Stickyrice

Reboot the Blog, Recalibrate the Palate

A period of neglect. Dormancy. Slackness. Call it what you will. This miniscule corner of the web still has some life. I'd like to make it sputter again from time to time. There are still stories to tell, observations to make and, clearly, plenty of street food to devour in Hanoi. And, it's not that I haven't been eating all these months I haven't been writing. I have. Too much. In the company of many fine gluttons from all over the world. I just haven't had the chance to eat alone with my thoughts for a while. Eating with others will not write a food blog.

So I'm committing to going solo and anti-social to the pavements, gutters and carts of the city from time to time in order to get this space kick started again. Today, after returning from a five week holiday in the States and Japan, I went about recalibrating my palate in my realm. After some excess - all detailed in short form on Instagram and Twitter, and evidenced in an expanded gut that cuts off my vision to my toes - it was nice to be sitting down again to the small portions that, by and large, exemplify street food in Vietnam. And none of that fear of making the wrong choice presented by the menus of the places we were eating at on our trip.

Today, a street food dish that's created quite a stir in my absence from Hanoi (and one that I've written about a few too many times) reared up in the streetscape as I sought out my first meal upon returning. A photograph of Barack Obama and Anthony Bourdain sitting at a bun cha table got relayed all around the world a few weeks ago. I believe there has been quite a lot of discourse about it, none of which I've read in detail. Former Hanoi, now Saigon expat Connla Stokes told me that the bun cha eatery in question is doing a roaring trade, many customers wanting to sit at the same table, set their dishes in the presidential way and take photos of course. Presumably, they then eat. We may have to wait until Mr. Bourdain's television program is aired to find out if the President did.

I didn't eat today where he supposedly did. Strangely I went back to a vendor that I boycotted many years ago when, after many fine experiences, she started to blatantly overcharge me. I'm talking 13 or 14 years ago when such practices were all too common. I pulled up with slightly better street smarts all this time later and she knows now that she can't pull such stunts. So many foreigners know so much about street food. And, to be fair, that level of desperation to forge extra profits through dishonesty - a reputation that afflicted Hanoi for a long time - is pretty much gone.

Fortunately, and completely aside from the dubious aforementioned tricks, this bun cha vendor and many of her ilk, are still here. Doing their one specialty, for a few hours a day. Here,the husband squats fanning the coals, turning the meat, smoking a cigarette. No doubt he could do it with one eye closed. Or both. The wife is boss of portioning the food, the money and the husband. That's how it works at street food level, day in and day out.

I eat well. I am satisfied but not full. My palate is again married to its environment.

 

Dark Alley Noodles

Dark alleys at night are supposed to be avoided. There are bogeymen lurking up them. Our western culture has prejudiced us against walking these passageways. All those books we read, all those films we watched, the stories we were told, the warnings of our elders have conspired to create a fear of long narrow stretches of space that have no light. Characters get murdered there. Monsters suddenly emerge from them. Shady dealings occur.

In Hanoi, fear not. Such corridors are rife, both as interconnecting short cuts through to wider thoroughfares and as dead-ends to private spaces and homes. The Old Quarter, in particular, is a labyrinth of these mostly covered alleyways, black by night and black by day. I suspect that "don't go down dark alleys at night" is not a caution issued here. A great percentage of the population lives in them!

I amble along them to feed my face. There is sometimes light at the end of these tunnels. Bright culinary light.

Down beyond the southern end of Hoan Kiem Lake, one such alleyway widens at the end to a cramped community of households, one house being a noodle house. Outside, a little courtyard of grimy chipped walls contains a medieval 'infrastructure' for cooking and washing; solid permanent charcoal cooking hubs, a collection of coal braziers, infant-sized earthenware jars, utensils for slicing and scooping hanging from mangled old coat-hanger wire. The modern world of primary colour plastic is in evidence, too. Torn towels stiff with cooking stains drape the walls along with motorbike helmets, conical hats and flimsy plastic raincoats. Pots and woks abound. This jumbled collection of stuff is emblematic of the Vietnamese woman's lot in life: daily or twice daily visits to market (rain, hail or shine), cooking and washing up, cooking and washing up, cooking and washing up...

Thousands of women across Hanoi attempt to generate extra household income from their cooking, welcoming patrons into their homes to eat. Our noodle vendor directs us up an awkward flight of steps to her second floor sitting room, telling me to mind my big foreign noggin on the way. We pass by her glass service cabinet where orders are placed, ingredients are prepped and ready for assembly. The space in which we eat is in direct contrast to that we walked along to find the vendor. My eyes are bleared momentarily by fluorescent light so bright I could be at the gates of heaven.

When this vendor's array of noodle dishes get set down on the table, there is a risk I will be going to that other place - for committing a gross act of gluttony. Four bowls await consumption: bánh đa trộn is a dry noodle dish comprised of Hải Phòng's brown rice noodles smeared with crab paste and other ingredients which can include fried tofu, sausage meat (giờ), beef, perhaps a bit of crispy deep fried perch and then bean sprouts and morning glory or Chinese celery (rau cần); miến trộn is essentially the same dish with a glass noodle made from tapioca or mung beans offering a slightly different mouthfeel - both are garnished with coriander and crunchy deep fried shallots here; bún ốc is a noodle soup (mentioned here in just the last post) with snails, a stew of turmeric-stained plantain and tofu in a sour tomato broth; and, bánh đúc, an unusual soup containing a gloopy mass of cooked rice starch (bột gạo) which cuts through with a spoon, minced pork, wood ear fungus, fried tofu pillows and coriander. Kalamansi, garlic-infused rice vinegar and chilli paste or flakes can be added to all at the table. This last dish in particular will be subject to further investigation.

This dark alley will be trodden again.

Bánh Đúc
Ngõ 8 Lê Ngọc Hân
Hai Bà Trưng

Hot Snail Quest

Hanoi is baking in hot summer sun and there hasn't been much rain about this year to take the edge off the heat. A savage storm or two but long periods with not a drop. The city population seeks respite in the breeze coming off a lake or the down draught from wind hitting the taller buildings. The public swimming pools are seething aquariums in the late afternoons; all neon swimsuits, pitchy kid-noise and chlorine vapour. There was deafening cicada clicking earlier in the summer. And coughing frogs now. Dry coughing frogs.

So as we all wait for rain, I might as well eat a hot bowl of noodle soup. It's not possible to feel any hotter. And then there's this theory that hot bowls of soup have cooling properties. For me, the jury's still out on that one. Let me take my hot noodle soup in the morning before my shirt is at one with my skin.

In one of the Old Quarter's narrower passageways, where a preposterous array of fake flowers is being sold at one end, there is a noodle vendor crouching in a grimy room about the size of a shipping container. Its lime green walls are blighted up high by Hanoi's damp climate and lined down low with a huddle of patient customers. This vendor is old-school, dealing her bowls of noodles from ingredients arranged in baskets, transported here by shoulder yoke. She no longer needs to ply her trade by arduous walking around the streets as she has permanent traction in this alley. In fact, a whole 'infrastructure' seems to have arisen around her, enabling her to serve more customers. The whole community in this alley seems to be profiting from her fame, in one way or another.

In many a previous attempt at getting this vendor's noodles to my mouth, I've been intimidated both by her crankiness and by what I interpreted as the other customers closing ranks on me, the foreigner, in that uncomfortable cupboard where she served. There never seemed to be a parking spot for my motorbike, either. I just wasn't able to time it right or crack the code on the situation. My usual bravado and attempts to ingratiate myself had fallen flat. I'd ride off muttering "fuck it" time and time again.

Today the situation is changed. When I pull up this time, as always, the first priority is to solve the parking puzzle. As convenient as eating street food in Vietnam may be, it has not reached a point where one can just dwell in the vicinity of the stall - on one's motorbike seat - and call for a bowl of soup. Parking protocol must be observed. An old lady from the cupboard opposite says with a smile, "park here". Very shortly after, in a random set of manoeuvres performed by more people covertly in this vendor's service, I am seated in a line of blue and yellow communal tables that have materialised next to a sugarcane juice crank. I am suddenly drinking its outflow.

During a wait that would only be tolerated for Hanoi's best street food vendors, I don't even catch full sight of her. She is obscured by a throng of yet more customers, all subtly and not-so-subtly placing orders and reminding her of orders already placed. There is Hanoi vibe all around; girl children in hello kitty night dresses, perspiration on their brows and not fully recovered from an uncomfortable night's sleep, are staring at me from across the table. A roving vendor selling limes and sour plums is transacting with my new best friend, the elderly parking matron. A bloke with a knife and scissor cart trundles by. He makes a sale, too. Wailing CD music emanates from the cupboard directly behind me, which before long is accompanied by the discordant pipes of the elderly father of the sugar cane juice vendor. Yep, karaoke at 8am.

Money can't buy better entertainment when one is waiting for a bowl of snail noodle soup.

 

Two kinds of snails feature in this bowl, one small, one large, both chewy. A salty-sour tomato broth is given depth of flavour with a heavy daubing of Hanoi's most contentious condiment, mắm tôm, a pungent fermented shrimp sauce mentioned often in these pages. It needs to be swirled in to distribute it evenly, as does any chilli sauce added at the table. Large bowls of herbs, lettuce, banana stem and curly morning glory stem accompany each bowl. The herbs I pluck out especially for this dish are perilla (tía tô), Vietnamese mint (rau răm) and lemon balm (kinh giới).

At this moment in this summer, getting these noodles down is hot work. Just as many napkins are being used to dab at beads of sweat as those being used for missing one's mouth. Once done, quickly getting wind on one's person is paramount. Cracking the code for payment prolongs matters, however. The karaoke singer breaks off mid-crescendo when he somehow hears me call for the bill. Money gets diverted to all who've had a hand in proceedings, including my kindly parking attendant. Before I mount my bike for getaway, I attempt to get a decent photograph of the vendor's cramped work space. Predictably, she roars at me and waves me away.

Hot and bothered, still waiting the relief of rain, another muttered "fuck it" escapes from my lips.

Bún Ốc Cô Thêm
Hàng Chai

Seoul Dining 3: Kalguksu Noodles

On our travels, we can meekly sit down at an uncrowded table and eat mediocre food. In fact, to us it might register as good food. How would we know? One principle that we espouse on our street food tours of Hanoi - when navigating unfamiliar food terrain on one's own, seek out places where the locals are shoulder to shoulder - served us well during our week in Seoul earlier this year. We've become quite adept at observing the prevailing culture around a busy eatery, mimicking local behaviour and confidently smiling our way into a queue or onto a bench.

The "I'll have what she's having" modus operandi works particularly well when it's multitudes of folk all eating the same dish. At Seoul's Kwang Jang Market on our last day in the city, one such experience was followed by a meander through the food corridors to chastise ourselves about what we might have missed. It's a form of torture we often practise, as in many cases we're not sure when or if we'll be in a neighbourhood or city again. To indulge on top of an already sated appetite would be judged frivolous, even gluttonous by some.

So what. We know we're gluttons. And drunks. Sometimes. But we're not stupid.

When an insanely busy market stall vendor sees our effort to 'fit in', to understand what it is she's doing and then insists that we sit at her table with her regulars, we obey. We feel the privilege and automatically our stomachs acquiesce. The little dumpling nuggets on exhibit have persuasive pull, too. But the fact that the vendor, in between customer transactions, is rolling and cutting her own noodles as well as keeping a control-freakish eye on her two assistants and her husband...well, we're attracted to the whole scenario, her fastidiousness included. That's a good quality in a street food vendor.

Kalguksu is a knife-cut wheat flour noodle eaten in a broth typically prepared over a long period from dried anchovies and shrimp heads. Rich in the process, at serving straws of zucchini, carrot and bits of potato are added, the finishing touch being a scattered handful of dried seaweed (gim) strands. So excited by this time, and with the encouragement of our host, we include the added dimension of the above-mentioned dumplings, called mandu. They are like ravioli, filled with mashed-up tofu and kimchi, and can be eaten separately after momentary blanching.

We go the 'whole hog', noodles and dumplings together in a marriage known at this vendor's as kal-mandukuk. The table is made more colourful with the addition of further Korean staples on the side, two styles of kimchi and chili paste. And without wanting to start any kind of spicy one-up-man-ship, I must say that I was not challenged at all by the amount of chili used here or at any other table in Seoul. On my tongue, the fieriness of the chili in Korea and Vietnam are not comparable because of the different overall flavour profiles each cuisine is trying to achieve.

Here, at stall number 13 at the Kwang Jang Market, our vendor is concerned more about the flavour and consistency of what we eat before it's customised at the table. The freshness of the noodles, the form of the dumpling, the richness of the broth.

Not that she needs to prove it to us.

Seoul Dining 2: Mung Bean Cake

At one convergence of halls at Seoul's Kwang Jang Market, there is jostling over mung beans. Not the raw ingredient but an enormous crisp pancake made of them. Called 'bindaetteok' or 'nokdujeon', it is reminiscent of Japan's 'okonomiyaki' in terms of size and capacity to satisfy, though is less rich and heavy. This market, on a busy intersection in Seoul's Jongno district, houses a dozen or so stalls specialising in this snack and that's what all the jostling is about - deciding on one's vendor, identifying seated customers about to take their last bite and hovering strategically behind them. And because this is a crunchy golden brown thing, there is an added sense of urgency, even desperation about getting into position at the counter.

From that counter, as the anticipation reaches climax, I occupy myself with the mechanics of the tiny work space these pancakes are being cranked out of. Split mung beans exactly like those found in dry goods stalls all around Hanoi are soaked and then ground through a motorised stone mill, out the bottom of which an ooze of pale batter is caught in plastic basins. Bean sprouts, spring onions and thinly sliced kimchi is added to the batter. Large discs almost the size of dinner plates, half an inch thick, are formed on a necessarily oily grill and not quite deep fried.

By the time they reach my section of the counter, cut into quarters on aluminium foil covered trays, they look as good as deep fried, however. A vinegary soy sauce with white onion wedges makes up the liquid component of the dish.

I dip. I bite. It crunches. It gratifies.

Hue Dazzler

I would be concerned if travellers to Vietnam omitted Huế from their itinerary. While much of the historical architecture is listed under UNESCO's World Heritage Convention and is described as "an exceptional specimen of late feudal urban planning", the frail decline of Vietnam's old capital is also very 'walk-on-able', so tangible that I can run my fingers along its cracks. There is an obvious majesty to the four citadels and the tombs of the Nguyen Emperors that deserves a place on postcards and package tours. But the aesthetic of universal dilapidation - of mould and atrophy, of weeds emerging from broken tiles, of warped tin awnings and rusted iron trellis - is the second best attraction of this city.

The first, of course, is food, for which Huế also provides a monumental itinerary.

And for one stop on that itinerary, a taxi ride slightly out of town is required. Much of everything else on Huế's streetfood tables can be acquired on foot. Regardless of your mode of transport, vestiges of the city's history punctuate the journey to any next food stop. Out along the Perfume River, on route to noodles, oriental archways and temple structures in various states of disrepair go by in a blur.

Out of the taxi and up a neighbourhood alleyway, one of Huế's most renowned noodle houses - a blue and green space that extends into an airy courtyard out back - puts food on immovable concrete tables that dazzles in appearance and taste. The dish that the establishment gets most of its kudos for is a southern and central Vietnamese standard, bún thịt nướng.

In a vague way, this dish is a central and southern iteration of Hanoi's lunch favourite, bún chả, albeit fully constructed and the pork substituted for beef. The compelling feature of both dishes is smoky-flavoured charred protein. Lemongrass figures prominently in the marination of the beef here, and is a characteristic aromatic of central Vietnamese food in general. In Hanoi's bún chả, grilled pork is served submerged with thin wedges of young papaya and carrot in heated nước chấm, vermicelli (bún) noodles, lettuce and herbs on the side. It's a dish that the eater reconstructs. With bún thịt nướng the dish comes ready to eat with all components in the bowl, though some vendors will serve the nước chấm on the side.

In this bowl here in Huế, the vendor's 36 year mastery of the dish means it is set down in front of the customer confidently perfect, sauce already in. I take the first bite with my eyes. The aesthetic of the dish promises much; I see leaves of mint and lettuce, crunchy pickled strings of radish, papaya, carrot and banana flower, bean sprouts white and sweet, rounds of cucumber, noodles glossy and loosened with sauce and the juice of the beef. And that beef has a fatty sheen and a dusting of pulverised peanuts. After tossing, the first bite with the mouth more than matches that taken with the eyes.

It would have been a two bowl sitting if it weren't for the plate load of bánh ướt thịt nướng already gone south. Similar to another Hanoi dish, phở cuốn, sheets of soft rice noodle are loosely rolled around the same grilled beef, lettuce and herbs to form a Huế version of a fresh spring roll. As with all spring rolls, sauce is essential to the experience. A standard nước chấm is given Central Vietnam treatment with lemongrass and searing green chili. I add garlic, too. And I dip and double-dip my rolls, dousing each mouthful liberally. This is allowed in Vietnam.

Missing these dishes, this eatery, missing Huế in a trip to Vietnam is most definitely not allowed.

Bún Thịt Nướng Huyền Anh
52/1 Kim Long St
Huế

The Year of the Horse, Hanoi and Me

It's the Year of the Horse, my second in Vietnam, marking a full Chinese/Vietnamese zodiac cycle spent in Hanoi. Twelve years! Twelve transformative years, in many ways. My toil in these pages here has enabled me to reinvent myself in ways I never planned when I first penned a post back in 2005. That post was about a dish and vendor I'm still patronising regularly today, a pauper's lunch of fried tofu with noodles and herbs in an alley in the Old Quarter that now has traces of my shoe leather.

This blog, which started out as a creative outlet combining my interests in food and writing, now enables me to pursue those passions as a career. I now experience great pleasure at the delight expressed by the many people I introduce to Hanoi's rich street food culture. Easing travellers down onto the city's plastic stools, de-mystifying and de-constructing the dishes and the eating environment and pointing out the diverse layers of texture to life in this city, in addition to feeding my rice-hole, is now what I do for a living. I feel privileged. And sometimes, I feel fat.

But I never feel bored. Because I, too, continue to discover miniscule pinpricks of Hanoi tapestry; a thread of a food tradition, a deep tunnel with a coal brazier firing up a home-cooked speciality, a second floor balcony with a dozen shiny aluminium pots gleaming in the sun. In a familiar street, if I turn my head in a new direction, at perhaps a different time of the day, I see the lady funnelling blood and gristle into intestines. Or the mobile tea vendor shoving a fresh pot of tea into her putrid styrofoam tea-cosy, ready for another lap of the Đồng Xuân market. In an alcove that I blinked while passing yesterday, today there will be a tap pouring a stream of water into a contraption which grinds glutinous rice into a paint-like liquid for making steamed rice pancakes.

Almost every day, there is (my kind of) magic. And even though I'm far from new in this town, I do like it when I'm treated like so. This week I entered an eatery I'd been in once three years ago. While I'm notorious in certain alleyways in Hanoi, these people had their 'shit-it's-a-foreigner-what-do-we-do' faces on. Even the handful of other customers, in this situation, are somewhat ill-at-ease, perhaps thinking that they will have to participate in the puzzle of finding out if I know what I want. Each of them is looking into their soup. I order, in Vietnamese, and the atmosphere is lighter immediately. Always, one person will remark that I can speak Vietnamese (I can't really!) and a bit of conversation occurs, about me.

"He speaks Vietnamese"
"He's eating crab noodle soup with tofu."
"Now, he's putting chilli into his soup"

I ask the boy next to me for the vinegar. Mirth is now in the air. Vietnamese, again from a white face. How about that? We eat. They stop talking about me. They are now not sure how much I understand. On the way out, I request a toothpick. Someone says, "He must be fluent."

God, I love Hanoi.

Bún Riêu Cua Đậu
43 Bát Đàn

Hanoi Bún Chả: A Revelation

It's time I got back to Hanoi in these pages.

To a dish that is literally in the air in this city. When I breathe in its blue meaty smoke, I start to salivate. Bún chả is a barbeque dish unsurpassed on the street food terroir of Hanoi, available up and down its wide boulevards and in its maze of alleys. Orange hot coals spitting with pork fat, griller ladies covered for battle in heavy duty blue-collar wear and face masks, and that wafting drift cloud of protein. These are the signs to seek out from late morning till about one o'clock.

Lunch time in Hanoi is bún chả o'clock, as it cannot be had for dinner. Two pre-requisites for eating this dish are come early and come hungry. Adjust the body clock, eat a paltry breakfast and walk briskly to avoid disappointment. I like to be amongst the first customers. In fact, I have a small confession to make. I sometimes have bún chả for breakfast.

Yesterday at 10.15, I was 'testing' a new vendor for the second time. I'm not yet prepared to forsake my default bún chả vendor but I am of the theory that one cannot have too many good quality bún chả purveyors. I have my go-to phở houses around town and it defies logic that I wouldn't do the same for bún chả. Let me state surreptitiously that, while many are enamoured of phở and the bánh mì as Vietnam's major culinary contributions to world cuisine, I vote for bún chả.

And it is largely because I am in a deep love affair with pork belly. My hungry arrival at this vendor's plot of footpath was like re-consummating our relationship. Naked and greasy, glistening in raw splendour, little strips of my love are arranged into wire grillers after an hour or so of marination. "Do you think I'm going to give my secret away?", huffed the vendor when I asked her about the ingredients in her marinade. "Many more than that", when I suggested the typical mix of fish sauce, sugar and shallots. She was equally evasive when I showed interest in the rice paper she was using to wrap her spring rolls (nem rán, a traditional accompaniment to bún chả in Hanoi ), which has a coarser, crispier mouthfeel that is distinctive. "Thửa" (meaning that is something special I found myself) was her retort. Short of assuring her that I (tall whitie foreigner) will not be setting up a rival stall in the gutter beside hers, winning this woman's favour will require a few return visits.

When all is said and done, though, the answer is ultimately in the eating. My blue plastic table is cluttered with bún chả's components; an over-abundance of Vietnam's herbal green, including lettuce, sawtooth coriander, coriander, Asian basil, lemon balm and perilla leaf, a fluoro-white mound of fresh vermicelli rice noodles (the bún in bún chả), a plate of smacked up garlic and sliced chili, crisp spring rolls scissored into bite size chunks and the bowl of salty, sweet, sour, spicy nước chấm containing the crispy black-edged pork belly and minced pork patties. 

I'm going to lay my culinary soul bare for a moment. I've been considering coming out with it for a while. Bún chả done well, as it is here, is near (if not at) the very top of my list of eating experiences.

Here, in Vietnam. And elsewhere.

Nem - Bún Chả
13 Hàng Bún St (cnr. of Phạm Hồng Thái St)
Ba Đình District
Hanoi

The Odd Incidence of the Man Vendor

I could count the number of male street food vendors who have served me in Vietnam on one hand. They are a small club, perhaps in need of a self-help group. Based on my statistic alone, I think it can be clearly stated that this kind of work in Vietnam is women's work, assigned to them from birth. In home kitchens and at street stalls in this country, it is women cooking to feed the masses. However, in professional kitchens in Vietnam - as with other parts of the world - the work is accorded more legitimacy and therefore men are better represented in these environs.

In Hanoi, in my observations, cleaning and childcare is also women's work. The garbage collection is largely done by women. They make up the vast majority of mobile street vendors, be they selling produce or other goods or scraping a meagre living from the scavenging of plastic or cardboard or scrap metal. Women are not averse to work requiring intense physical strength, like carting bricks or shovelling sand or digging ditches. They are very well represented on thousands of construction sites throughout the city. On these construction sites, women will be cooking for the men and washing their clothes.

In the country's National Assembly, women are quite well represented but between 2007 and 2011 Vietnam's position on the gender gap index fell from 42nd to 79th in the world. In other male dominated domains, such as coffee houses, tea stands and bia hoi restaurants in the capital, women will be seen but in much fewer numbers then men. They do not linger at such places, either. For they have work to do fulfilling their traditional roles in the home, on the street...even on the building site.

In Vietnam, it's clearly a man's world. But what of this rare breed of male street food vendor? Was it his idea to throw a pot in a Hội An alleyway and start serving cao lầu? Is it a tradition whereby his father handed the family recipe down to him and he, in future, will pass it on to his son? The answer to both questions undoubtedly is a resounding no.

Much more likely is that his wife is actually reponsible for the whole operation. Even in a town famous for this one noodle dish, she eked out a niche for her version of the dish, just far enough away from her competitors. By day, she is purchasing her ingredients, prepping and portioning them ready for the evening's trade. In the late afternoon, she oversees the haul and set up of the servery, each vessel methodically placed in the right position to expedite rapid assembly of the dish. The patron's tables are laid with sticks, spoons and condiments. The husband may be allowed to assist in these steps but by god he better get it right.

So where is the woman this night? Could she be forsaking her reputation by allowing her husband to run the show? Maybe she is running low on a particular ingredient and has gone rushing madly to replenish it. Perhaps she is visiting her relatives or caring for a sick grandchild. Perhaps she is attending to ceremonial or ancestral matters at the pagoda or the family burial plot. Could it be that she herself is sick, in hospital having a procedure done. Maybe she died. 

Any number of scenarios could have led to the man of the house being temporarily or permanently in charge. He has been trained well in the assembly of the dish; blanching of the 'only-in-Hội An' noodles (the defining ingredient with a back story), portioning of thin slices of pork, herbs and sprouts, ladling of five-spice infused broth and the texture masterstroke of flat oily crunchy croutons on top.

It seems that a man - in the odd incidence in Vietnam - can do women's work, too.

Aunty Lan's Bun Oc

Thirty-four years is a long time in the snail noodle soup business. And given the obscure location of Aunty Lan's bún ốc, it's no wonder it's taken me 11 years to find it; nestled away in Hanoi's labyrinthine alleys in the southern suburbs and just out of the shadow of the high rise developments of the main arterial roads there. The route - a puzzling series of right-angled turns and straights, all of which have to be remembered in reverse if one is to ever see the light of day again - takes me past that generic Hanoi mixed business lane-scape of one-chair hairdressers, tea stands, tailors stretching leopard-skin polyester over sewing machines, and grease sheened boys tinkering in repair shops. Retired men in pyjamas promenade up and down. At one point I look up to a roof top 'installation' of dozens of metal washing machine cabinets, all obviously thrown up there. I take a mental note of the odd stuff to plan a passage out.

Known to the local neighbourhood and the student population of the nearby university precinct, this shaded courtyard beside a chemical blue-milk canal is an old-world oasis of Hanoi food gold. And I'm kind of loath to give the secret away. But I will do so because we are talking snails; clearly not an imperative on most people's 'must-eat-food' list. These are very large snails pried out of cavernous shells, snails with a full scope of textures in the mouth - provided by bits called mantel flap, opercular lobe, inhalent siphon, penis and eye. Chewy and slimy are two obvious words that come to mind though I suspect that English lacks the range of lexis required to give meaning to all of the actions and sensations induced by eating snails.

I may not have the language but I have acquired the skill set; not necessarily to enjoy them but to get them down efficiently.

These snails come as only one ingredient in a striking bowl of colour and flavour. Red is imparted by tomato wedges continuously added to the simmering stock, one or two ladled into each serve. The rich scarlet dollop of rice on the surface of the soup is achieved by reducing tomatoes with rice in a process not much different to making risotto. A saucepan of it is part of Aunty Lan's mise en place. Yellow is there too in the form of turmeric stained tofu. A purple spot of mắm tôm (fermented shrimp paste) floats for a moment before being swirled through the soup with chopsticks, adding an indefinable depth of flavour. Green is always present in Vietnam's noodle soups with scatterings of herbs added by the vendor and the customer at table. Here, Aunty Lan is generous with dill and spring onions and I pick Vietnamese mint, lemon balm and lettuce from the communal salad plate. And all this colour in pink crockery!

Fresh vermicelli noodles, green bananas (chuối xanh) and crab paste (gạch cua) bulk up the dish. The snails are prominent without being dominant, augmented by the confluence of the many other ingredients. I eat them with respect. I eat them complemented in my mouth by the those other ingredients.

I eat them in an unsophisticated ambience amongst drying clothes, bicycles with flat tyres, pot plants where weeds are more prolific than the original plant - in family territory, where the student patrons treat Aunty Lan like...well...an aunt. An old gentleman customer tells his grandaughter that he has been eating bún ốc in these surroundings for 30 years.

Aunty Lan is a proud and gracious hostess, very interested that I'm interested in her bowl of noodles. She says she's been on the TV before and sets about telling me of one of the other dishes she serves up; a stew of snails, green bananas and turmeric stained tofu (ốc nấu chuối đậu), it can be eaten with vermicelli noodles, rice or simply as drinking food, picked at with chopsticks between slugs of Vietnam's rice wine, rượu.

Politely, I decline. Negotiating my way out from this clandestine snail house is going to be trouble enough without the potent influence of rượu. This is on reserve for a return visit.

Bún Ốc Cô Lan
Ngõ 139 Khương Thượng
Đống Đa District
Hanoi