Competitive Tourism: Race 1 - Walking Street Food Tour of Hanoi

I met our tour guide, Lee, in the foyer and we wandered around to collect two other people, women from Singapore who didn't introduce themselves (as it happens) but were quite friendly during the tour. We set off around the old quarter from their hotel. Lee was a charming and attractive young man who was self-taught in English, but very easy company and an excellent guide.

The tour involved walking around the old quarter visiting a range of restaurants at which we had a tasting-serve of the specialty (typically, the places we visited served one dish with a variety of flavours), which were all the classical Vietnamese dishes. Not much point in a narrative here, so I think I'll just list the places we visited and what we sampled. (Lee has promised to send the names of the dishes and the restaurants to me later. I'll update the blog with the correct details when I have them.)

First course: Banh Cuon Lon - rice paper crepe with pork (lon) and mushroom filling served with herb salad (coriander). Lovely, light starter. Lee told  us that it was a common dish for any meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Second course: Beef with noodle soup. Like the famous pho but a different broth and a different presentation of the beef (tightly packed rissoles). Very pleasant.

Third course: Dry Pho. Pho with chicken this time, but no broth. Another different flavour profile. I really liked this dish. Apparently, this version is very popular in the summertime because the hot broth is difficult to eat in the very hot summer. Tonight was 36 degrees and the air was as still as the grave; I can certainly sympathise with their thinking!

The young man all in black is Lee. We were sitting outside here, which is actually illegal, according to Lee, and that explains why we are on very small plastic stools sitting at very small  tables. They can all be carried away quickly if the police show up!

The locals were all out having dinner or drinks; these streets were closed to traffic tonight

Fourth course: Banh Mi. Essentially, a sandwich in a baguette style roll. I had the Pate and Charsui (roasted/fried pork) version and it was very nice. Shops specialising in this dish are appearing in food courts around Australia.

Fifth course: Bun Cha. Pork with noodles served in a fish sauce broth. Made famous by Obama having the dish in another restaurant when he visited. Another dish that I really liked, this time because the fish sauce soup/sauce was just the right balance of sour and sweet.

By now the restaurants (pretty big word for some of these shops) were getting to be pretty full and we started to bump into other tour groups from the same tour company and others.

Sixth course: (Make your own) Summer Roll. A variation on the famous rice paper where pork (again) on a lemon grass skewer is rolled up in a rice paper sheath with vermicelli, a shred of pineapple, shredded carrot, mango, cucumber strip and fig strip. Once rolled, one extracts the lemongrass stick, dips in sauce (satay was my preference here) and eats. Yummy!

Egg coffee as served.

Bonus "dessert": Egg Coffee! That's right, coffee with an egg yolk stirred in as a substitute for fresh milk, or so the story goes. In fact the egg yolks (2) are whisked with sugar and vanilla essence into a rudimentary custard that is floated on the coffee. Sampled from the top (as instructed), it's a sweet custard. Stirred in, it's a really nice coffee!

On the walk back to the hotel, Lee pointed out a building that is 1 meter wide (the yellower lighted building). It's a working shop on the ground floor and a residence upstairs. I had walked past it this morning without noticing. I have no idea how the people live in such a building, in the middle of the old quarter of Hanoi.