Hanoi travel guide for fearless foodies
But first, coffee.
There’s surely nowhere better to watch the world go by than from a pavement table beside Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, the storied hotel where Graham Greene penned some of The Quiet American, and Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un. Nibbling a madeleine and sipping a coffee, I’m thinking about all the famous guests who might have sat in this spot, from Charlie Chaplin and Bill Clinton to Mark Zuckerberg, Brangelina (when they were a thing), and planning what to eat today. Like Paris, Hanoi is a city devoted to food.
Coffee starts every day and the Metropole’s is good and strong but in 1946, during the First Indochina War when the city was beset with food shortages, the Metropole’s resourceful bartender Nguyen van Giang was forced to find a substitute for fresh milk. Egg coffee, or Vietnamese tiramisu, was born. It’s a delectably sweet concoction of egg yolk, condensed milk and sugar stirred through locally grown Robusta coffee.
So popular was his happenstance brew that Giang opened a specialty cafe, and his elderly sons now run two, one in the Old Quarter (“the touristy one”, says my guide, chef Duyen) and the other near the wholesale food markets, where the crowd is local and the egg coffee not as sweet.
The charming and indefatigable Duyen’s food tour is for fearless, famished foodies or those who enjoy a very early breakfast (or two). We meet at 4am in the hotel lobby before a short taxi ride through dark streets to the wholesale food markets beneath the famous Long Bien bridge. We’ve been promised a street food extravaganza, visiting vendors rarely, if ever, patronised by tourists. There are precisely zero tourists afoot at 4am. If I’m nodding off in the taxi, the market soon shocks me awake; it’s as manic as a rave, with a blaze of colour and honking din that seems rather outrageous at this hour.
Alighting from our taxi, we run the gauntlet of a blitz of scooters, piled high with trusses of sugar cane, boxes of chooks, and four pig carcasses hoisted atop each other like a porcine pyramid. Horns are blaring, vendors yelling, and we must be extremely nimble-footed in the narrow alleyways, dodging Vespas and bicycles that have all but disappeared beneath a mountainous cargo of herbs. Then there are the big trucks bringing fruit from the mountains, or sloshing tanks of fish from the coast, squeezing between stalls with the merest wisp of rice paper to spare.
Men sort drums of cockles, women fillet fish or slice garlic or banana flowers with machetes big enough to clear a jungle path. There are baskets of wriggling river prawns, vats of silkworms, glittering mounds of aubergines and chillis. Bicycle vendors arrive to collect the fruit they will sell throughout the day across the city. Duyen, who lives nearby, knows everyone, and pauses to collect samples as we dart between stalls. All this frenetic trading is happening in the dark under low-strung sulphureous lights; the entire market will be swept away midmorning to be replaced with more humdrum clothing stalls. At 5am, Duyen declares it’s time for first breakfast, banh duc nong (tapioca flour with a gravy of pork mince, coriander and spring onion) served from the back of a bicycle by a woman in a jaunty polka-dot hat. With dawn breaking, we leave the wholesale market, weaving through a maze of back alleys to find Duyen’s favourite hole-in-the-wall eateries, frequented only by locals, many packed up for the day by 10am. These are the same stalls she once took Gordon Ramsay to visit.
From a little pot on a tiny brazier on the pavement, we’re served sticky rice with turmeric, fried shallot, diced pork and yellow mung bean. Then it’s off to a small bun cha joint, lit like an operating theatre, where we lower ourselves gingerly on to tiny plastic stools before tucking into meatballs swimming in a sweet and spicy broth loaded with herbs. Then to Duyen’s favourite pho vendor for “fourth breakfast”, before a quick snack stop for sweet banh ran, like a chewy doughnut, made with mung beans, fresh coconut and cane sugar.
We jump the long queue at a popular banh mi kiosk as children drop by on bikes to collect school lunches. Finally, settling in beside a large extended family eating breakfast beneath the gimlet eye of a fierce-looking grandmother, we silently contemplate a plate of glutinous, paper-thin rice pancakes rolled with mushroom and chives.
Five hours and seven breakfasts later, Duyen has delivered this thrilling and informative tour with aplomb. After finishing our superior egg coffee, we head back to the Metropole where most guests are just arriving for breakfast; the buffet is a standout, especially the pho station (with vegetarian options). Perhaps tomorrow morning?
As Duyen’s tour so perfectly illustrates, Hanoi is a street food mecca, and one of the city’s hottest restaurants celebrates the locals’ penchant for flame. So many of Hanoi’s specialties are cooked on little braziers dotting pavements everywhere. At Chapter Dining and Grill, tucked away on hip Chan Cam St in the Old Quarter, the ground floor is dominated by a state-of-the-art flame grill. Chef-patron Truong Quang Dung cooks most of his food over flame, marrying street food with fine dining, and showcasing incredible technique, every plate a work of art. Dining is over three levels in small, elegant rooms that feel more like gallery spaces. Quang Dung studied fine arts at Exeter and Cambridge universities and his sophisticated eye is evident in the elegant interiors and theatrical food on the plate. Think: Hokkaido scallops with orange and fresh seaweed cooked over flame. Mushrooms from the grill are doused in an incredible caper sauce. There’s the most delicious suckling pig, and a sublime mille-feuille with pistachio and Earl Grey cream daubed with little petals.
Dung’s haute cuisine might seem a long way from that little pot of banh duc nong served by a plucky woman from the back of a bicycle, but both share the people of Hanoi’s abiding passion for the freshest produce and eating well several times a day.
Christine McCabe was a guest of Sofitel Legend Metropole Hotel.
Chef Duyen’s local market tours, street food excursions and tasting experiences can be combined with a cooking class in her home. From $US45 ($68) a person.
Chapter Dining and Grill serves dinner Tuesday-Sunday; 12C Chan Cam, Hoan Kiem. Reservations essential.
