Stickyrice

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.

Religious Pho

The Spot: A Catholic spot, the towering grey spire of St. Joseph's cathedral casts a solemn shadow across the threshold of this pho house in Au Trieu St, just up from an expat fave, La Place.

Space and Atmosphere: Room enough for about 40 slurpers inside with the footpath accommodating a few more on the kiddie furniture. The pho crew is busily led by pho ma, all gussied up in her black evening wear, jewels, make-up caked on and a new 'do'. Similarly, the walls are spruced up with a range of brand new lunar calendars from this pho family's many associates.

Shopfront Style: It's an open house with garage door frontage, a makeshift rangehood hanging from the ceiling, sucking up the noxious emissions of the coal brazier upon which a range of stock pots are simmering away. Surprisingly, there is no signage, unusual in this  town, where even the vendors who operate under trees or against walls have some kind of crude banner.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: Whoever whittled these chopsticks wasn't observing the industry standards - the fattest bamboo sticks in the capital, they could double as a good cane on the back of recalcitrant primary school student legs, if corporal punishment were still the norm!

Serving Station: A stainless steel bench near the front of the joint is loaded up with prepped pho ingredients, to which pho ma catwalks from the shop's rear when required to slap a bowl together. Lean corn beef (chin) is being cleavered finely under the staircase to the rear.

Meat Generosity: The above-mentioned chin is supplied in more than ample proportion and, like my pre-Tet pho stop, the quality of all meat at this establishment seems to be a priority.

Service to Delivery Gap: I ferreted about parking the bike next to the dishwashing girl for a few minutes and upon entry my mate was tucking into his and my was going cold on the table. Quick!

Stock Factor: Rich and verging on thick, as if a drop of it might have descended from the original Hanoi pho pot of a century or so ago, lovingly preserved in this nameless pho crypt by the cathedral.

Cost: 12,000VND (USD75c, AUD95c) per bowl, right on the standard.

Rank: Five of fourteen

Major Pho Stop

The Spot: Not far from the bottom end of Hanoi's heart, Hoan Kiem Lake, this slurp station is in Nha Chung Street, wedged between another branch of winter favourite, Nhat Ly Goat Restaurant and a street-side tea shop. Across the road, multi-lingualism is on sale at a private language centre.

Space and Atmosphere: The dining space is three dimensional. Directly behind the serving station is the main eating room, with seating for about thirty, packed around five or six tables. I was elbowed out of a berth here by someone obviously more ravenous. A small odd-shaped annex next door holds a single table of six. It's full. Third option is a bench running along the wall in the alley up which motos are parked. Peeling walls are printed with the telephone numbers of the local concrete cutters. In London or Melbourne, this decor would be chic. In Hanoi, it's normal.

Shopfront Style: Red coca-cola-subsidised signage and awning shelter a queue of local slurpers, in line to pay before one thread of noodle gets sucked between their lips. This practise is not common in Hanoi and, even though I don't like it, it usually indicates the pho is more than decent.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: Nothing out of the ordinary in this respect, though it was somewhat of a struggle to procure some fresh chili, which I prefer to the standard red sauce.

Serving Station: This one is labour-intensive as the assembly line has the added complications of ordering and paying. Three white-coated pho maids head up this operation, a short one stood up on a footstool in front scattering herbs and onions from a huge pile prepped earlier. This is a major pho stop, evidenced not only by the queue (and it's very orderly for Hanoi, I must say), but also a kitchen of sorts at the rear where large parts of cow are being taken to with knives and pots of stock taller than me are simmering away for slurping on the morrow.

Meat Generosity: Not much chewing required here. The quality of the beef, in both its forms, is A1, the pride of the butcher, melt in the mouth tenderness. It ranks up with Hanoi's best.

Service to Delivery Gap: Once through the lining up, ordering and paying palaver, and the jostling for a seat, the noodles are set down not long after.

Stock Factor: Dark, clear and beefy. Slight assistance from Ajinomoto but, remember, the addition of this enhancement can be subverted at order with a curt "khong mi chinh" (No MSG).

Cost: 12,000VND (USD75c, AUD95c) per bowl. This is the median price in town these days.

Rank: Four of thirteen

I'm off to the south of Vietnam tomorrow for Tet holiday. Chuc Mung Nam Moi - Happy New Year!

Market Street Pho Ga

The Spot: Almost directly backing onto another pre-Hanoi pho swoop soup fave, this market street (25 Hoe Nhai) crack in the wall is opposite a large eastern medicine clinic, next to another noodle vendor selling hu tieu on one side and a sleazy looking karaoke bar on t'other. Veg, pork and tofu stalls abound all around.

Space and Atmosphere: Not much space to speak of here. The harsh-faced noodle ma is jammed into a nook with a doorway leading through to the adjacent dining area, a space no bigger than a prison cell, lit similarly with bright fluorescent light. The family altar is wedged into the corner, in front of which is a gold-plated plastic electric frog with flashing green eyes. This is a lucky charm for good fortune in business. The joint is empty.

Shopfront Style: It's all pots on pavement and bare light bulbs swinging in the cold wind.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: A 'knock your socks off' garlic vinegar, glossy blood-red chilli sauce and lime segments cut three hours ago constitute the trio of condiments. The chopsticks are finished timber rather than the standard bamboo...vail the forests of South-East Asia!

Serving Station: Noodle ma swivels on her plastic stool, between a little glass cabinet loaded up with all parts chicken and a blue plastic table atop of which are the prepared herbs, chopping block and cleaver and the essential noodles.

Meat Generosity: Generous shreds of white chicken flesh are sat on my mound of noodles. I'm now used to this 'special treatment' where I'm spared the skin and chewy bits simply because I'm a foreigner.

Order to Delivery Gap: As it's well past rush hour, the wait is only momentary.

Stock Factor: This woman is keeping Ajinomoto in business so the flavour of her stock is hard to judge. Note the big square tub of it in the above photograph.

Cost: 12,000VND (USD75c, AUD95c)

Rank: Seven of twelve

Thick Pho

The Spot: In Thuy Khue, which runs parallel along the southern bank of West Lake, this pho shopfront backs onto the Hanoi Film Studios and is just up from the Quan Thanh Temple. Next door to a cavernous pool hall where motorbike parking is provided for pho slurpers and pool sharks.

Space and Atmosphere: An awkward long space with pillars and punters to step around and over. In the morning rush hour, the pavement outside is scattered with kindergarten furniture to cater for the crowds, under whose feet is an ankle-deep build-up of discarded lime wedges and paper serviettes. The staff are frantic, taking orders, portioning, ladling, clearing and fielding odd requests from a crew of road-workers who have got the lid off a gully-trap full of black sludge out front. An appeal for a knife is met bluntly with "Our knives are for meat, not for scaping muck out of your dirty gully-trap." I'm thankful for that!

Shopfront Style: One in a long line of simple shop spaces with rusted heavy sliding gates, light sea green shutting between fading pink walls. Signage is sponsored by Pepsi.

Sticks, Condiments and Crockery: I choose two sticks from the three warped and unwanted ones on offer. It has been a busy morning. Condiments are all over the show, the system has broken down and I traipse through the mess underfoot to fetch my desired fixings of lime, fresh chili and pepper.

Serving Station: Pho Pa surveys the landscape from behind his post in the brief moments when he hasn't got knife to chopping block. He's the meat man. His right-hand woman portions and flash dunks the noodles. A third link in the chain scoops the soup into the bowls. An enormous vat of bones is on the flame too, no doubt in preparation for the next day's service.

Meat Generosity: In need of a protein hit this particular morning, I order an egg into the fray. The beef is some of the best I've eaten in the series. The chin (corned beef) melts in my mouth, the tai (rare beef) is fresh and tender. The egg is peppered and swallowed whole.

Order to Delivery Gap: An extra minute or two of egg poaching means I'm ravenous by the time it arrives.

Stock Factor: This is full-bodied beef stock. The extra thick noodle straps are unique and add an indefinable dimension to pho here. I like it a lot.

Cost: 14,000VND (USD87c, AUD$1.10), bumnut included.

Rank: Four of eleven.