Stickyrice

Vina Drinks List: A Revelation

Under a bang tree canopy of green on a still grey summer day, I sit thirsty, a healthy sheen on the brow.

It's imperative to keep the fluids up in Hanoi as they disappear fast via the pores. Some days, simply standing up sets the perspiration oozing. It's definitely the season for 'Vina Drinks List' research.

At my current location, I sit facing a pyramid of coconuts cut back to their husks, precariously resting against the cafe wall. One abrupt move and the coconuts become rogue bowling balls, cracking the ankle bones of passers-by, skittling the traffic into a deeper state of chaos, if that's possible.

I order one.

Now, by West Lake or beachside down south, the coconut would be delivered just as it falls from the tree, with the top hacked off and a plastic straw inserted into the hole. The juice would be tepid and not very refreshing. In such circumstances, I don't think it's crazy to push a few chunks of ice through the hole. When I do, my coconut purveyor thinks I've escaped from the funny farm.

In a metaphorical sense I have, which gives me license to behave like it when the situation calls for it.

Today there is no call. The preparation of my coconut is a far more intricate, sophisticated process at this humble kerbside cafe in the Old Quarter. A coconut carpenter is on hand, chipping the green skin of the fruit away with a heavy cleaver. Once the juice is poured off, he pulls a vegetable peeler from his toolbag, which he expertly uses to scrape the luscious white flesh from the coconut's bowl. I admire his handyman skills, for one slip would surely result in a deep cut, a fountain of red and a bloodied pile of coconut meat.

I do not want gorey medical emergencies on my morning break. I want refreshing cold coconut juice with ice. And that is precisely what I receive, albeit with a twist. The juice (nuoc dua long nhan) is served in a large handled glass containing a longan or two, some lotus seeds and a divine tangle of shiny coconut ribbon on top.

I experience a revelation.

Cafe Hieu
Cnr. Hang Thiec & Bat Dan
Old Quarter

Vina Drinks List: Bot San

A big glass of full cream milk would give me a belly-ache. In fact, I haven't downed one since I was a wee lad. It must be some kind of screwed up selective lactose intolerance 'cause I can devour whole rounds of cheese, large tubs of yoghurt, inches of whipped cream in Aunty Marge's sponge cakes. Even milk on my morning cereal was an issue, a stand-off of sorts, with me staring at my bowl, watching the milk being slowly absorbed and my breakfast morphing into sloppy ugly swill. I happily went hungry to school.

But it was nothing a cream bun at recess wouldn't rectify.

In Hanoi, when I was very green on the scene, I was slightly bemused when I noticed a number of cafe punters nursing bloody big glasses of cow juice. Adults do not order milk to drink in the cafes of my home town. Even kids drink babycinos there! What was going on in Hanoi?

Folks, looks can be deceiving.

The lime slice should have alerted me, I know. But when new in town, one has to allow for some regional variation. I was thinking if the Vietnamese want to sour up their milk with citrus, let them. As I've said before, cultural difference is a wonderful thing. Maybe, I thought, it was a weird climate thing, to fight off some dreaded lurgy brought on by humidity. Who was I to judge?

My theories were wrong and I've since been enlightened. It aint milk. It's bot san.

Whiter than milk, this drink is made by mixing water with what looks like pulverised chalk but is in fact cassava powder. A root vegetable with various other culinary uses, cassava is also being harvested to produce bio-fuel. That doesn't make me want to drink more of it, strangely. In fact, even mixed with loads of sugar, ice and the aforementioned slice of lime, I find it medicinal, sedimenty and basically yuck!

But I prefer it over milk. 

Vina-Drinks List: Chanh Muoi

It's time to diversify.

My narrow-minded automatic pilot order of a cafe den da (iced black coffee) does serve my rather selfish purpose, giving me a jolt of the tingles, setting me up for a productive couple of hours, whatever I may be doing. But there are so many more options in Hanoi's caffeine dens, not all of them containing the world's most common performance-enhancing drug.

However, I'm not going to upset my own applecart completely. There is no way I'm going to forego my black liquid medication.

That'd be nuts!

In an attempt to widen the scope of my cafe experiences in Hanoi, though, I will promise to occasionally follow my coffee with a second beverage. I will wet my whistle with other fluids, mostly unfamiliar ones. It might be fun. It could be informative. It may challenge my very existence. These drinks could indeed react with the coffee, setting off a curdling centrifuge around and around the lining of my stomach!

Nevertheless, let me start. Chanh muoi literally translates as lemon salt, though in Vietnam wherever you see lemon, read lime. On a drinks menu, it means salty lemonade.

Limes are pickled in a preserving process not dissimilar to that in Middle Eastern cuisine. Packed into jars with salt and left until a briney liquid covers them, the whole limes lose their lush green colour but gain an intensely lemony flavour. Of course this process occurs long before I place my order.

At the cafe, a lime is popped into a glass along with a slug of brine and sometimes sugar. The lemony flavour is released by stabbing at the lime with a spoon until it is suitably mangled and messy. The final step involves filling the glass with water and lots of ice.

I dig the lemon. I don't dig the salt, which makes the drink strangely syrupy, as if some chemistry experiment has occurred in the glass. Cold and salty in a drink does not float my boat, I'm afraid.