Eating in Hà Nội (Part 2)

My eating experience in Hà Nội continued...

1. Bún chả Hàng Mành
One of the most popular Hà Nội specialities is definitely "bún chả, nem cua", it's so famous that everyone want to try at least once while visiting there. The foreigners might have a difficulty to find the best place in Hà Nội, but to Vietnamese - should be no problem! But by somehow ridiculously an original Hà Nội-born gentleman in his early 40s took us to a place for bún chả, where after the first bite, I realised something wrong with the crab roll. It was bad, quite bad, strangely covered with bread crumb that I've never seen before.

                          Looks good? But honestly tastes not good, after the first bite....I gave up! 

When I looked around, I found, next to our place, another shop named Đắc Kim, with a big board in the shop "We are the original bún chả nem cua, the next one is fake". "The next one" meant our place, right at the corner! Usually I didn't pay attention to those notices, but our nem cua was bad, so I was wondering where was this place and quickly realised that we were in Hàng Mành. The best "bún chả nem cua" supposed to be here, on this street. And Đắc Kim was the one! The funny thing that our friend booked the hotel, right in front of this place. The next day I decided to buy some "nem cua" to take-away from Đắc Kim, just to compared with nem cua from the "fake shop". Đắc Kim was much much better! So watch out when you come here for bún chả!

                     The grilled pork was ok, but my favourite "crab roll" was far from good! 

2. Bún đậu Phất Lộc 
Few years ago, in Sài Gòn there was a big trend among the youth to discover the Hà Nội taste - "the rice vermicelli, the tofu with the shrimp paste" was the top choice. Everywhere. Everyone. At that time I took a chance to try for the first time, not in Sài Gòn but in Hà Nội, at Phất Lộc, one of the most popular places. It was very good! I quite liked it. Everything was fresh: tofu, bún, herbs.

                          Back to Phất Lộc where I have been two years ago for the first bún đậu in my life.

But as normal when the trend reached the crowd, later it was gradually fading away! Now these eateries "bún đậu", seemed less and less in Sài Gòn, we still could find it hidden somewhere, and my appetite for this speciality also cooled down. Anyway I still felt happy to come back to the old place and introduced it to our friends. One more thing, in Hà Nội the "bún đậu" is so popular, people can get it everywhere, exactly like the bread sandwich in Sài Gòn!  

                       I quite like this pork cut. it was good.

3. Deep-fried cake at Lý Quốc Sư 
I passed by this small shop in Lý Quốc Sư several times, not far from the church, I was hesitating to stop by. The deep fried cake or as we call in Sài Gòn "bánh xếp" didn't attract me very much! But it was one of popular street foods, probably more in Chinatown. One morning I decided to grab a few cakes, take away, to my coffee place. It was good! The cover was amazingly thin, crispy but the filling was quite ok!

Another early morning, with friend, we decided to spend more time at this place. It was empty. Only two of us with an old man, in his 70-80s - the owner, I guess. The old man started first the conversation when hearing our Southern accent. He said he used to live in Saigon, in Đa Kao, when he was a kid, he has been "kidnapped". I wanted to ask more because how he lived in Đa Kao and then back to the North. During the war? Or it should be long before the war. But then I realised I didn't know what to ask. I felt the man was too old to remember what happened to him at that time. We left the place, without taking a photo of him. I don't know why!

4. Bún dọc mùng 
Being a Southern-born, and I used to study linguistics, that's why I found the Northern Vietnamese language quite interesting. The words, the expressions they use, the way they speak. I don't know many words, like "dọc mùng" in" bún dọc mùng".  I was amazed at how rich is our language and that brought me back to the old times when we were student, we argued which one was official - the Northern accent or Southern.

                 Bún dọc mùng was simply rice noodles with "bạc hà" (i.e "elephant ear" or "taro stem"!) 

                        It was noodles in pork soup, served with pork meat, meat balls...Taste was good. 

5. Bún cá cây si  
I suddenly got a message on Facebook from one old friend who works as Bike Expert Tour guide in Quảng Bình. I met him last year before my trip to Sơn Đoòng. It happened that both of us went to Hà Nội at the same time, so he asked "Let's meet and go for something good!". Sure! We met at noon and went to bún cá (i.e rice noodles with fish). It was in a very small alley, where we can see a big tree, that's why the dish was named "bún cá cây si". It was very good, rich taste but not much sour flavour as I expected for this kind of dish. It has been served with deep fried fish or with a special side dish: fish spring rolls!

                               My first bún cá in Hà Nội. It was very good, rich taste...

                             The fish has been deep fried so it was tasty and crispy. 

                           The fish spring roll, a side dish, wrapped not with usual rice paper but fish fillet.  

6. The sweets 
I love sweets as many others. The most typical sweets in Hà Nội could be those we keep buying from Hàng Đường as gift to friends, or fabulous green bean cake or fragrant young rice cake (bánh cốm). I bought these colourful cakes from a small shop, along the way we walked back to the hotel. It was like a collection that people buy for the full moon day by Lunar calendar. It was not bad. Different taste. Interesting combination of taste. And not too sweet!

Hà Nội eating experience amazed me, not only because of the taste, but the tradition, the culture that I hardly find it in Sài Gòn. I love listening to those stories that from tim to time the owner shared with us, or observing their behaviour, like at the popular chicken porridge place, in front of the old church. I was told about the old lady-owner, she loved to blame staffs in her high-pitch voice. I didn't witness her blames but curiously listening to her flirt with a young couple. She kept saying how handsome was the boy, even though with glasses, and asked the girl to better look after the boy, otherwise she might lose him! The old lady was funny!