From Street Food to Fine Dining in Hanoi

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Nick: Our night train from Dong Hoi rolled into Hanoi at around five in the morning or so, and thankfully it was already getting light - it's always a little more daunting arriving in unfamiliar surroundings during the dark hours with your worldly possessions on your back and the usual Hassle Brigade of taxi drivers itching to take advantage of your weary state! They certainly did their best, as we blearily disembarked the train...the problem with sleeping so soundly on those wonderful sleeper berths is that it's harder to wake up when you finally reach your destination. Managing to bypass the keener taxi drivers, who were quoting daft sums for the short ride to our hotel, we linked up with a driver from 'Mai Linh' taxi agency, who are known to be reputable, and were soon on our way. Like Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, if you prefer), this wasn't our first visit to Hanoi, having stayed a few days in the city during our previous trip to Vietnam. We'd fallen in love with Hanoi back then, for its hugely characterful French colonial architecture, the dilapidated old buildings, the tree-lined streets and parks offering welcome respite from the heat, the hordes of locals squatting on tiny plastic stools drinking powerful black coffee and eating all manner of delicious looking street food at all hours of the day...and not least for the frenetic madness of traffic and pedestrians on the historic Old Quarter!

Indeed, as on our previous visit here we had booked our accommodation in the Old Quarter, to be near to the action. As we neared our hotel we began to recognise some of the places we'd seen before, including Hoam Kiem lake, with its distinctive red bridge leading to the 'Ngoc Son' temple on an island in the water, and we both began getting excited at the prospect of rediscovering this fantastic city. At our hotel, we were told the room was not yet available and check in was not until 13:00, so we had a fair few hours to kill. That was fine by us - it was nice and cool at that early hour and we were keen to get out and about. Leaving our bags in the reception, we wandered about the Old Quarter for a while, savouring the sights, smells, sounds (for the most part!). Hanoians, and the Vietnamese in general, are evidently early risers and despite the early hour there were already plenty of people out and about taking their early morning constitutionals. There was a river of people walking, jogging or cycling around Hoan Kiem lake, whilst others took part in the many communal aerobics classes that sprung up anywhere that there was space. We joined the throng and took a stroll around the lake.&& Having had a very early dinner the previous day, our stomachs were rumbling by now so when we passed an open cafe and were hailed inside by the owner, we didn't resist. We each had a fresh bahn mi (the ubiquitous Vietnamese baguette) with cheese - well, Laughing Cow spreadable stuff anyway, which is the closest you'll generally get over here, outside of posh restaurants. With plenty of time to kill, we hung around for a while reading our books until eventually deciding we'd better move on. After a bit more wandering we swung by our favourite bar in Hanoi, 'Bia Minh', making our way straight upstairs to our favourite spot: the balcony overlooking the street, from where you can watch the madness on the street below from a comfortable remove! We sipped our iced teas and planned out the rest of our day. Having previously been to Hanoi, we had already visited many of the usual tourist attractions, such as the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum as well as the obligatory tour out to Halong Bay - both well worth seeing, but we weren't too bothered about repeat visits. The last couple of weeks of travelling almost the length of the country, the overnight trains and buses, not to mention the snorkelling, caving and so on, we're beginning to take their toll, and our main priority in Hanoi was to rest and recuperate for a day or two before we moved on to Laos. With this in mind, we planned day of casually strolling around the city...well, as casually as you can when forced to walk in the road and motorbikes are flying at you from all angles!

Drinks finished, we paid up and hit the streets once more. Our next stop was St Joseph's cathedral, which appeared to be closed so we just admired the outside and took a few snaps before moving on. We passed by "Uncle Ho's" (as he is apparently affectionately known here) mausoleum, which already had whopping queues building up, instead going for the botanical gardens. It was mid-morning by now, and the sun was starting to make an appearance, although thankfully not in the oppressive, suffocating way it had in Hoi An. We ambled around the gardens for a bit, stopping to take a look at a slightly sorry looking peacock in a caged enclosure, and walked around the small lake in the park's confines. At the far end of the lake, the water was completely blanketed with bright green algae, and something - in fact, somethings, plural - were continually popping up all over the place, from beneath the water, to eat the beasties on the surface. At first we couldn't see quite what they were, due to all the algae, and initially thought they might be small turtles, before we spotted some big 'whiskers' and realised they were a load of catfish. It was a bit creepy, for some unknown reason, perhaps because they're not the prettiest things!

Approaching midday, and we'd walked a good number of miles; we were pretty footsore, hot and tired, so made our way back to the hotel to see if we could chance our luck and check in a little early. Our luck was in, and we were soon enjoying the air-conditioning, a cool shower and a well-earned rest. An hour or two later, and it was well past lunchtime so we made our way out to find some tucker. Hanoi is celebrated for its street food (although much of it is served in open-fronted restaurants) and we were both keen to try some of it out, having been perhaps less daring than we should have been on our last outing here. A short while later we'd found just such a place and ordered a good mix of local grub: beef in sesame seeds served on a big bed of greens that were a sort of skinny version of Morning Glory, as well as a couple of crab spring rolls, and some chunks of pork served on the ever-popular vermicelli rice noodles. Well. It must be said that after all of the amazing food we've eaten and subsequently reported in this blog, I'm struggling not to wear out the words 'delicious', 'tasty' or other such equivalents...but it must be said, the food really, well, tasted delicious!

Feeling refreshed from our recovery at the hotel and subsequent scoff, we headed back out for another stroll, this time heading south down to a big lake, the name of which eludes me. We'd been here on our previous trip, and it was funny to see the familiar sites these four years later, As before, we walked around the outside of the lake, taking our time and enjoying the chance to just walk and talk. (Later on during our stay in Hanoi, we were able to root out our old photos from the first visit to this lake and compare them to the ones we'd taken during this trip...which caused great merriment! I'll add them to this blog for your viewing pleasure and general amusement, all I'll say is: Time is master of us all!) by the time we'd completed our circumnavigation of the lake and then made our way back over to the Old Quarter, it was late enough in the day for a cold beer at our favourite spot in our favourite bar, and another good long read. We took advantage of the wifi to do a little digging and track down a restaurant we'd been too previously, and were keen to revisit. Sure enough, it was still there and open for business, so, as evening came around, we made our way to 'Highway 4' restaurant to see if it was still as good as it had been four years ago.

What we'd loved about this place was the unique menu, which offered more than the usual rice and noodle dishes that could be had everywhere else: snails, frogs legs (French colonial heritage showing through there) insects, and much more had been on offer, as well as a selection of fruity rice wines! Happily, the menu was just as interesting and varied, and the rice wine (or liqueur, as we realised it in fact was) still available! We ordered a tasting set of the fruity rice liqueurs and a mixture of dishes, some interesting, some safer bets. Shared starters included crickets with 'lemon leaves' (which I think were kaffir lime leaves), served up with crispy pork fat. Eating insects might sound unpleasant, and some of those we tried in Cambodia were pretty stomach churning, but we are both converts to the pleasures of eating tasty, crispy, spicy crickets! Our other starter, as recommended by the waitress, was catfish spring rolls...thoughts turned to the stagnant smells of the lake this morning where we'd seen all those whiskered fishy mouths champing at the surface! Wherever they were from, they were wonderfully firm, tasty white fish and not too unlike cod. Main course comprised of more spring rolls (rolled by our good selves at the table), containing beef and lettuce leaves, green banana, carrot, assorted herbs, the whole thing dipped into some sort of brown horseradish sauce that burned the nostrils a fair bit. As a side, we'd ordered plate of good ol' kim chi fried rice. All in all, it was an eclectic, unusual and delicious meal. I'm afraid we didn't opt to try the 'spicy bulls penis', however! By the time we'd worked our way through that little lot, it was quite late, so we were straight back to the hotel for some shuteye.

With a good deal of walking under the belt the previous day, we felt justified in having a really lazy, relaxing morning the next day, and so there is little to report really, other than the hotel breakfast was very good, and our morning was productively spent sorting our the logistics of our impending trip to Laos. Lunch was had in another Old Quarter restaurant and included 'ban xeo' (not even going to bother trying to sort out the various accents some letters of those words should include), which is basically a sort of larger doubled over pancake with fairly crispy batter, that is filled with bean sprouts, pork mince, tiny shrimp, and other bits and bobs - yummy. This was accompanied by a banana leaf salad (also yummy), and some grilled aubergines with a sauce on it (also yummy). Our post lunch activity involved yet more aimless ambling around the narrow streets, dodging motorbikes and getting sweaty, before we happened upon a sign for a 'skyline' bar, located high up in the 11th floor of a tall hotel building, one of the highest points in the Old Quarter. Always suckers for a good view, we made our way up and ordered a couple of fruity drinks that we dragged out for a good hour or so. The view was indeed spectacular, and before we left the waiter even let us wander up to the uppermost point, the roof terrace itself, to take some photos. The rooftop area, deserted when we went up, appeared to be undergoing some sort of renovation, and many of the glass panels that constituted the perimeter fencing had been removed. This meant that there was pretty much a straight drop with no protection at all on those sections, so we made sure to keep a good bit of distance from the edge at those bits! Good to see the 'elf 'n' safety mafia haven't arrived in Vietnam just yet! Anyway, the photos were good and no-one took the quick route down.

Later on we were back at our favourite bar once again, enjoying the people watching when Sarah, to her eternal credit, suddenly remembered that today was the day of the 'State of Origin' big decider! As has been described in previous blog entries, we'd discovered the State of Origin during our stay in Brisbane - it's basically a very fiercely contested three-game Rugby League series played annually between Queensland and New South Wales. We'd been caught up with the excitement of the first match in Brisbane (Queensland), but were unable to catch the second match due to travelling commitments. With the series tied at 1-1, we'd been waiting to watch the decider. It had, however, slipped our minds and the match had already kicked off when we remembered. We rapidly made our way to the nearest sports bar, an Irish pub not far away, and were there in time to catch most of the match. Well, all that needs to be said is that (a) the very small pub was full of NSW fans, and (b) Queensland, a.k.a. 'The Maroons', who we'd adopted in Brisbane, rode to a crushing 52-6 victory. Needless to say, the Aussie delegation in attendance were not best pleased, although took it in good humour, more so when they realised that England were floundering a bit in opening hours of the first Ashes test, and there were a couple of Pommies in the room! After the rugby finished, the Aussie lot departed, and we fell into conversation with a couple of older guys from Hull who were out here on holiday. They were really sound blokes who both worked on the rigs, really funny and easy to get along with. The conversation flow thick and fast, covering politics, football, Vietnam and all sorts, and the beer flowed too. It was a cracking evening, and by the time we said our goodbyes it was quite late at night.

Fortunately, despite their early starts to the day, the locals seem to eat late around here, or at least they certainly we doing so when we tumbled out of the bar. Carried away with the good company, time had certainly got the better of us and it was well past dinner time. We saw an open-facing restaurant almost directly opposite packed to the rafters with locals enjoying a good feed, and it looked pretty good. There wasn't a tourist in sight, and this was precisely the type of place that we'd have chickened out of on our last visit here - but now we were older, wiser, more brazen...not to mention half-cut and very hungry! We found ourselves on of the few remaining little tables and plonked ourselves down on on of the tiny stools. The waitress procured what appeared to be the only copy of a menu in the place, and we ordered some food via the well-respected medium of pointing at pictures and holding up digits to signify numbers. Very quickly, a plate of small, very crunchy and very salty crabs appeared, which we set about with gusto, dispatching the whole crab in one mouthful; think crab popcorn! It was a bit unusual, but certainly tasted good. Our other choice was good old faithful dumpling, of the pork and prawn variety. Readers of this blog will probably have gathered that we both love a good dumpling and they've made a number of appearances since we made it to Asia; these ones were definitely up there with the best of them. Served in crispy batter, they were eaten with a few mint leaves at the same time, and they were indescribably tasty! To fill in the corners, we ordered a few small stuffed squid, also very good. After our stint in the pub and the wonderful food, we were absolutely ready for bed so made our way back to our digs.

Thursday morning brought about another lazy morning and a bit of a sore head. Going down for brekkie at nine-thirty or so, the friendly girl at reception laughingly observed that we had a 'very good nights sleep', in reference to our relatively late appearance (by Vietnamese standards anyway!). After breakfast, we faffed around in the room for a bit, reading the latest news online (including the latest disappointing transfer news from Southampton), finally emerging into the sunlight a round midday. After being fairly inactive the previous day, we decided to go for another stroll and made our way to the West Lake, which is itself far too sizeable to walk around but has another adjoining lake that is a good size for an afternoon stroll. Halfway around, we stopped at a nice cafe with lakeside tables for a light lunch (a shared bowl of Bun Bo Nam Bo, a beef and noodles dish with plenty of tasty roasted peanuts) before pushing on. Our ambling occupied a good three or four hours before we were sufficiently hot and tired enough to warrant heading back for another shower. What with general pottering about, blog writing and suchlike, we didn't get back out until around 19:00. The dinner venue had already been decided; a super-fancy restaurant called 'Green Tangerine' we'd had lunch at on the last day of our previous visit, which had left a great impression at the time. On our way past the restaurant, we booked a courtyard table for 20:30, giving us enough time for a quick pre-dinner drink before heading back for the main event.

As I've already alluded above, I'm rapidly running out of appropriate adjectives to describe how great all of the wonderful food we've been enjoying during our time in Vietnam (and almost every other country)...so I will start this bit by simply saying just the once that absolutely everything we had for our meal was superb, truly incredible cooking - both in agreement that it was clearly the best meal we'd had on our travels so far, and after some of the amazing grub we'd been through already, that was saying something! Okay, you get the picture. So, we took our table in the enclosed front courtyard which was nicely removed from the street and cosily nestled between the tall, colonial buildings. To kick things off we ordered a glass each of a Sauvignon Blanc, cold and refreshing in the evening heat, generally speaking, wine is a treat here as it costs a fair bit (excluding the Da Lat local stuff, which ain't my favourite), but the wine list included some ridiculously-priced fine wines...we're talking thousands of pounds! Suffice to say we went for the rather more affordable (but still lovely) house stuff. After agonising over the menu, we placed our orders and relaxed, anticipating what was to come.

Almost immediately, our waiter presented us each with a plate of three 'amuse-bouches', each speared on a cocktail stick: gizzards with radish and lettuce (which was much nicer than it sounds!), a 'bahn onion' (which was like a puff pastry profiterole filled with rich onion gravy), and a duck and banana thing. From the weird combination of flavours - which weren't just gimmicky, they actually worked well together - and the quality of the food, we knew we were in for a treat! Up next was the starter course, and by former agreement we'd struck our usual deal between us to share a couple of different dishes. One was a 'crab mille-feuille', wonderfully tasty crab and green/red pepper served up on layers of pastry, with a tomatoey seafood bisque-type sauce, and we were given a basket of French bread to mop up the mouth-watering sauce! The other starter was a duck liver mousse served with what basically looked like an apple turnover, a puff pastry triangle filled with small chunks of stewed apple in calvados - once again, the mix of flavours was just amazing.

Before our mains turned up, we refilled our glasses, this time going for a Pinot Noir (anyone reading this who knows their onions about wine will presumably instantly recognise that we don't know what we're doing in terms of matching our wine to our food, but as the saying goes, we know what we like!). And then our mains were here: firstly, a mixed seafood plate, including squid, clams, prawns, and scallops, alongside a Mediterranean veg and feta cheese stack and another amazing bisque-type sauce. The winner, though, was the roasted pigeon, served in a potato 'cage' (fancily arranged tatty, basically), presented with a little parcel of enoki mushrooms (those long, thin Japanese ones with a tiny cap), wrapped in bacon and served on a bed of aubergine mash...the whole affair was topped off with a beetroot 'rose'. It was an incredible plate of food to look at, although I didn't need much convincing to set about dismantling it! The earthy flavours all worked really well together, although being a large and very rich dish I was glad to be sharing it with Sarah, and that our other main was a good deal lighter. By the time we'd finished the mains, we were both pretty stuffed and normally would have given dessert a miss...but given the quality of the food we were loathe to skip a course, so with a Trojan fortitude we ordered a dessert to share: a passion fruit tart with a very wee ball of good vanilla ice-cream. Lolling back in our chairs, we rounded the whole meal off with a drink, ginger tea for Sarah and brandy for His Decadenceship.

So there you have it - an absolute gem of a meal. We figured that we could come in for some criticism for coming back to Hanoi and going to a couple of the same restaurants we'd been to already, rather than taking the opportunity to discover some new ones...but I think that we've managed to to tick both boxes during our time here, having experienced some really wonderful street food that we'd not previously had, and our decision to make our way back to Green Tangerine was well and truly vindicated by the superb food and service. It goes without saying that after dinner we were so done in by it all that it was straight backup to the hotel to rest and digest. It is now the following morning, and we are packing our things, preparing to leave Vietnam once again. We've had almost three weeks in the country, and in Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hoi An and Phong Nha we've been to some great new places that weren't included on our first visit here. Both of us agree that whilst we've enjoyed every country we've visited in one way or another, Vietnam has a special place in our hearts, and I wouldn't be too surprised if we find ourselves back here once again in a few years. Hanoi in particular seems to grow and develop at a relentless pace, and you can't move for building work; we did notice on our arrival that there was something indefinably different about the place as compared to four years ago...nothing that we could put our finger on, but it seemed a bit slicker somehow, a bit more modernised, whilst still retaining the atmosphere and charm that we love it for. It will be interesting to see how the place continues to grow and develop in the coming years. For now, we move on to less familiar surroundings, in Laos!

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