediately after by an hour on the caffeine drip!

Space and Atmosphere: A jolly owner directs patrons to appropriate parking spots and collects the dong on the way out. He attempted a conversation in English with me, and despite his abstract pronunciation, I manage to gain full comprehension. Amazing what seven years in a classroom with Vietnamese students can do! The pho chain gang are ready at the serving station of this narrow space, which has walls papered with fantastic metallic floral contact. I think my textbooks were covered with the stuff in the 70's. Dusty plastic flower arrangements feature prominently and every unopened soft drink, beer and Hanoi vodka bottle is shelved against the floral walls, giving off some kind of trippy psychedelic vibe. The business altar above the back door is flashing with fairy lights.

Shopfront Style: Mixed messages are being conveyed here. Up high, there is pepsi sponsored signage promoting pho ga at a completely different address while below, the shop's yellow canopy advertises che, which they apparently flog at night. The latter has the correct address. Ignore the signs and look for the chickens!

 

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: The chopsticks are shorter and with a more defined eating end than the industry standard sticks found in most pho joints. Old jam jars do nicely for the red sauce and garlic infused vinegar while the lime wedges are fully replenished on fancy orange tear-shaped plates. All in all things are spiffy in the condiments department, with smudges and smears kept to a minimum. A clean-freak is in the house somewhere!

Serving Station: A chopping block, various plastic containers of seasoning, mi chinh, lime leaf needles and stainless steel bowls and trays loaded up with bird bits for all tastes as well as plates of rare and corned beef for the pho purists...the big custom-made glass and steel cabinet is well set up for pho assembly, with the finishing touches of herbs and soup carried out by the ladler on the street.

Meat Generosity: A generous handful of quality bird from the thigh and breast lands in my bowl along with a serving of trang trung (tubes and eggs).

Service to Delivery Gap: I hit this bird soup house during a lull, so after putting in my order on the way in, the soup practically followed me to the table.

Stock Factor: I slurped to almost the bottom of the bowl.

Cost: All spelled out in the photo above. (USD$1.40, AUD$1.72)

Rank: I can't bring myself to start the ranking palaver again, by setting pho in conflict with pho, chicken pho against beef pho in an unresolvable battle that will only end in tears. Nor do I want to be exposed for my less than scientific research methods. Let me just rate this as pretty bloody good!

Let's not forget pho

An acquiantance of mine is leaving Hanoi after three years. Last week at a farewell lunch, we got to talking about food. It was me who guided the conversation there as I'm fairly shallow on other topics. I'm always intrigued by how little exposure some medium-to-long-term ex-pats have had to street food. I wanted to interrogate the acquaintance, see what her form was like.

Not that this is how I judge people, of course.

I try not to, anyway. But I got the sense that the acquaintance's excitement about Vietnamese cuisine and the local specialties was limited to her first year here. She claimed to have overdosed on pho, admitting to knocking off three bowls a day on occasion, one for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The acquaintance was fast becoming a friend, or at the very least an inspiration for a future post. Even I have not attempted this 'pho three-peat feat'.

While the acquaintance lost her pho mojo early on, citing some kind of MSG giddiness, I have soldiered on. I may not have written about it for a year or more but be assured that noodle soup is still slurped and sipped regularly at stickyrice HQ. I still revere the pho ritual. I feel excited when waiting for my bowl to arrive, chopsticks cursorily cleaned with paper and ready. Juice is extracted from a wedge of lime. Hot red sauce is passed over in favour of a few slices of fresh chili. A drop of garlic-infused vinegar, a shake of pepper. The ceremonial lifting and dropping of the noodles with the sticks and spoon to mix the condiments in signals that the preparation is done. Afterwards, I wipe my mouth with a square of flimsy napkin and insert the toothpick.

And I feel as if I should genuflect as I back out onto the street.

Is there a need to resurrect the Hanoi Pho Swoop, to revise it with a chapter or two, to suck up new noodles and spit out new words?

I wonder.

Orange Pho 24 Imposter

The Spot: Not far from the main railway station, just off Le Duan at the western end of Nguyen Du (108), this modern pho establishment is a fine example of a trend I blogged about a little while ago. Dubbed 'Pho Quen' (not Queen), it's directly next door to a probable Polo Ralph Lauren imposter outlet, with the other main businesses in this street dealing in fire extinguishers and safety helmets.

Space and Atmosphere: Go upstairs to a mezzanine level or around behind the shiny new cash register (cash register, in a Hanoi pho house??...what happened to the old tea tin, or grubby cash-laden hanky tucked into ma's knickers???) and drinks bar to half a dozen or so tables on the ground floor. Be careful to dodge the fancily attired staff who are tripping over each other to be of assistance in that cheesy 'franchisy' way. I justed wanted to slap them.

Shopfront Style: A direct rip-off of Pho 24, except orange, right down to the flashing neon arrow pointing customers inside.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: Clear, logo-stamped perspex boxes house the black plastic sticks and silver spoons, which have clearly been organized by someone with OCD. Symmetrical and spotless, they augment more clear vessels containing red sauce, chili-infused oil and garlic vinegar. A rather poor imitation of Pho 24's side plate of herbs, bean shoots, lime wedges and fresh chili arrives along with the paper placemats espousing this joint's flowery-worded philosophy. If I translated it, you'd vomit!

Serving Station: A glass walled booth left of the entrance, with a serving window where the noodles are dispensed to the waiting staff. Marble benchtops, plastic gloves and tupperware containers abound, the chefs look the part in starched white and there is no evidence of animal carcass or organ visible to the eye. This is doctor's clinic pho, portioned with precision, lacking feel.

Meat Generosity: The scales ensure that all customers receive one of their daily recommended meat allotments - no more, no less!

Service to Delivery Gap: With staff out-numbering customers, there was no problem in this regard.

Stock Factor: Slightly murky but tasty enough.

Cost: I'm paying for the salubrious (and orange!) surroundings here. Well over the industry average, in the 20,000s.

Rank: I'm loath to continue the ranking system, other than to say this bowl of noodles is nothing special.

Belated Seasons Greetings! I've been in Oz, pouring loads of wine down my throat and over-indulging in foods not freely available in the Hanoi streets! Hope the coming year is kind.

Hanoi Pho Swoop Top 20

I've sucked them up all over town. Up alleys, down lanes, in gutters, next to churches, with exhaust fumes puffing in my face, with a grandad coughing his last bark in a bed right next to me. Pho knows no boundaries in Hanoi. Morning, noon and night, these noodles are slurped as a snack, a meal, a cure for a cold, a chill or a hangover.

Almost 18 months ago, I began crapping on in public about Hanoi's signature dish on this blog by way of the Hanoi Pho Swoop. There was talk of some mythical scrap of paper known to some as the Hanoi Pho Map. It hasn't materialised. I've abandoned that search. Its urban legend status remains unchanged.

Do not despair, however, as I have solid findings about pho, not on a map per se but found easily enough on the back of any xe om worth his ounce of street cred.

I present to you, dear readers.....

THE STICKYRICE 'HANOI PHO SWOOP' TOP TWENTY SLURPS
(as at 26/11/07)

1. Best Pho Ga By Far So Far (posted 26/7/06)
    "Get me a whole bird in my soup!"

2. Would You Queue For Pho (2/8/06)
    "...a joint that Hanoians spruik up as one of the places to slurp one's noodles"

3. Pho Corner (12/9/06)
    "...cleavered chicken pieces, diced up hearts and livers, sliced fillets of breast covered in lime leaf needles, a huge pile of fresh pho, a pot, a sieve, a ladle and some bowls"

4. Thick Pho (4/12/06)
    "...extra thick noodle straps...add an indefinable dimension here"

5. Clean Stern Pho (3/9/07)
    "all of the Hanoi standards are rigidly adhered to: floral bowls, tick; bamboo sticks, tick; red sauce in plastic cups, tick; lime wedges, tick; refuse underfoot, tick!"

6. Pho Franchise (9/11/06)
    "classy almost minimalist, a far cry from the cluttered detritus of the average family pho show in Hanoi"

7. Old Quarter Market Pho Ga (13/8/07)
    "...plenty going in to each bowl here, birdwise and otherwise"

8. Major Pho Stop (10/2/07)
    "Three white-coated pho maids head up this operation"

9. Up Market Pho (7/10/06)
    "...no slap dash affair. Someone cares"

10. Crabby Faced Pho (29/7/07)
      "Retro-post-war-functional and communist"

11. Pho Map Installment No.15 (16/4/07)
      "Fine cow indeed!"

12. Stumbled Upon Pho (11/7/07)
      "...all deafening shout and bang here"

13. Pho Ga Blur (8/8/06)
      "...this rambling kerbside affair is an evening only slurp in a dark section of the old quarter"

14. Religious Pho (13/3/07)
      "... a drop of it might have descended from the original Hanoi pho pot from a century or so ago"

15. Pho Poser (10/7/06)
      "...there's half a cow on board this bowl"

16. Market Street Pho Ga (21/1/07)
      "... a space no bigger than a prison cell, lit similarly with bright fluorescent light"

17. Pho Map Installment No.16 (25/6/07)
      "Steaming and robust, shiny yellow oil pills dotting the surface"

18. Friendly Grotbox (17/11/06)
      "...bargain basement territory..."

19. More Pho Tails (20/8/06)
      "... a definitive little pinch me moment of "bloody hell, I live in Vietnam"

20. Pho Map Installment No.2 (18/8/06)
      "...chewy, fatty and if I think too hard I might be forced to spit it into a serviette"

Clean, Stern Pho

The Spot: A 100-metre dash up from the eastern shore of Truc Bach Lake on Nguyen Truong To Street, diagonally across from a ritzy apartment building called 'The Manhattan', car air-conditioner components are sold next door to the left and the pho joint crowd overflows into the cafe on the right. There's a kindergarten a few doors up where another pho mob operates evening slurping.

Space and Atmosphere: I feel like I'm being watched over by a librarian here. The pho Ma peers over the top of a seriously stern pair of specs and I wouldn't want to be her if the wind suddenly changes direction, that facial expression stuck there for eternity. Sans specs, her daughter is clearly her mother's daughter. From the footpath table, I can observe the entire crowd, fifteen or so in the actual pho house and that again in the coffee house beside. I sit next to an octogenarian couple in their pyjamas. An air of efficiency and obedience presides.

Shopfront Style: Dull pink and white quartz tiles frame this place, a royal blue awning protects it from the elements and lots of steel and aluminium out front reflects the mid-morning light right in my face.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: This pho Ma ensures that all of the Hanoi standards are rigidly adhered to: floral bowls, tick; bamboo sticks, tick; red sauce in plastic cups, tick; lime wedges, tick; refuse underfoot, tick!

Serving Station: Boxed in and surveying the scene from on high, pho Ma runs a pretty spotless serving area, not a hint of the coated-on dust and grime evident on surfaces elsewhere in Hanoi. All apparatus - sieves, plastic colanders, pots and ladles - appear brand new. Ma is attired in plastic sleeve protectors and clear plastic gloves. A huge industrial exhaust fan hangs quite low over her and her proceedings and I don't even want to think of the carnage that would occur if a stray hand got inserted in it! Call the workplace safety inspector!

Meat Generosity: It's good quality cow and plenty of it, no grisly fatty bits to speak of. Extra points for onion abundance, brown and spring.

Service to Delivery Gap: Spot on the industry average.

Stock Factor: One of the best I've encountered, I could almost feel it doing me good inside. Not salty, nicely gingery and clearly beefy. Really good!

Cost: 12,000VND (USD73c, AUD89c)

Rank: 'Stickyrice Top Twenty Pho Rankings' coming soon!

Old Quarter Market Pho Ga

The Spot: A dark place in the middle of what is a bustling, heaving market by day. Just down from a popular drinking hole, this is night noodles in the Hang Be market. Funny how temporary wet markets actually are. At night the stalls are completely devoid of produce, and chairs and odd bits of broken timber are leaned up all over the place.

Space and Atmosphere: This is a crowded evening noodle slurp shop. Night noodles is a more relaxed food experience. People have more time and they drink beer and dwell longer than they would over a breakfast bowl. This is a family arrangement and the whole clan is on deck, pho ma at the helm. The space is a recently renovated pale green family room converted into an eatery for six o'clock opening. Photocopied A4 signs are sticky-taped to the newly painted walls, advertising sup ga, mien ga, bun ga and xoi ga, the four dishes on offer. A kitchen is tucked up in the back corner through which the family bathroom can be found and in it, a hot pink bra is hanging from the shower head.

Shopfront Style: An open house between closed houses, the shop sheds bright light across the dilapidated market stalls. Bikes are parked all round. An awning overhead protects the serving station from the stormy downpour that fell during our visit.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: The move away from Chinese gilt-edged floral bowls is evident here, too, with classic but modern white ones holding the product. Sticks are standard bamboo and all of the usual additive jars are topped up, their lips wiped, nothing dripping down the sides. It's relatively early and the system is still running smoothly.

Serving Station: Not your average smorgasboard of half a dozen ingredients thrown together in an instant. This is a bird part museum and the artifacts include recognizable breast, leg and wing alongside claw, comb and organ. Another delicacy is chicken skin stuffed with some kind of mushroom and meat mix which is cut into slices and laid atop the pho if you so choose. I've never seen this before - a pleasant little surprise for a pho veteran!

Meat Generosity: There's plenty going in to each bowl here, birdwise and otherwise. The pins of lime leaves pinched in at the last moment is a touch that I'm keen on - combined with chicken, it's a fantastic flavour combination.

Service to Delivery Gap: A trio of electricity company workers in orange overalls lobbed just before we did but, before long, a fine bowl of pho hit the table.

Stock Factor: My eating companion complained of saltiness. I kept slurping.

Cost: 12,000VND (USD74c, AUD87c) a bowl.

Rank: The rankings are totally hieroglyphic - head nor tail can be made of 'em. This ranks high. High for the fun factor, too, as I had a film crew pursuing me on this one. More on that later!

Crabby Faced Pho

The Spot: At number 39, it's a stone's throw from 'best pho ga by far so far' on Ton Duc Thanh, one of the main thoroughfares out of town, a noisy, nasty, dusty grind all the way. Curtains and bed linen are sold to the left, teeth drilled and pulled to the right.

Space and Atmosphere: Retro-post-war-functional and communist, not one personal touch or object of family detritus to be seen in this large concrete noodle hall. Fluoro-lit and lined with long stainless steel topped wooden tables and benches, I can imagine this place pre-Doi Moi, customers in government issue attire, trading their food ration coupons for a bowl of pho. The white bathroom tiles adorning the walls have blue letters and numbers adhered to them both denoting customer bench position and advertising the fact that tea and cigarettes are also available. The elderly dame who operates the show still wears the standard issue white blouse and black trousers in addition to a crabby face that would frighten away a Hanoi gutter rat. Her raspy barking has the staff jumping to attention. Patrons, too!

Shopfront Style: A yellow awning is the only splash of colour in this dull acid rain stained grey 'pho-scape.' A course grass-green mat covers the floor at the entrance - not sure if I should be wiping my feet on the way in or on the way out!

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: Well-stocked and topped up. Large stainless steel pails are jammed with a couple of thousand bamboo chopsticks, the red sauce and chili vinegar vessels are brimming and colourful in colourless surroundings.

Serving Station: Left of the entrance with big barn windows swinging onto the street, the serving station has a huge rangehood haloing number one son and country cousin, who two-hand the operation, juggling bowls, hot noodles, ladles and knives. During my breakfast, country cousin was hooking big hunks of cow from a simmering pot with an old sharp ended coat-hanger, from a position atop a rickety stool on the footpath outside - a kind of culinary circus act!

Meat Generosity: The portioning is far from stingy. Spring onions are piled on the piles of meat, the orange tinged beef in the photo at top being a stewed preparation known as sot vang which is also commonly eaten mopped up with bread.

Service to Delivery Gap: Pho-Nana's barking ensures that everything occurs swiftly here.

Stock Factor: Well-balanced with an extra hint of ginger which I'm rather fond of in my noodle soup.

Cost: Nana's vertically challenged friend scribbled a sum on a napkin in a shaky hand. It added up to 26,000VND (USD$1.60, AUD$1.90).

Rank: Much like picking numbers out of a hat at this stage I'm afraid. I still have to spend a slab of time updating the rankings. This is in the top ten. A list of the top twenty is not far away. This is Hanoi Pho Swoop post number 18!

Stumbled Upon Pho

The Spot: I'm tearing around in unfamiliar districts trying to find me a new pho cave. That's how wide the sticky pho map is spreading - it's a sprawling noodle seeking extravaganza which has reached the 'burbs. I'm off Giang Vo Street here in a little lane called Nui Truc, not far from the beer guzzling of Bia Hai Xom, immediately beside a 'foot massage body sauna' - god only knows what goes on there!

Space and Atmosphere: It's a major cave, this one. Amazing how things get bigger in the 'burbs but not necessarily quieter. It's all deafening shout and bang here, not the best place to nurse a Saturday morning hangover. The cleaver's getting a workover on the chopping block that warrants inclusion in the percussion section of an orchestra. If you want anything here, just yell. Earplugs recommended.

Shopfront Style: This pho mob have built a big two-tone blue, chrome railed wedding cake of a house from their noodle proceeds, the ground floor of which is grimed up with kitchen activity. A wok sits on the front step, buckets on the footpath ready for dishwashing action.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: The bowls are breaking the Hanoi pho by-laws here. Not the Chinese floral numbers one expects to slurp from, but instead classic white. I'm reporting them!

Serving Station: The luxury of space permits a serving station far bigger than the average squat and swivel style I'm so accustomed to. Here, the lads get an aerobic workout moving up and down the bench space and backwards to the simmering pot. A constant production line of bowls ready to be dealt to signals this pho house as successful. They're up for the morning onslaught!

Meat Generosity: Sliced, beaten, squashed and whacked against a knob of ginger on the chopping block, the meats come in pretty standard portions

Service to Delivery Gap: While the soup arrived fairly smartly, I was less than impressed by the snooty neglect of the money collector, who obviously felt that fetching me some fresh chili was beneath her standing. I childishly glared at her as I marched across to another table to fetch it myself. She stared me out the whole, not one inkling of a grin. Icy pho Ma: one, childish foreigner: nil.

Stock Factor: Salty! Though with the sweat my pores are oozing at the moment, salty is probably good!

Cost: Forgot to note it down but definitely within the limits.

Rank: Eight of seventeen.

Pho Map Installment No. 16

The Spot: In the French Quarter, not far from a couple of posh hotels, this pho cave stands between a double-decker bia hoi restaurant and some 'ma and pa' grocery and vegetable shops on Le Phung Hieu, just off Le Thai To Street.

Space and Atmosphere: Small, family-run and supported by the neighbours, everyone seems to know everyone, except me, the big awkward blonde one who sneaks to a table behind grandma's tea and fag stand. Each family member contributes here. Dutiful daughter delivers to table, Ma preps, portions and deals in dong, aunty wrings out the laundry in the tiny bathroom out back and country cousin squats in the walled wet zone in the corner washing dishes, one nut hanging low on show!

Shopfront Style: A mad clutter of primary colours.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: Nothing out of the ordinary here, each element complying to Hanoi standards

Serving Station: This area extends from a blackened tree on the pavement which acts as a kind of hearth where coal brick fires are lit and kettles boiled. Behind a glass cabinet with a stainless steel bench, Pho Ma expertly throws the ingredients together. Grandma, who used to be in charge, casts her expert eye over proceedings, offering her two hao's worth every now and again.

Meat Generosity: On Saturday morning at quarter to ten, it's well past the rush hour and the house is out of chin, the thinly sliced corned beef that makes up one half of my usual meat order. I settle for pho tai, the simplest of pho dishes - beef cooked rare under the pour of the ladle. As there's no corned beef, I'm compensated with a larger than usual serving of the latter. On a green note, I must say I do prefer pho joints that include a handful of blanched spring onions rather than just a scattering of chopped ones.

Service to Delivery Gap: At this hour, it's instantaneous.

Stock Factor: Steaming and robust, shiny yellow oil pills dotting the surface.

Cost: Under the pho industry average, at 10,000VND a bowl.

Rank: The rankings are a fine mess which I'll rectify soon. I'm putting this joint amongst the middling. Nine of sixteen.

Pho Map Installment No.15

The Spot: Just across the way from the railway line at 113 Phung Hung, this very well-attended noodle joint is next to a little post office which serves stamps and bun oc, a snail noodle soup - what you might call a mixed business! Further along the length of this street, famous for its hot pot restaurants, you'll have no trouble flogging off stolen goods or getting some quick cash for a hit of smack at the many pawn shops.

Space and Atmosphere: A vast fluoro-lit concrete shed, more spacious than the average soup house, with furniture for adults but, on my visit, loads of kids sitting up at it. One young girl, a yo-yo swinging a wide arc out from her middle finger, copped a greasy middle finger school-teacher tone from me. Her yo-yo was getting far too close to my noodles. I had to bark at her.

Shopfront Style: A makeshift corrugated plastic awning, in good need of a shake to get rid of last year's moulded autumn leaves, shelters signage depicting smiling cows and a winking fat French chef.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: 'Gold Leave' bowls, pho crockery of a nation but made in China, hold the soup. Sticks are plentiful, no problems forming a pair. Uniformity of length and straightness are the two properties demanded by all etiquette abiding Vina-mums, according to the god. Big Bat Trang ceramic pots of red sauce are a tad unique.

Serving Station: What you can't see in the photograph above is the elongated bull's dick spiked and hanging from a butcher's hook, ready to be chopped (again!) and added to the bowl of a tougher man than I.

Meat Generosity: This post marks a hat-trick of very fine quality pho bo establishments, none recommended to me and all fallen upon by chance. I was tempted to ask the very obliging pho pa for half a dozen slices of corned beef for me to whack in a sandwich with some mustard for lunch. Fine cow indeed!

Service to Delivery Gap: Speedy

Stock Factor: The ongoing process that is pho stock preparation is in full evidence here. At one stage, a pho-runner ferries a bucketful of broth from the mother pot out back to the one by the serving station. The flavour is full and satisfying, just the right amount of saltiness.

Cost: A steal at 10,000VND (USD60c, AUD75c) a bowl.

Rank: I'm going to put this at four of fifteen, knowing full well that the overall rankings are in need of a major update.