Stickyrice

A Hanoi Discovery: Cá Cuốn Thịt

To find a new snack in Hanoi, and a fried one at that, causes a degree of flurry here at stickyrice HQ. It doesn't happen often. Friends and acquaintances in Hanoi who know me and the blog tend to assume that I've eaten all there is to eat here, and thus are reluctant to give recommendations outright. This is a pity. Of course, I have ways of making people talk. Sometimes I will chance upon a snippet of conversation about a new dish or a new location for an old one. I actively eavesdrop, too. I interrupt. And I (mostly) tactfully tease the required intelligence out of them.

Or occasionally, a sheepish half-question will be proffered. "Don't you just love phở blah-blah?" or "You have tried bánh blah-blah, haven't you?" A couple of weeks ago, in similar fashion, a colleague half asked what I thought of cá cuốn thịt. To which I replied with a quickening heartbeat, "never heard of it." A not-so-subtle interrogation ensued.

Since then, I've eaten cá cuốn thịt too many times. An addiction is nigh. The literal translation of the dish's name is fish roll meat and, in some ways, while not being half as large or extravagant, is reminiscent of those 1970's specialties like the carpetbagger steak, chicken cordon bleu or chicken Kiev; lots of protein, one type enveloping the other, artery-popping richness, crisp fried exterior...let's just say they have much to recommend them.

I would classify cá cuốn thịt as spring rolls. The coating is a mixture of different grades of flour ingrained with clippings of dill, which is a natural flavour match for the next layer; large flakes of moist perch, no doubt sourced from the lakes and rivers of the north. At the centre of the roll is a mince of pork and wood ear mushroom, a common pairing found in other snacks such as bánh cuốn and bánh bao. As with all spring rolls, these ones must be wetted in dipping sauce. A house-mixed nước mắm pha can be given fruit notes with the kalamansi at table or heat with chili.

The dish has its home in perhaps the most charming nook in Hanoi's medieval Old Quarter, overhung by the tentacles of a Banyan tree and beside the narrow entrance to the lane's temple. But it isn't only home to these newly discovered rolls. Another Hanoi standard is the main fare, in fact.

A prismatic bowl of fish noodle soup (bún cá), clumped with green at its centre, competes for my attention. Thumbs of perch fillet and a dark crumbly, almost biscuit-y, fish cake lurk beneath with the noodles. The broth is webbed with dill and augmented at the last minute, in that Hanoi way, with a spoonful of MSG. I'm pretty certain it doesn't need it.

I'm also pretty certain I'll be a regular patron here. I will just have to manage another addiction.

Bún Cá Sâm Cây Si
5 Ngõ Trung Yên
Old Quarter, Hanoi

Thanks Dan for asking the question.

Chicken Rice Church

In eateries outside of Hanoi, in regions and towns I'm less familiar with, I tend to watch my p's and q's more than usual. I don't just bluster in like I own the joint, shouting my order, re-arranging the furniture. I be-have. I try to get a sense of the place; its tenor and drill, so that I can start off on the right foot. I may linger outside for a few minutes, observing the comings and goings, to catch any ritual I may need to pay heed to. Sometimes, particularly as a foreigner, an action as simple as entering an eatery can be nerve-wracking.

Nobody wants to fart in church.

In Hội An a couple of months ago, I entered a cơm gà (chicken rice) eatery with a pious sensibility. Overhead and directly in front upon entry, creating a mezzanine level above the food preparation area, was an ornately carved and gilded altar. Business altars are a common feature throughout Vietnam, placed to appease ancestors and thereby, ancestors willing, bring business success. More religious people may have altars to Buddha or other deities and figures who fight away evil spirits or bad luck. This altar dominated, making me feel as if I should have been genuflecting or lighting incense as I went in. Should I have prayed for holy chicken rice?

I joined other customers at round stainless steel communal tables, looking all around at the other artifacts in the establishment and, under the altar, at the three-handed team running the show. Gathered behind a large table cluttered with an assembly line of ingredients contained in colanders and other vessels, they were quietly mindful of my presence, one woman coming out to take my order. In Hanoi eateries, it's normally me going to them or calling my order in from the table. Vietnam is a broad church.

Every possible shred of chicken is manipulated by hand from the carcass here. Placed on a bed of turmeric stained rice, the shredded chicken flesh and skin comes with a spoonful of stewed chicken innards and blood cake, a handful of mint and Vietnamese mint (rau răm) and a smattering of onion on top. On the side, a plate of young papaya and carrot strips and a perfect good-salty chicken broth. I laced my serving with fabulously complex tương ớt Hội An (Hội An chilli sauce), of which I now have a cupboard full.

People seek comfort in all manner of things, vice or virtue. Some get it at a church of god. I got it that day at a chicken rice church.

Cơm Gà Bà Buội
26 Phan Châu Trinh
Hội An

Cold Day Hot Snails

Hanoi is weird cold.

Temperatures don't drop much below 10c, there's no snow, frost nor much nipping wind. Yet clothes don't seem to be very effective, even those made from impenetrable materials, as the cold in Hanoi bypasses clothes, takes a circuitous route and somehow ends up in direct contact with the bones. Houses here are draughty, built of concrete and tiles and have the kind of insulation that, at times, seems to have the opposite of the intended effect. That is, after a run of cold days, the temperature inside the house becomes by degrees colder than the air outside. Heating is problematic too; twelve foot high ceilings mean reverse-cycle air-conditioning only works if you're actually living upside-down on the ceiling. Or it may exist in only one room, meaning that one has to rug up to use the bathroom and, indeed, go through serious deliberation before taking a shower (could I go without for one more day?). Other heating options include Chinese bar heaters that one must practically sit on (mind the dressing gown doesn't catch fire) to receive any warmth.

Warming food experiences can help. My recent experience eating the Hanoi stew, sốt vang, gave some respite on a particularly brittle cold day. Getting together with a group of friends around a hotpot is not unlike the medieval concept of the hearth, with the heat emanating from both the portable gas burner where the cooking occurs and the communal closeness of this style of dining, not to mention the compulsory shots of rice liquor. Though they have a tendency to burn rather then warm!

A couple of weeks ago, I sought solace in snails. At the top of an alley syphoning a rigid wind up off Hanoi's West Lake, there is a one woman snail operation set against the wall. As I waited for my snack to be assembled I was jogging on the spot in business attire to stop the onset of icy numbness. The snail vendor was rugged up like a woolly mammoth, her back to the lake draught, her hands working a hook into the tiny spiral shells to remove the edible curlicues.

Behind, she placed a few ladles of a diluted nước chấm into a saucepan over a single gas flame. In front on her tiny stainless steel plated workplace, where I'm also to sit once the food's ready, she pinched a smattering of finely sliced lemongrass and pins of lá chanh (Kaffir lime leaves) into my bowl. The warmth of the dish was beginning to take shape so I stopped my idiotic jumping up and down, and sat.

Vietnam's most versatile noodle, bún (fresh rice vermicelli), is either served separately on a plate alongside the bowl of snails swimming in the heated nước chấm, for dunking, or combined as in the photograph at top. The tangy zest of the lemongrass and lime adds a very likeable aspect to the hot sauce-soup. The snails are gently but not confrontingly chewy, easily swallow-able whole even. In warmer weather, the nước chấm is served cold and the dish has a rather cooling effect.

On this day, I wanted none such thing.

Bún ốc chấm
Ngo 120 Phố Yên Phụ
West Lake, Hanoi

Name Your Poison: Dipping Sauces in Vietnam

I don't know any other cuisine where dipping sauces feature so prominently as in Vietnam's. In fact, a meal here in some instances has so many bowls and ramekins on the table that one needs one's focus in order to dip into the right sauce, much like playing an awkward game of cards with too many rules. At Hanoi's bia hơi establishments, for every four or five dishes ordered there will be a corresponding number of sauces coming to table, too.

Nước mắm (fish sauce) forms the basis of many but not all. It most commonly gets combined with water, vinegar and/or lime juice and sugar to form nước mắm pha, somewhat mistakenly referred to in the west by the generic name nước chấm, a term in Vietnam which is broader in meaning and refers to a wider range of dipping sauces, including nước mắm pha. I don't want to get weighed down in a semantic debate so let's just say many ingredients get added to fish sauce to make dipping sauces and this depends on region, dish and personal taste. Garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chilli, carrot, young papaya, even dill, are amongst the aromatics clipped, crushed, cut or shredded into fish sauce. Even alone, fish sauce is a remarkable ingredient to dip food into, giving both deep sea and salt. To be frank, if you can't stomach or don't like fish sauce, you cannot experience Vietnamese cuisine. It has a mild flavour profile compared to other dipping sauces used across the country.

Soy beans are fermented to make a brown sauce called tương, its most famous pairing being the south's delectable hand-rolled gỏi cuốn or fresh spring roll. Because this sauce is sometimes scattered with crushed peanuts, is is also frequently mistaken for peanut sauce. (Indeed, peanut sauce is also used for gỏi cuốn, as is hoisin sauce) At a famous goat joint in Hanoi, I remember a very white milky tương of soy beans, to which we added sliced lemongrass and chilli. Tương is a word, too, for sauces made of chilli or tomato. Soy sauce, so synonymous with Chinese cuisines, is also seen on tables here, be it with fresh chilli, garlic or lately, a slug of wasabi.

Vietnam is a wonderful world of sauces, clearly. But for my tastes at least, there is funk amongst the fine. Mắm nêm is another sauce derived from anchovies, the fish favoured in the making of nước mắm. While the latter is extracted in a longer process in a pure liquid form, mắm is thicker, murkier fish residue and liquid. This condiment at the table is completed with the addition of pineapple, garlic and, particularly in the centre of Vietnam, chilli. At a recent bia hơi outing in Hanoi, the mắm nêm served alongside our grilled beef was flavoured with ginger.

Perhaps the most pungent of Vietnam's dipping sauces is mắm tôm, which renowned Vietnam food expert Andrea Nguyen describes as "stinky but stealthily good". Looking back through the blog at my descriptions of this sauce, I came across the phrases "purple poison", "fermented fishy rocket fuel" and "evil...purply concoction." Made from fermented shrimps in a process not dissimilar to that gone through for fish sauce, mắm tôm is not for everyone. Particularly apparent in the north, it is used as a dipping sauce for dishes as widely varying as bún đậu (fried tofu with noodles), Chả cá Lã Vọng (Hanoi's sacred fish dish) and thịt chó (dog meat).

In short, a book could be written on dipping sauces in this country. I've only scratched the surface of this essential element of the main cuisine(s) here, not even mentioning what occurs in remote and ethnic minority communities. That could be a book on its own, too.

It's not a project for me. I have enough trouble deciding which sauce to dip my tofu into.

Bún Đậu Bình Liên
Đặng Thai Mai St
West Lake District

A Stew of French Origins

 

I'm sitting indoors with a cardigan on, in old fart mode, moaning. The cold is persisting in Hanoi and the disco-version Boney-M Christmas carols have commenced. On the weekend, I helped to wind a few lengths of tinsel about the wrought iron window bars at the front of the house and I hung a bell and a few baubles. I'm certain the look on my face was more funereal than festive.

It's here, there's no denying it, the double punch to the guts called winter and Christmas. Reminiscing about hotter times is also pointless. The sun is only coming out momentarily and I can't feel the warmth. So I've taken a happy pill, dragged on my beanie, stocked up the grog cabinet and started spading in some cold weather grub.

A bowl of Hanoi stew, sốt vang, is where I began this past Saturday. The influence of the French on this dish is clearly in evidence in the use of wine and beef, though it still has characteristic Vietnamese notes, the strongest being the inclusion of fish sauce. The marriage of red wine and fish sauce doesn't inspire confidence but in typically ingenious vina-style, and with the addition of spices including cinnamon and star anise, the union is a harmonious one. Variations sometimes include tomatoes and carrots. Thickened with tapioca flour and garnished with spring onions and herbs before the bowl comes to table, sốt vang is normally served in two distinct ways; a ladle full, as an alternative to other cuts of meat on top of phở, or in a bowl accompanied with a plain bánh mì. I don't like the idea of dispersing the richness of the stew in a thin soup so my preference is for the latter.

My surrounds, as I waited for the stew to cool at the table, were coincidentally colonial. Ochre-painted two-storey villas were opposite, shuttered windows firmly closed against the cold, iron lattice balconies uninhabited but for dankly hanging clothes. I shivered, warming my hands over the steam rising from the stew. The old-timer ladies serving tea on the pavement went one better; they had a fire going in the gutter.

I had one more trump up my sleeve, however, to combat this cold. A condiment on the table that, added to a beef and wine stew, would surely provoke a Gallic shrug from any passing colonist spirit; but, upon taking effect in my mouth and throat, raises my body temperature nicely.

Hot chilli sauce (tương ớt), at least in Hanoi, is permitted in a stew of French origins.

Bánh Mì Sốt Vang
11a Phạm Hồng Thái
Ba Đình District

Pining for Heat, Rangoon Dosa

Today Hanoi has turned dull and cold. For a warm-to-hot climate enthusiast, inclined to temperatures in the 30s (C) and skies of blue, there is reason to be downcast with overcast. From now until April, barring the weeks leading to Christmas where there will be the odd nice day, I am resigned to infuriating drizzle, poor visibility and a depressing cloak of grey overhead. I would be lashing the noose now if it weren't for upcoming travel plans to Australia (summer!) and Nha Trang (tropical Vietnam) in January and February.

Until I can escape, I shall seek solace in the memory of heat.

Last year at about this time, the god and I were enjoying the perspiration induced by Rangoon. In our exploits there, the gilded gold beacon of Shwedagon Pagoda was not only a landmark for orienting ourselves but also a kind of second source of heat and light, a shimmering focal point on the landscape like the sun is one in the sky, radiant and radiating. Rudyard Kipling once wrote "...the golden dome said: 'This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land you know about.'"

In a short five day jaunt, I knew that to be true after only a few minutes. But of course, Rangoon's location in South-east Asia offers me a certain easy familiarity. The street-life is vibrant like a circus, as in other parts of the region, with - to the western eye at least - a prismatic set of what are essentially daily tasks becoming a mesmerising show. In my home in Hanoi or there in Rangoon, it takes discipline not to stare.

At the feather duster salesman marching along with his fluffy batons. At the barrel hauler, seemingly sinewy and skinny, but a real strongman in his longyi. At the banana sculptor sitting back with a sigh, an eye on his next casting. Or at the mobile fritter vendor, side-stepping through the market crowd with his wares balanced in a basin on his head. From a shady position under a tree, my furtive observations took place and, truth be told, I could have sat there all day.

But I stepped out into the hot light of mid morning for some sustenance. Across the way, I'd had half an eye on a woman working ingredients in a doorway. Simply equipped with a hot flat griddle plate over a brazier, she was rather gracefully turning out that southern Indian specialty, the dosa. Not unlike Vietnam's bánh xèo, a pancake batter made from ground rice and lentil (or perhaps chickpea flour in Burma) is poured and very thinly spread across the griddle. The dosa is not flipped. The vendor scatters shredded cabbage, shavings of carrot, sliced tomato, mung beans and coriander leaves onto the batter. A mere moment later, she folds the golden underneaths over to form an envelope, which is stacked on top of those made earlier.

Whoever said heat acts as an appetite suppressant didn't canvass enough views. I immediately relieved her of one, then a further two once the first was down the hatch. They were bursting with capacity to please; a satisfying crunch-through at the bite combined with moist savoury vegetable inside.

Medicinal Bird (in a Coke Can)

In my exploits around Hanoi, the merchandising of coca-cola - whether it be point of sale signage, massive billboards or astutely arranged cans or bottles in ma and pa grocery stores and tea stands - is unlikely to turn my head. Old and cynical, I believe that I am impervious to advertising. Even if the said corporation were to start marketing to tetchy middle-aged bookish types with an ad campaign set in a hermitage, I would not be swayed. I remember a long dead great-uncle warning me "that stuff'll make your toe nails curl up." But as a hungover degenerate in my early twenties, I did drink it to generate a burp. These days, corporate evil and health implications aside, I just don't like the stuff.

Unless the can has a chicken jammed into it, legs sticking out stiff as two pokers.

Gà tần, which has origins in China, is a snack of chicken steamed innovatively (on the streets of Hanoi, at least) in a soft drink can with a concoction of medicinal bits and pieces purported to improve blood circulation and relieve other ailments. Goji berries, ý dĩ seeds (Job's Tears), lotus seeds, angelica root, ngải cứu (artemisia or mugwort) and dried Chinese apple are amongst the hodgepodge in and around the bird in the can. The only liquid added before steaming occurs is a half shot of rice wine.

Yet when the contents are expertly extracted from the coke can, a tonic soup is present in the bowl. Medicinal in a pleasant way, the bitterness from the artemsia combines nicely with sweeter flavours seeping from the fruity bits. While this is mildly of interest, I'm not that desperately in need of a cure.

Give me what is attached to the bones!

The gentlest probing with chopsticks brings the flesh away, an act which strikes my tastebuds with a desperate sense of anticipation. My mouth knows how this birdmeat will feel. The accompanying dipping paste of salt, squeezed kalamansi juice and fresh chilli adds power to every delicate mouthful.

As I savour this classy snack, each bone sucked dry and disposed of in the plastic bin under my table, the proprietor quite surreally is cleaning his pet bird's cage and stocking up its supply of seed and water. I feel all wrong, like I need to join the proprietor's wife, whom all the while has been chewing an almost unmanageable gobful of betelnut. A mildly dazed intoxication would surely take the edge off what is before me.

The image transforms into horror when the pet bird somehow grasps in its beak a rubber band and proceeds to tilt back its head for a gradual slow-motion swallow. I screech "My God" and point, the proprietor half reaches into the cage before realising it's pointless and the wife is laughing so hard that the betel-juice is oozing down her chin.

I realise I have to pay and get out. The culinary experience has been sublime, the goings-on around me; abstract and disturbing.

Đoàn Quý Gà Tần
12a Hàng Cót
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Gossip in the Gutter

I have a love-hate-but-understand relationship with the lady vendors of Vietnam. There is a grudging mutual respect underlying most of our dealings, a certain civility no different to the relationships forged between the Vietnamese themselves in these circumstances. Business is business and money is money and we're never going to be best friends. I'm comfortable with this. It's normal.

I've mostly dispensed with the pleases and thank yous too, following local practice. I'm also not averse to commenting bluntly if I think something's not quite right; if the vendor goes overboard with the MSG, for example. Or she's charging me more this week than last week. Or if I get ignored in the service sequence, I will pipe up. This is how I earn my respect.

I also earn it with appropriate facial gestures, a smile being the most important one. And by keeping my big foreign body as unobtrusive as possible, which is a bit of a stretch amongst a population of stick figures. I don't take up space for long either. Nothing worse than a fat-arse foreigner lingering over his food restraining trade, taking up area an entire local family could squeeze into.

So after ten years you might say that I have found a way to fit in.

To such an extent that, in the gutter the other day, I was privy to an episode of street vendor gossip. Over baskets of diaphanous rice-flour pancakes studded with sweated spring onions, the conversation between the womenfolk turned to the subject of the crab parcel vendor who used to be situated opposite.

"Whatever happened to her?"
"You haven't heard? She's done a runner"
"Why?"
"Lots of debt. Every day, somebody was asking her to pay them back"
"Gambling?"
"Yep. Lucky I didn't lend her any"
"So where is she?"
"Nobody knows. She's just vanished"

The speculation went on as my breakfast carbohydrates were being peeled from their stack and scissored onto my plate. Nước chấm is poured into dipping bowls from recycled bia tươi Việt Hà bottles. I added garlic-infused vinegar and fresh chili plus a drop of essence of cà cuống, a pheremone extracted from the giant water bug commonly used in dipping sauces at Hanoi's bánh cuốn eateries. There on the curb, it was more than likely imitation.

As the vendor cut wedges of giò lụa (pork sausage) onto my plate and I stirred up my dipping sauce to taste, an elderly lady customer spied me. Perhaps my odd presence sparked the memory; she said that she could recall eating this very same dish - bánh cuốn Thanh Trì - as an eight year-old in harder, simpler times.

As I reflected on this, having detached myself from the buôn dưa lê (gossip) for a moment, it did seem that they were the right words for this dish, which originates from a semi-rural district called Thanh Trì to the south-west of Hanoi. Hard and simple, to describe a combination of those past times, when calories and protein were most essential for arduous days in the rice fields, and the nature of the dish, basic meat and carbohydrate.

Bánh Cuốn Thanh Trì
45 Đào Duy Từ St
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Where there is smoke, there is Bún Chả

I'm not sure how much bún chả emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect or if Hanoi's numerous vendors would be subject to participation in future carbon trading schemes. I do care about the environment but not so much that I want to see traditional grilling methods banned, the bún chả experience gentrified or moved off the street into the kitchen.

I like the smell of bún chả fumes.

And I recently inhaled the smoke that drifted from what I now consider to be Hanoi's best bún chả barbeque.

My previous favourite has been usurped.

My bún chả landscape has been altered. In some senses, strangely.

Outside this particular exponent of Hanoi's trademark lunch dish, a peculiar set of oddities (which are all quite normal for this city, I might add) are at play. First there is the key tree, used ingeniously by the proprietor's parking guards to keep track of patrons' motorbike keys. Regular customers know the drill: ride into the blue meaty smoke, get off motorbike, remove helmet, gives keys to boy-guard, order lunch and eat. Meanwhile, boy-guard transports motorbike to nearby parking strip, walks back, hangs keys on one of numerous nails hammered into the key tree. Customer finishes lunch, pays, exits via the tree, points to keys and boy-guard retrieves corresponding motorbike. Essentially, it's valet-parking Hanoi style.

Second, across from the establishment, is the old lady bra cabinet. Forgive me for not knowing much about the technical aspects of this kind of apparatus but it seems these ones are not contemporary, definitely not part of Elle McPherson's Intimates collection. All fabric and no wire, they are in essence old world "over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder"...but with sequins and seemingly hand-made, exhibited in a 2'x4' wooden cabinet with sliding glass doors, on the street. A bit like a museum vitrine.

Inside there is much to observe, too. The ambience here is very much 'I am eating in someone else's home, don't be too nosey, don't touch anything and don't stare'. Of course, everybody (including me) does the exact opposite and it doesn't matter one iota. There's the detritus of 50 or more years of accumulation, a courtyard out back that barely has a square inch of floor to stand on, at the centre of which is a conical monument to the spring roll, parts of which will be chipped off during lunch service.

There is human interest, too. Ancient grandpa is being assisted to lunch from his 'cupboard' somewhere out back. Attended to by the family/business helpers, he is clearly revered as he sits down on a huge day bed which occupies one corner of the room. He gently smiles and bows to the customers present, pats down the front of his pale blue pyjamas and waits patiently for his lunch to be placed before him.

And that's complicated because the family and staff are not having bún chả. No doubt they are sick of the sight of it. Instead it is family recipe chicken noodle soup (not phở but a kind of bún gà), rich in blood chunks, organs, cones and beak. I almost want to change my order and push my way onto the day bed for this home-cooked bowl of bird.

But simply being here is privilege enough. I turn away to what has been set down on my table.

The side players have been assembled: bún (vermicelli noodles) which here seems better than simple carb element, somehow more fresh, less processed...just more, well, better; a generous fistful of greenery and sprouts, so sweet you could juice them; and the colour spark of the chili. All is in readiness.

To dip into the meaty font that the customers are really here for. This bún chả is close to perfect. Pork belly grilled with crunchy black edges, pork patties enveloped in lốt leaves and a charcoal-y must on the surface of the 'soup' all combine to win me over.

So this is a strong recommendation. Even if you don't encounter the key tree or sight the brassiere vitrine, even if grandpa is not sitting down to lunch - all experiences that I am keenly on the look-out for because I'm strange - the bún chả is the main event here.

Come, put your head down, and just eat.

Bún Chả
34 Hàng Than
Hanoi

Main Street Eat

Phố Huế drills traffic from Hanoi's inner south to its heart at Hoàn Kiếm Lake. A one way procession of engines which changes name to Hàng Bài nearer to the lake, it intersects with three main east-west roads, Trần Hưng Đạo, Hai Bà Trưng and Lý Thường Kiệt, ensuring an increasing glut of vehicles as it passes over each.

Along its length, Phố Huế  is all business. At its southern end lies the infamous chợ đen (black market), just off in a side street. Here, one might be able to recover a stolen remote control or power tool, buy cheap blank CDs, DVD players and karoake machines and speakers. The din created by the merchandising and demonstration of this equipment is quite something. For the locals, the noise is water off a duck's back, exciting even. For me...well, I think I've made my feelings about Hanoi's noise known in many a prior post.

The next stretch of the road is a shrine to the motorcycle. On the run into town, businesses on the left are selling every possible accessory for Vietnam's most common people and product mover. Stainless steel exhaust pipes and shimmering mirrors hang on display like arty industrial installations. Whistles, air horns and flashing lights that deafen, blind and distract are sold in great numbers to the city's young male population. Female customers like to dolly-up their bikes with stencils of butterflies or flowers. This summer's craze in motorbike customising is little plastic cartoon figurines being scewed on the back tyre mud-guard.

For rev-heads, it's all very interesting.

But Phố Huế has its food heart, too. Mid its length, the road takes a slight bend where the Chợ Hôm (Hom Market) is situated. A cavernous central space inside houses some of Hanoi's finest fruit vendors while, out through the rear entrance, vegetable and herb stalls, butchers and fish-mongers operate along with many other specialist food purveyors.

This is all very well if one wants to shop. Normally I would be happy to poke around for a bunch or two of Asian greens, sample a rambutan or two, perhaps even put together an impromptu lunch menu from the foodstuffs on offer. This excursion down Phố Huế  has a purpose, however. These scant descriptions of the commodities available on this street are just a means to an end, an angle into what I really want to say.

I want to shout loudly, "Mỳ Vằn Thắn."

From the top of a mountain of deep fried wontons!

Just opposite the market, this dish of fresh egg noodles and wontons is put together by a chain-gang of mighty women. There is a chain of command and clear delineation of labour but it is hardly unspoken. Efficiency, as in many noodle houses in Vietnam, is in accordance with volume. If there's no shouting, there may be a wait on the noodles. Here, prompt service is a hallmark and barking racket is the prevailing atmosphere.

The preparation of the dish is a methodical portioning of both steamed and deep fried wontons, an egg wedge, thinly sliced xá xíu and a semi-circular slither of liver (try saying that quickly!). All is arranged on the silky nest of blanched noodles and greens. The final flourish is the pour of the ladle. 

Mỳ Vằn Thắn comes to Hanoi from China, via Saigon. It came to my face from the bowl, via the chopsticks, quick.

Mỳ Vằn Thắn
86 Phố Huế
Hanoi

Thanks Connla for the recommendation.