Stickyrice

On Huế Cuisine (and Colour) in Hanoi

When I first came to Vietnam in 2002, the streets were frenetic with colour. The people were all go and no stop, possessed with an industry that made me tired. The mangoes were going by bicycle, the chickens and ducks faster, feathers ruffled in the slipstream of millions of motorbikes in a hurry. Hanoi was positively floral, each street corner a mini-Chelsea flower show. The hats on the heads of the country's women were crazy paisley psychedelia, hot pink lace, big yellow bows, rainbow rims. In short, the joint was a kaleidoscopic blur, hard to process.

But I persisted. And nine years on, I've changed and Vietnam's changed. It seems that my views have been coloured while the vibrancy of the colours around me seem to have dulled. My personal vista is greyer.

The tables I graze at are not, thankfully.

On one of Hanoi's blue formica tables last weekend, I went central. That is to say I reacquainted myself with a taste of Huế, Vietnam's old capital located on the country's middle coast. Famed for its eccentric 'royal cuisine', the city also boasts a sexy range of savoury rice and tapioca flour snacks as well as the ballsiest noodle soup of them all, bún bò Huế.

Before I go any further, let me just say that this establishment in Hanoi does an interpretation of bún bò Huế, which would not please purists. Yes the dish is a celebration of protein in all its visceral glory, a porky-beefy marriage in a bowl. There is beef shank, chunks of pig's blood, pig's trotters, sliced tender 'corned beef' (chin), steamed pork balls...in short, the butcher involved is making a good profit. A pleasant side plate of crisp vegetable content in the form of bean sprouts, shredded banana flower and herbs also scores points.

The problem lies with the soup. The pungency and colour of bún bò Huế is delivered by lemongrass, annatto and chili. Here it's virtually a clear pho broth with only the slightest hint of the right aromatics.

But there is a bright side.

Bánh bèo is the simplest of snacks done up with a colourful throw of dried shrimp dust (tôm khô), slightly sweetened croutons and perfect sprigs of mint. The flat white disks of steamed rice cake lay underneath, camouflaged by the plate. In many Huế restaurants they are served separately in their own small ramekins. Of course, this dish is nothing but dry and bland without nước chấm, a nước chấm with extra chili, in the true spirit of Huế cuisine.

A similar colour scheme is seen in another of Hue's specialties, bánh bột lọc, also on offer at this eatery in Hanoi. These dumplings consist of a filling of shrimp and sometimes pork encased in a dough made not from rice flour, but instead tapioca flour. This gives the dumpling a semiopaque appearance and quite an unusual sticky quality in the mouth. Again, the dipping sauce is essential to this dish's success.

 

This orange and green on white is a spectacular foodscape, photogenic and reminiscent - at least in my sensibility - of nature.

In one way or another, Vietnam's plates are continuing to string me along.

Bún Bò Huế O. Xuân
3 Quang Trung
Hanoi
(next door to Vietnam Airlines ticketing HQ)

West Lake Fish Answer

I know I've been kidding myself.

It would be impossible to count the number of times I've uttered something about West Lake's fish, how they survive in such a body of water, how people who ate them must be crazy, how I would never...

...well I did, and probably have eaten them just as many times as I've said I would never.

Hồ Tây (West Lake) is Hanoi's largest, with a 17km circumference around which it has recently become possible to bike, drive or run. But it's always been accessible to fishermen. Having lived just 20 metres from the lake for five years, I've seen my share of fins exit its waters. Waters that one can only hope are cleaner nearer the centre.

I'm going to tell it like it is here. All of what I describe, I've witnessed with my own eyes. In no particular order of severity, without any intention to shock nor pass judgement, these fish have been subject to survival challenges that could yet be turned into a reality TV show. Let's cut to poo, firstly. I've seen humans poo by the lake's edge. My neighbour washes the bird poo from the base of her birdcage into the lake. Her husband, I saw one day pick up a dog turd with a yellow trumpet flower and piff it into the lake. He said hello to me and smiled as he did it.

I've seen dead dogs float in the lake. I've seen three rats at night swimming in unison, one minute this way, the next the other way. The hundreds of angling enthusiasts think nothing of flicking cigarette butts into the water all day long. Young lovers kissing lakeside at night fling their plastic chè cups into the water. There's been the odd condom, too. House painters clean their dirty brushes and paint tins. To save on the water bill, many lakeside residents wash their rubbish bins with westlake water. When ceremonial paper is burnt in little tin incinerators or battered aluminium basins, they invariably get rinsed out in the lake. I've seen dogs washed with shampoo.

I've seen many a fisherman pee in the lake. I've seen one holding fishing rod in one hand, peeing rod in the other, an arc of yellow urine and an almost invisible thread simultaneously attached to the same human, entering the same lake. I feel I must state plainly that I'm under no illusion that this type of behaviour doesn't occur in and around waterways in other parts of the world, developing or otherwise.

 

And yet despite it all in this instance, the fish miraculously continue to multiply and mistakenly swim into nets or onto hooks or worse still, get blown out of the water by explosives in numbers that must be in defiance of international fishing law. There are three forty-something men in my little commune who fish the lake for a living, setting nets morning and evening, paddling out in little tin boats to drag up their catches. At 6.45 each morning, the fishmonger's delivery guy arrives with a large aerated steal tank fixed on his motorbike. The catch is weighed, math done and money exchanged.

Then the fish go pillion to market.

All of this goes through my mind again last week as I contemplate a bowl of bún cá rô. Served with ample stems of rau cần tây (wrongly translates as celery), briefly blanched in hot water with the noodles, a few wedges of tomato from the broth similar to that made for bún riêu, the fish is proudly laid top and centre.

Afterwards, after I've examined the ingredients cabinet and made enquiries about the broth, I want to face the quandry of the West Lake fish, so I ask, "What is the fish?"
Boy vendor answers, "It is perch (cá rô)."
"From West Lake?" I prod.
"Yes."

I'm not sick yet. It's obviously a slow poisoning. So is life. I will continue to eat at this bún cá purveyor (address on bowl above) and have at many others over the years. I will also continue to hope that the fish in my bowl is sourced from somewhere nearer the centre of the lake.

Rise Early, Eat New

In Hanoi, it pays to be an early riser. The day gets underway before dawn, signalled by the increasing hum of motorbike engines and associated horn use. Troops of walkers shuffle along alleys, setting out for nearby parks and lakes to work up a sweat, their mouths often exercising as hard as their bodies. The echo of keys, locks and chains are amplified, ricocheting against the concrete surrounds.

The idea of getting back to sleep is a foreign concept, I've come to believe. In fact, it's a luxury I can barely recall. My body clock adjusted quickly to this series of Vietnamese 'alarm clocks' due largely to several years spent running a cafe in Melbourne before I landed here nine years ago. Dark awakenings have been part of my daily routine for 15 years.

So why fight the inevitable?

Why sleep when you can eat?

I've discovered that my eating adventures are often more enlightening in the early morning, that I'm more likely to stumble upon something new, something that the locals have been keeping secret, something that the average expat will never experience because they are still in bed. It is not unheard of for popular breakfast streetfood stalls to open at 6 and be done by 9. Thus, for many early risers 9am feels like noon.

And, for many early risers it is sometimes difficult to believe what one is seeing. Like me, last Saturday. As with their politics, Hanoians are traditionalists when it comes to their specialities. They hate what the southerners have done to phở, for example, making the broth sweet and serving it with a mountain of herbs and condiments, tricking the customer with smoke and mirrors to a dish far removed from its northern origins.

So it was with suspicion that I found myself sitting down to a radical combination in a city of culinary conservatism. Bún chả, the city's lunch trump, was being paired with another standard, bún riêu, a 'peasant-y' soup with variations up and down the country. Such a marriage was destined to fail, one might think; two strong characters tentatively held together by a hyphenated name.

BUN RIEU-CHA is barbequed pork belly served over a soup of crab, pork, tomato, herbs and noodles.

Let me tell you why it works.

Firstly, this little street stall's tables are occupied from open to close of business...hundreds if not thousands of Hanoians cannot be wrong. Whether they are philosphically opposed to this union or not does not seem to matter, as they are clearly not opposed to chopsticking it voraciously down their noodle-holes. Secondly, kindly Mrs Tuyết, who runs the operation is proud of her little divergence from the norm, happy to answer questions from the inquisitive amongst her patrons (that'd be me) and happy to add extra bún chả skewers and ladles of soup into my bowl as I made notes and took photographs.

Thirdly, this bowl of combo looks dazzling, comforting, delicious...insert any positive adjective applicable to food. Fourthly, tiny cubes of pork belly fat have been softened in oil and sauteed with tomato to start building the colour and flavour profile of the broth. Fifthly, these little pork cubes are floating in my bowl  gelatinous like soft tofu, slippery on the spoon, melting in my mouth. Sixthly, as with all good bún chả, the meat's edges are blackened over the coals and crunchy.

Need I go on?

One final point, if eating the bún chả riêu seems somehow to be desecrating the cuisine of the city, then deconstruct by ordering either bún chả or bún riêu.

And while 10am is still technically morning, Mrs Tuyết may be up to her 'afternoon' nap...so get there early.

Tuyết Bún Chả Riêu
12 Phùng Hưng
(slightly difficult to find as these buildings are concealed behind the green sheds of the temporary market. Look for butcher stall #59 and the stall is directly behind)
Open 6.30am Generally closed at 9am.

Hanoi Grandma's Chao Suon

Hanoi is developing but it is also dilapidated. Gleaming new cars drive alongside putrid motorbikes held together by the splattered pig slops they transport. A sharp glass edifice of a building stands in sharp contrast next to the mildewed ochre facade of once stately colonial villas. Boys with sharply angled coiffs gelled to attention escort their black toothed betel-addicted grandmas across gridlocked intersections.

There are restaurants housed in the courtyards of modern office complexes and streetfood eateries set up in the crumbling cluttered doorways of the people.

Old is juxtaposed against new, clean against dirty, obscene and decadent against pure and simple. 

So pure and simple that almost anyone can whack a pot on the street and start serving breakfast. With the aid of a trolley or a husband, the women of the alleys of Hanoi orchestrate the lugging and arrangement of their product on a stretch of curb or the more prominent doorstep of a neighbour. The utensils and ingredients, the small collection of plastic stools and tables, the money tin and other sundry items are meticulously placed within a half-arm arc of the proprietress and her pot. I must say there is something to be admired in the Vietnamese ingenuity of operating a business without having to ever stand up.

Which is just as well because some of these women are as ancient as the doorways they inhabit. In the western world, women of this age would have retired to their gardens, their grandchildren, their needlework, their cruise ships, their long-deserved leisurely autumn years. But in Vietnam, even grandma has to earn her keep.

Rugged up against the cold, she sets up a pot of rice porridge (chao) to feed the neighbourhood breakfast. Prepared using pork ribs (suon), this thick viscous version does not contain the broken pieces of rice of other chao establishments. In the pot, it spits occasionally like a hot mud bath might and when grandma is serving the porridge, it is reluctant to leave the ladle and almost has to be thrown at the bowl.

On the porridge's surface, minced pork is scattered and quay (deep fried fingers of airy bread) is cut with scissors. I add heat and spice in the form of pepper and chili flakes before dragging everything under the surface to coat it with salty cloying chao.

And, despite the stiff breeze, the whole experience warms me. Being served by grandma, sitting in a doorway that nobody seems to enter anymore, spooning a steaming simple porridge into me, I can momentarily forget the white noise of progress all around me.

Chao Suon
Au Co St, near lane 124
Hanoi

New Neighbourhood, New Noodles

Moving house is something most people do with a sense of trepidation. In the old house, open the cupboards and all the detritrus from the the last however long falls out. All the things that were to come in handy one day are really just nostalgic items from the past that tend to prolong the task at hand. 

Remember where we bought that?
I wore that shirt to so-and-so’s wedding.
I’m sure we could get that repaired somewhere.
Oh…that was Nana’s.

If one was to dwell on every relic, photo, slip of paper or item of clothing, and systematically place them in the keep box or dump box, any move would take weeks. In a perfect world, yes, some culling of one’s four year accumulation of stuff would be useful and no doubt cathartic. But when the move is slated for the week of Christmas and New Year, with all its incumbent merriment, it’s much better to simply empty and shake the cupboards into boxes and run.

At the other end, there's another opportunity to take stock of one's belongings. Yet there's also new territory to explore, routines and rhythms to fall into. Street vendors and food purveyors to sniff out. This morning for instance, leaving for work slightly earlier than usual, the scent of bakery drifted down into my tiny courtyard making me immediately hungry. That little trace of fresh bread has been filed away for a slow Saturday morning when I have time to investigate further.

But just out of my alley, not fifty metres from home, I've discovered new noodles in someone's yard. Sitting along side winter-weathered walls on which sit the vendors own collection of relics, I pondered over bánh đa thịt đậu (Hải Phòng brown noodles with beef and tofu). Similar to bún riêu, except that this dish does not include crab (cua), it has a hearty tomato pork broth and is served with shredded lettuce, herbs and banana stem. With the addition of chili paste at the table, I was warmed and insulated against the cold motorbike journey to work.

I've spied more food businesses and I'm continuing to map the alleys and lanes of my new neighbourhood. I'm also continuing to ignore the few boxes of stuff in corners of rooms. When I close my eyes, they are not there.

Bún/Bánh đa Thịt/Đậu
76 Âu Cơ
Tây Hồ

Fat Woman's Duck

Before I came to Vietnam, duck seemed so old-fashioned, so Peking, so Donald, so Daffy, so cartoon-character. So zoo animal, even.

At Christmas in Australia, the duck was envied by other birds, less often getting the chop. I wonder if a duck breast could be found in a supermarket there now, tidily wrapped in cling-film on polystyrene like chicken. Come to think of it, what made the chicken more common on our tables anyway? Perhaps the fact that they weren't too good at flying. Wasn't it the ducks who flew somewhere for the winter?  

Must've been Hanoi and....well, Peking.

While they've been through a rough trot these past few years, with the avian flu epidemic resulting in mass cullings, duck is very visible on the food landscape in Vietnam. Like chickens they go by motorbike to market, where they can be purchased live and killed dead. The grisly blood-letting can be confronting but no more than a scene from True Blood or Twilight. If you can't kill the beast or bird you're intending to eat, at least witness it. 

And then, eat its blood in chunks. Served in a broth with thinly sliced bamboo pieces, duck's blood has the texture of firm tofu and a barely identifiable flavour, both bland and inoffensive.

This particular duck-house is run by a very jocular, smiling woman called Xuan and the literal translation of the eatery's name is Fat Xuan's (Xuan Beo). Patrons would be advised to stand back when she is cracking her cleaver across the duck carcasses. Accurate and forceful, Xuan slides evenly cut chops of breast from her cleaver to our plate and these come adorned with more bamboo and quickly blanched spring onions. The herb match, generous on the side, is hung que (Asian basil).

In the mouth, a few plucked leaves ruminate with luscious duck flesh and the effect is a revelation.

Duck Bill

One serve duck blood (tiet), one serve duck pieces (vit luoc), one serve broth and noodles, two large beers - 89,000VND (USD$4.65, AUD$5.05)

Xuan Beo Vit
76 Quan Thanh
Hanoi

Going Back in Time for Snails

It's becoming increasingly difficult to go back to old Hanoi.

The horizon is visible in only very few places as the move up to the sky continues. On clear days across West Lake, I used to be able to see unobscured views of the hills, Ba Vi and Tam Dao. Now, residential and commercial high rises impede the view. Pagodas and temples are getting make-overs which leave them the same drab grey of other new structures. Bicycles are being pushed about in the heave of traffic on roads they once dominated. The girls are having their gorgeous long hair clipped short and coloured, the boys are growing theirs long and choosing funky frames for their glasses. KFC, Lotteria, Burberry, ATMs galore, mad technology uptake. My students have Ipads. And the cars. My God, the cars.

But there is such an excitement about the newness, about being able to afford posessions, about accumulating possessions, about shopping for shoes, about Hanoi getting tall buildings and posh shops and malls, about buying shares, smoking foreign cigarettes, designing the home renovations, choosing the paint scheme and the furniture, owning a family pet.

For the most part, I'm enjoying the ride. After decades of misery and bombs and death and poverty and decay, allow the Vietnamese some time in the sun, I say.

And inversely, allow me to go in search of crumbling Hanoi, broken pottery, old boys playing chess and street vendors peddling snails. 

Twenty years ago, when Vietnam was still somewhat in the doldrums, this snail vendor started passing by Hanoi's Truc Bach village, just north of the Old Quarter. Each afternoon, she sets up her two-basket operation in a tiny alley where the only through-traffic is to one or two homes that lie at its end. She hangs a nondescript sign, signalling that all is in readiness.

In one basket, on a bed of banana leaves, the vendor handles the sticky fresh white noodles known as bun, which are the carb element of this dish. Mounded on plastic plates, they arrive first at the table as the vendor takes to the snails with a tool that wouldn't be out of place in a surgeon's sterilised instrument tray. Designed for removing slippery things in awkward places, it is a thin metal rod with a sharp angled hook that she expertly slides into the snail shell before sharply wrenching the little blighters out.

The other basket contains the creatures: freshwater gastropods with ornate spiral shells, surely a design wonder of the animal world. Much prettier than what emerges from them, that's for sure. In little white bowls, post-op, they look like something an elephant might have sneezed up. The sooner they're covered, the better. Out of old-world stoneware, the vendor spoons out the tomato-based broth the snails have been cooked in.

Chili paste is added to the soup at the table and the noodles are wetted before they are eaten. And the snails? Without going into anatomical detail, parts of them are quite silky and sensuous. Other parts are much as you would expect, kind of chewy, bouncing in the mouth. When I have them where I want them, all that is left is a half bowl of broth.

The vendor taps me on the shoulder and smiles, gently miming that I should put the bowl to my lips and drink it down.

And I do. The soup and the experience. The moment back in time.

Old Money

One serve of bun oc lo (snails from a jar with noodles) - 30,000VND (USD$1.55, AUD$1.75)

Bun Oc Lo
6 Nguyen Truong To
Hanoi

Duck Soup Breakfast

This morning I disappeared up a crack in the wall for duck.

And when the crack opened up into a courtyard jolly with family atmosphere, I knew I was on track for a pleasant Sunday. My fellow patrons assured me that the motorbike was safe where I'd parked it, they edged around the communal table to make room for me, asked me where I was from and, once content that I was comfortable, continued their good-natured banter. Everybody had woken up on the right side of the bed.

For my viewing pleasure, half ducks were neatly stacked on a metal tray alongside the shredded flesh of the one on the go, which was being portioned generously into each new customer's bowl. Fresh white vermicelli noodles (bun) are 'done' two ways here, depending on one's preference: blanched and separated momentarily in hot water or served as they are. If opting for the former, then the other ingredients are placed atop the hot noodles before soup is ladled over the top. The latter option sees the soup and other ingredients come in another bowl so that these customers can then dunk their own noodles into the soup. Each to their own but I went for the one bowl option.

The other ingredients start obviously with the luscious pinky-brown duck meat. A scattering of green spring onion tips and several slices of bamboo (mang) finish out the bowl. A side plate of Asian basil (hung que), leaves plucked in, adds a complex but necessary dimension to this dish. When my bowl is before me, my eating companions start nudging utensils and condiments my way, their warm welcome continuing.

I know through experience that the Vietnamese really are at their most hospitable around food but there seemed to be something else at play this morning, something about that particular mix of patrons or the way the lady proprietor (duck dealing for nearly 20 years) smiled and effortlessly dealt with everyone. Of course, it goes without saying that the bun ngan (duck noodle soup) did not disappoint. I went onwards to coffee and then deeper into the day wondering what made that simple breakfast special.

Hard to put the finger on.

Duck Bucks
Two bowls of bun ngan - 40,000VND (USD$2.10, AUD$2.40)

Xuan Giang Bun Ngan
2 Duong Thanh Nien

Old Quarter Bun Rieu

There is no signage. There's hardly any room to sit down. The woman who runs the show is bleating with gusto into her mobile phone. Is this an establishment that serves food to the public?

You betcha!

In so many eateries in Hanoi, it's as if the residents simply throw open the doors in the morning, have a stretch and a spit, throw a few pots on the pavement, move the beds and the TV out of the way and let strangers into their house to eat noodles.

Here in the Old Quarter on a hot day, a tiny dark cell out of the blinding rays is not a bad option, even if it's a bit of a tight squeeze. Being a taller and wider specimen than 99% of the locals, I'm forced to sit in what is the equivalent of side-saddle in this space that would not actually do for a horse. On the walls, large portraits of the family members are bearing down on me, in ao dais and tuxedos on special occasions. I'm sure they're wondering what I'm doing there.

I have reason to wonder myself, as the boss lady is still roaring into the phone. Something about the husband. The customer is not always king in Vietnam and even though I don't necessarily believe in that adage anyway, I do want to get fed. So I start pointing.

I point at the squares of already fried tofu (dau). I point at the beef. She points at the mystery sausage (gio). I nod no. She knows what I want now but also that to do it properly, she needs the use of both hands. Reluctantly, in the middle of the rant, the phone gets flung onto the white pile of noodles (bun). She's back on the job, all arms and implements, portioning and ladling.

Bun rieu cua is a tomato based broth noodle soup dish with crab paste, which can be customised in many ways with different ingredients. And despite my slightly pesky relationship with the owner, I do like her little house, her bowl of soup and the fact that she does not promote her product at all.

I will be back, again and again.

Soup Money
One bowl bun rieu cua - 18,000VND (USD95c, AUD$1.10)

11 Hang Bac St
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Island Noodles

The eating routine in Phu Quoc involved seafood for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

In the mornings, ravenous after an hour swiping at tennis balls, we'd seek out the island town's banh canh purveyors. Like pho vendors in the capital, they were not hard to find. This noodle dish is exactly what one would expect of an island largely reliant on the fishing industry and it is flung in bowls up and down the streets of Dong Duong.

Fish cake slices, prawns, squid rings and tentacles not long off the boats are swimming again in a green bowl of pork broth with fresh banh canh noodles, herbs and spring onions.

And in the morning light, it's such a picture that one bowl is just not going to do!