Street food in Hanoi Part 3: xoi che, chao suon, banh bao

We are back home in Hong Kong now. That trip to Perth was so good but also so tiring; travelling with three kids (two under 3) is hard work. But it really was great to catch up with families and long-time friends. This is the final post from our trip to Hanoi last summer. I can't believe it already has been almost a year since we were in Hanoi, sampling all the delicious street food! Baby #3 was still in my belly, causing me awful morning sickness grief, but I somehow still managed to enjoy the foodie experience in Hanoi. Most of the following street stalls were marked on the map by our hotel guy who gave very good food recommendations. Nothing beats having a local's advice!

Xoi Che (sweet glutinous rice and treats)

The first stall we found was marked on our paper map by our hotel guy, but saw a similar stall across the road selling the same stuff, and we decided to check it out for comparison's sake. The first stall operated in front of a tailor's shop, which seem to be a common way for pop-up food stall businesses to run in Hanoi. The proprietress had some English ability, and she managed to understand what I was trying to buy.

Friendly partnership between the tailor shop and the xoi che stall:

The xoi che lady at work:

A simple dessert that was ready in a matter of seconds (though the ingredients would need to be pre-prepared):

Sticky rice with a simple syrup:

We also got a layered mixed beans dessert (quite possibly the Che Ba Mau, three-coloured dessert) which was refreshing and sweet and filling:

Across the road is a proper shop selling the same kinds of dessert, but with more varieties. I can't figure out if they're both owned by the same people because the signs of each shop state the same address, but we think the sweets taste better at the first stall. The dedicated seating space inside and in front of the second shop may be a bit more comfortable, though I'm sure you agree that there is not much that can be done to make sitting on low stools any more comfortable than it is (consider my poor hubby who had a big-for-her-age 21-month-old strapped on to him in a carrier - the bad pavements (and the lack of pavements altogether) plus the rain make Hanoi not very good for wheeled pedestrians).

Across the road at 93-95 Hang Bo:

There is a proper menu (in Vietnamese) on the wall, and google translate indicates that one side lists what is available in winter and the other is the summer menu:

The same bowl of sticky rice and layered mixed beans to compare. The other one is better:

93-95 Hang Bo Street
Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam

Chao Suon (spare rib rice porridge)

I love congee, so I was pleased to see this marked on the map. The consistency of this congee is thick and super-smooth. Flavour is great, but not a big fan of the spare rib bones. Comes with a serving of quay which is essentially the Chinese you tiao, the great partner of all things congee. You can also request pork floss topping, if you know how to ask for it (we didn't - there was a lot of pointing and gesturing).

Open-air dining at this roadside stall:

Super smooth and thick congee with condiments:

16 Hang Giay
Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 4 6684 9857

Banh Bao (steamed meat buns)

This is just like the Chinese bao. There were several stalls selling these steamed buns literally by the side of the road along the same street, and we chose the friendliest one (the other two didn't seem to care for our business). This is a meal-in-one deal, perfect for grabbing to have on the go.

Soft fluffy bao:

Glass noodle, vegetables, egg and meat inside:

Tiem Thanh Beo
8 Luong Van Can
Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam

Fine dining Vietnamese @ Gia Ngu Restaurant, Hanoi (Vietnam)

When we were in Hanoi last year, we had the chance to eat an amazing variety of delicious street food. Though we could have easily avoided restaurant dining altogether, we could not resist enjoying a meal at Gia Ngu Restaurant, located inside the hotel we stayed at. Service was amazing - staff were smiling and friendly as always, and very helpful in explaining the menu items and then demonstrating how to eat one of the dishes we ordered. The menu contained a combination of Vietnamese dishes as well as Western food, so there is something for everyone! Prices were of course higher than on the street, but still cheaper when compared to the same quality of restaurant service and food in Hong Kong, Australia and the US. And it was worth dining in air-conditioned comfort sheltered from the rain!

Gia Ngu Restaurant was also where we had our daily breakfast that was included in our hotel rate:

Even when we were living in Australia, the Viets had a reputation of doing awesomely delicious drinks, and here we enjoyed a mango smoothie, a passionfruit smoothie and pineapple juice:

For the kids, we ordered the Stir-fried Noodles with Seafood (US$7.50). I loved how much veges there were, but the 7-year-old disagreed:

Grilled "Hoi An" Snakehead Fish (192000VND, US$9) - with lemongrass, galangal, spring onion, garlic, onion, dill, peanuts in banana leaf, served with rice noodle, fresh herb, rice paper with Vietnamese fish sauce:

This was how you're supposed to eat the fish - DIY spring roll!

Wrapped Chicken in Sugar Cane (195000VND, US$9.20) - "chicken in ginger taste are wrapped with a sugar cane then grilled, served with rice noodle, vegetable for rolling and fresh sugar cane sauce". This was also eaten in the same style as the fish. Delicious!

If there is only one restaurant to visit in Hanoi, make it Gia Ngu Restaurant! The hotel, the restaurant, the staff - everything about this location gets our thumbs-ups!

Gia Ngu Restaurant
Essence Palace Hotel
27 - 29 Gia Ngu Street
Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 4 3926 2135

Street food in Hanoi Part 2: bun cha @ Bun Cha 34

There has been some buzz in the news about President Obama lunching on bun cha during his visit to Hanoi earlier this week. Obama was accompanied by Anthony Bourdain, who was filming an episode of his food travelogue Parts Unknown. It was also during our trip to Hanoi last year that we tried bun cha for the first time. I don't think we were prepared for how good this meal would be - it definitely was worth the trek on foot in the rain, manoeuvring the crazy road traffic with two kids in tow. Bun Cha 34 was one of the places recommended by our trusty hotel concierge (who had been thus far on point with all his street food suggestions).

For the uninitiated (like we were), bun cha comes in four components: the herbs, the noodles, the grilled meat and the dipping sauce. The meat is grilled on charcoal fire then dipped into the dipping sauce just prior to serving it. All the ingredients have their part to play, but the star of this show is no doubt the meat: sweet bite-sized pieces of pork belly and succulent pork patties wrapped in flavourful lolot leaves. The dipping sauce brings the whole dish together with its slightly sweet, salty and piquant flavour - a perfect mix of salty fish sauce, tangy vinegar, sugar and lime. Combined with the pillowy soft noodles, crunchy beansprouts and fragrant herbs, this is foodie heaven in a mouthful.

The shopfront. This is popular with the locals, and its location on the outer skirts of Old Quarter means less crowd and less tourists:

Be prepared to share a table. Don't worry, Vietnamese are courteous diners and will not bother you (though as an interracial family with two kids and one on the way, we attracted attention anywhere we go). An advantage to sharing a table is that you can easily watch how you're supposed to eat the food:

The noodles, grilled meat in dipping sauce and a mound of veggies and herbs that make up bun cha:

Yum!

This meal happened on our last day in Hanoi, and I sorely wished we had given ourselves more time to try bun cha in other shops to compare. Bun Cha 34 is definitely worth the visit!

Bun Cha 34
34 Hang Than
Ba Dinh
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 94 836 19 71

Essence Palace Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam

I don't usually do hotel reviews on my blog; usually my accommodation reviews are reserved for bed and breakfast types where accommodation and service are provided on a much more personal level. However the hotel hospitality and service at Essence Palace Hotel in Hanoi is one of the best we have experienced in our many years of travel around the world, that I feel it warrants some praise from a humble traveller. I chose this hotel because of its high rating and good reviews on tripadvisor, and the fact that I could book two connecting rooms (under Family Room plan) at a very affordableThe hotel itself was pleasant, but what stood out the most was the staff. Weeks before our arrival, Mike would promptly reply to my emails and requests, and I value good email communication very highly after years of travelling and expatriate living, because international phone calls are costly and impractical when different timezones are involved. The welcome drink (mango smoothie) offered to us upon our arrival to the hotel was delicious and a lovely refreshment after the long drive from the airport. We arrived at 12pm, and though check-in wasn't until 3pm, staff were kind enough to allow us to check in early since a set of connecting rooms were cleaned and ready for us, which we were grateful for because the toddler was overdue for her nap. I'd requested a quiet room, and traffic noise was not an issue as there were no windows facing outside the hotel. Our connecting rooms were located close to the lift, so noise from outside the door can be an issue from guests checking out early or coming in late from a night out (not the hotel's fault). The hubby and kids slept through the noise fine, but I am an unusually light sleeper so I noticed the noise. The rooms were clean, and the beds were comfortable.

The main room with a double bed:

The door that connects to the second room:

The adjoining room which is a twin bed room, with a crib:

Clean spacious bathroom:

Mike proved to also be a wealth of information on good street food to eat around the Old Quarter, like egg coffee, banh mi and pho. We enjoyed many different types of food I'd never even heard about, and all of Mike's recommendations were good! Food in the highly rated Gia Ngu Restaurant downstairs from the lobby was delicious, and the included breakfast everyday had a good variety of Vietnamese and western dishes. We could also each order a plate of eggs (any style), french toast or pancakes freshly cooked to order, or a bowl of beef or chicken pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) brought to the table. We ate lunch at the restaurant to try out the menu and really enjoyed our meal (review to be posted later). The restaurant staff were always so friendly and loved chatting to our kids.

Part of the spread provided at the free breakfast:

The variety and quality were good for a free breakfast:

Made to order pancake:

A bowl of chicken pho:

We had also booked an overnight cruise to Halong Bay through the hotel. However it rained everyday during our trip, and on the morning of our booked cruise, Jennifer (another lovely front desk staff) greeted us while we were having breakfast in the restaurant downstairs, and informed us that most cruises that day would be cancelled. She helped us cancel our cruise, arranged for full refund of our deposit, and then arranged for our accommodation for that night. She had gone above and beyond her duty, which saved us a lot of hassle. The doormen and hotel porters were all very friendly and polite, always offering an umbrella whenever we went out, and running down the stairs to greet us and take the umbrella from us when we came back to the hotel. Just little things like that made our stay more special. On our final night in Hanoi, hubby made use of the spa service offered at the nearby sister hotel, the Essence Hanoi Hotel and Spa. After carrying our 13kg toddler in the carrier on our outings for four days (the crowded pavements and terrible traffic and rainy conditions made it very challenging to use the stroller), his sore shoulders and back thoroughly enjoyed the massage.

If you are ever in Hanoi, I highly recommend staying at the Essence Palace Hotel. What a bargain to experience such top service at such affordable price! It really rates as one of the best hotels we have experienced

Essence Palace Hotel
27 - 29 Gia Ngu Street
Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 4 3926 2135

Please note that I was not paid to write this review. Just a very happy customer sharing the love.

Street food in Hanoi Part 1: banh cuon, xoi xeo and banh xeo

I believe that the best way to experience the culture and cuisine of a foreign place is to explore the streets. Our hotel concierge in Hanoi was a wealth of information on good street food in the Old Quarter and nearby, and we were not disappointed with any of his suggestions. Here are some of the eats we enjoyed during our short stay in Hanoi last summer.

Banh cuon

Banh cuon reminded me of the Malaysian chee cheong fun and the Hong Kong cheong fun - thin rolled rice crêpe-like sheet filled with pork, chicken or shrimps, and other ingredients. It is a light dish, usually eaten for breakfast in Vietnam, but we enjoyed it for a late supper. We liked banh cuon, and enjoyed both the chicken and pork versions (but we agreed the pork one was more tasty out of the two). Though this is traditionally a breakfast item, the banh cuon shop was doing a roaring business at 8pm.

The shop front:

The English menu:

Banh cuon with the dipping sauce:

Generous topping of fried shallots and leafy green herbs:

Banh Cuon Gia Truyen Thanh Van
14 Hang Ga
Hoan Kiem, Old Quarter
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 4 38 28 01 68

Xoi xeo

Our hotel guy noted down 'sticky rice' on the map at this location, which had a large banner that said Xoi Cat Lam. I am familiar with many Asian glutinous rice dishes, both sweet and savoury, but this was unlike any I've encountered. We had no idea what or how to order, but a guy who could speak a bit of English understood when I said "sticky rice", and gave us a bowl of xoi xeo, a yellow dish made of glutinous rice cooked with turmeric and topped with yellow mung bean that had been steamed whole, ground, shaped into balls and then sliced. Fried shallots was the final garnish. The ingredients and flavour of xoi xeo may be simple, but it was a textural delight: soft sticky rice with the slightly gritty mung bean paste and crunchy shallots. Great on its own, or accompanied by one of the meat dishes also available at the shop.

Xoi xeo:

Xoi Cat Lam
24 Duong Thanh
Cua Dong, Hoan Kiem
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel: +84 4 62 61 99 55

Banh xeo

Banh xeo is one of our favourite things to order at Vietnamese restaurants, so I was quite happy to see this recommendation on the map. I could finally try this dish in its homeland! The shop was tiny, and we could smell the delicious greasy aroma before we could see where it originated from. There's one cook hard at work in her tiny workspace at the front of the shop, doling out banh xeo after banh xeo to satisfy the hungry hordes of customers in her shop. Service was quick and efficient, and we got our crispy pancakes in no time at all.

This lady had 9 stoves going all at once!

The food served on our table, with rice paper, leafy herbs and a dipping sauce:

Delicious and hot, fresh from the pan:

Banh Xeo shop
22 Hang Bo
Hoan Kiem, Old Quarter
Hanoi, Vietnam

Miscellaneous snacks

This vendor operated out of a tiny shop space on the same street as our hotel. Plenty of colourful snacks to entice one particular pregnant lady in search for street snacks. They were amazingly cheap so I bought a few to bring back to the hotel room where hubby was keeping an energetic 6-year-old quiet while his toddler sister napped.

Clockwise from the green-topped layer cake on the left: banh chin tang may ('cloud 9 cake'), banh xu xe (tapioca and mung bean cake), che con ong (glutinous rice cooked with sugar), and banh xoai dua (coconut and black sesame dumpling). The coconut and black sesame ball that looked very similar to Japanese mochi was our favourite):

This was wrapped in banana leaf, likely to be banh tet - glutinous rice log with a mung bean filling. This was not sweet, but neither was it very savoury, quite bland flavour, so it was our least favourite out of the five:

This post covers only half of our street eats, so stay tuned for more.

Beef Pho @ Pho Suong and Pho 10, Hanoi (Vietnam)

To be completely honest, I have never been very big on pho (soup noodles with meat), the most well-known dish of the Vietnamese cuisine. When it comes to Vietnamese food, there are so many other goodies out there that we haven't really eaten much pho. However, since we were in Vietnam last summer, it would be a real shame to give pho a pass. Therefore, armed with a few recommendations for pho from our hotel's concierge (everything food-related that I write from this trip came from him), we braved the rain and took to the streets of Hanoi for an evening of pho-eating.

The first pho place we tried, Pho Suong, was on the same block as our hotel, a simple hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but popular with the locals. Our hotel's concierge guy says he often comes by this place for breakfast before work. It really is no-frills, but it was clean, and the simple menu made ordering easy. Only four options on the (Vietnamese) menu board: well-done beef, half-done with well-done beef, well-done brisket or flank, and half-done brisket. A bowl of noodles was very cheap, about US$2, and it was tasty even without using the condiments provided on the tables. Pho Suong is open daily from 5:30am to 11:30am, and from 4:30pm to 9:30pm.

We rocked up to Pho Suong at 4:30pm just after it opened for its evening service, so we had the whole place to ourselves for a few minutes:

Some pickled garlic, fresh lime, chilli, ground white pepper, hot sauce and fish sauce - all to add to your bowl of noodles to your liking:

The bowl of beef pho, served:

Stirred:

Pho Suong
24B Ngo Trung Yen,
Hang Bac, Hoan Kiem
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 9 16 19 76 86

The second pho place we went to was in a busier area than Pho Suong, and catered for a larger number of patrons. The menu has a slightly larger choice of different cuts and combination of beef (flank, brisket, fillet). The two bowls we ordered were tasty, and given Pho 10's bustling popularity, it is a solid choice for good pho.

A large steaming kitchen greeted customers by the entrance to Pho 10:

Simple restaurant-style setting:

We got two different types of pho, but I forget what they were:

Pho 10
10 Ly Quoc Su Street
Hang Trong, Hoan Kiem
Hanoi, Vietnam
Tel. +84 4 38 28 44 55