Eating All the Food in Hanoi (And Another Street Food Tour!)

Hanoi’s food scene was everything I’d expected it to be. I tried SO much new stuff in the week that I was there. Though with how crazy plentiful the street food is, the lack of sidewalk space to maneuver around on, and the absolute chaos of motorbikes zipping by, it can be a little overwhelming to decide what your next meal will be.

So the solution is simple: eat all the food in Hanoi.

Of course, I’m exaggerating. But really, what you should do is try everything you see that looks good (or smells good – literally, sometimes we just followed delicious smells to find the snacks we wanted). You’re never too full for another spring roll, or banh mi… or egg coffee.

The best food I’ve had so far has been on the street or at a small place that specializes in only a few or maybe even just one dish. Don’t, just don’t enter a proper restaurant with closed doors or a man out front waving a menu and yelling at you.

A big thanks to Anna at Slightly Astray for providing me with what turned out to be a pocket guide (more like a Bible, really) to the food in Hanoi, both in terms of being a checklist and at times an address book for some real gems.

Phở

The first dish I tried in Vietnam – after the dengue blood work, as a a congratulatory “get well soon” meal – was pho. It’s pretty much the quintessential Vietnamese meal and the only food from the country I was even slightly familiar with before this trip. Well, aside from banh mi and (due to a mediocre experience with it in Raleigh once) bún bò huế.

While every pho is different, these soups are big and filled with noodles, meat, and green onions… and hopefully a wonderful savory broth that’s been cooking all day. It’s up to you whether you add the provided garlic and chilies and potential other condiments on the table. The pho comes out steaming hot, which is lovely in Hanoi since it’s actually a cooler city. (It can be a bit of a sweat-inducing meal in hotter cities though.)

Vietnamese Coffee and Especially Egg Coffee!

Okay not really a food, but WHY don’t we have this everywhere? Vietnamese coffee by itself is incredible. It’s so, so strong and dark, and when they throw in the condensed milk it’s just amazing. There’s not as much liquid involved as a regular coffee, so it’s more like espresso… but different.

And then there’s egg coffee, which is so fantastic that it’s barely describable with words. Egg coffee has a thick whipped topping made from a (sometimes secret) mixture of a whipped egg, sweetened condensed milk, and other ingredients, and when you stir it in with the strong coffee on the bottom, it tastes like drinkable tiramisu. So liquid crack, pretty much.

I had one of these almost every day I was in Hanoi, sometimes more. The best one I found was at Giang Cafe for 20,000 dong. It’s supposed to be one of the oldest and best places for it in the city. (Make sure you head down the alley.) I liked getting a street waffle from nearby to accompany it for breakfast; the cafe doesn’t mind if you bring in outside food.

Bun Cha

Oh man, everybody loves this dish. Grilled pork and pork patties in a sweet broth, served with thin rice noodles and fresh herbs. Oh, and chopped garlic and chilies to throw in there, as you do. I haven’t met one person who hasn’t absolutely raved about this dish.

It seems weird to serve the pork in a broth, but don’t ask questions. Just do it. I ate bun cha three times in a week. It never disappoints.

Sticky Rice

The famous sticky rice joint Xoi Yen was conveniently just a block from my hotel. Tons of people go here for breakfast. The combinations are endless when it comes to the toppings you can add to your perfectly sized bowl. At Anna’s recommendation, I got the boiled chicken and pate, and it was a delicious, interesting, and a  surprisingly filling meal. Of course, they top it with the ubiquitous fried shallots as well and hidden amongst everything are finely sliced kaffir lime leaves.

Banh Mi

Man, these things are good… and SO cheap. French-inspired obviously, it’s a (hopefully) crispy and fluffy baguette spread with pate and topped with various meats, from ham cold cuts to grilled pork, and then a pickled daikon, cucumber, and carrot mixture. Then they add chili sauce, if you’re into that, which you should be. The banh mi in Hanoi did not impress me nearly as much as the ones in Hoi An, but they were still solid. They cost anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 dong – so like, consider them a dollar menu item.

*Update: I have eaten approximately 327 banh mi now. Never met one I didn’t like.

Bun Bo Nam Bo

A bit of an honorable mention. So, there’s a place that’s supposedly famous for this noodle and beef dish, but the group we were hanging out with got separated, and three of us ended up in the knock-off joint next to it.* In this case, go for the less-fancy looking place. Should’ve known…

The dish consists of bun (in this case, spaghetti-sized) rice noodles on top of a bed of lettuce dish. The noodles are stir-fried with beef and topped with vegetables like bean sprouts. Ours also came topped with peanuts and fried shallots. There was an accompanying thin, sweet sauce that was essential to flavor it, so we dumped that on top. After a taste test by our friends who eventually joined us, we were informed that the legit, famous restaurant served up a better version than ours. Shocking.

*This is pretty common in Vietnam; some establishments leach off the success of others and name their restaurants the same exact thing. It’s very confusing for tourists who don’t know the difference, so they’re bound to get some customers from this. Not to mention, most casual or street food joints are just named after the dish they serve. (The sticky rice place mentioned above also has a copycat next door.)

A few shots of daily life in Hanoi (and a delicious night time spot serving kebabs off of Hang Bac)

Another Street Food Tour!

One of the top things to do in Hanoi, according to the almighty TripAdvisor, is the Hanoi Street Food Tour. It’s $20 USD (you can pay in dollars or dong at the current exchange rate). And while you could actually have a crazy huge street food feast for that amount of money in Hanoi (or feed a family of four their three square meals a day), it’s worth it to have a guide who’s from Hanoi to show you some local spots.

We went to eight different stops and by the end we were stuffed. I had already tried many of the dishes we sampled during my first few days in Hanoi, but you can’t have too much of this street food.

Normally, I’d do a food tour on one of my first days in a new city, but with the dengue and all, I wasn’t able to stomach a lot of food, much less eight different dishes in one day. So I was perfectly happy to eat a few repeat dishes…

During the food tour, I got to hang out with some fun young people from New York as well as a couple from Boston who’d moved to Canada. While organized tours can seem a little cheesy and pricey at times, it’s the meeting people that makes them worth it… oh, that and the help familiarizing yourself with a new city.

And especially when it comes to food tours, they’re not going to take you anywhere that’s not been vetted or that tastes bad (which could easily happen when exploring on your own). Which is great, because nothing makes me madder than paying for a bad meal.

After the tour and a shot of rice wine, a few of us went out for a some bia hoi. That’s the “fresh beer” made locally with a low alcohol content and no preservatives. We sat on tiny plastic stools at the intersection of streets famous for their crowds of people drinking the stuff. A glass is anywhere from 3,000 to 15,000 dong, depending where you are. So cheap!

And with that night, I ended my brief stint as an unsociable, non-drinking invalid in Hanoi. And on the Halong Bay cruise I signed up for the next day, things were about to get even better on the social front.

Hanoi Street Food Tour costs $20 USD (or the equivalent in dong, whatever the conversion rate is that day). You can reserve in advance or just head to their office with the big sign above it 15 minutes before the tours, which start at 11 AM, 5 PM, and 6:50 PM. I took the 5 PM tour, but it’s totally possible they change up the stops depending on the time and day. They are located at 74 Hang Bac.

Are there any dishes from Hanoi that I’ve missed?! Nevermind, don’t tell me – it’s too late! Any recommendations for foods in Saigon?!

Linking up for Travel Tuesday with Anna, guys!