Top 10 Eats in Hanoi

10 . Fanny Ice Cream @ 48 Pho Le Thai To

This is the place to chill after walks around hot, humid and horn-blaring traffic in the streets around Old Quarter. The Fondue option gives you a choice of 14 flavours and we tried, Chocolate, Dark Chocolate, Rum & Raisin, Strawberry, Mocca, Passion fruit, Soursop, Tutti frutti, Baileys, Green Tea, Raspberry, Nougat, Chocolate Chip & Mango! Whew... My top 3 flavours are Chocolate, Green Tea and Rum & Raisin. We went back another day to try their Avocado and Salt Caramel and I favoured the latter more.

9. Banh My @ Dong Xuan Weekend Night Market

The kebab meat served with pickled vegetables in a warm bread sat well with LR. He said this was the closest to the Saigon Baguette he can find in Singapore.

8. Banh Ghoi @ 52 Pho Ly Qouc Su

We were clearly disappointed when we got to the stall and found out that this was a curry puff dish, when the description I was given was meat patty with glass noodle. I guess we were expecting this to be similar to our favourite dish - Bun Cha but just served with glass noodles.


Also, the previous stalls we went usually were packed with locals, but this stall was empty with 3 stall helpers chatting among themselves listlessly. Sigh, I guess this Singaporean mentality of long queues & many patrons equals to delicious food will forever be in our blood. So anyway, we sat our butts down on those tiny plastic red and blue stools and waited for our 'curry puffs' to be served.


First came some pickles and herbs then the Banh Ghoi cut into 3 pieces. Then I began to see that the fillings consisted of glass noodles and meat, hence the description I got. The first bite reminded me of the usual fried spring rolls, but the combination of pickles in sweet sauce and herbs had me gobbling up the next 2 pieces in a jiffy. Yummy!

7. Green Papaya Salad with Beef Jerky @ Quan An Ngon

We ordered this dish without the beef jerky the 2 other times we came back as an appertiser. For less than S$1 this really is a good starter to whet your appetite for more to come!

Quan An Ngon , 18 Phan Boi Chau St

This place is the place to go if you want to eat all the street food in Hanoi under one roof! In Hanoi, the street food or stalls believe in specialisation. They do a one dish system and therefore if you want to try a variety of food, I would highly recommend this place. Also, the prices are not much different from those on the streets. There are other added advantages of coming to this place as well is that firstly, there's a menu in English to tell you exactly what you are going to expect, secondly, the stalls are around to let you wander around and point at what caught your eye and lastly a pretty important factor for weak tummies, this place is 100 times cleaner than the usual street food.

These are the following dishes we tried there...

Banh Xeo - Saigon Pancake

Sugar cane wrapped in prawn paste and served with a putu mayam type beehoon patty. The sugar was really rock hard and you would not be able to chew on it to savour the sweet juices of the sugar cane.

You basically wrap the prawn meat, putu mayam thingy, herbs, cucumber and what appears to be banana in rice paper and dip in the sauce.

Dessert that LR ate everytime we were there :) It was a cross between cendol and red ruby. The interesting thing about this dessert is that they serve it with mashed up mung beans to give this dessert a creamy texture.

6. Apple Tart with Ice cream @ Little Hanoi

Walking in Hanoi makes you want to go into nice air-conditioned cafes and have a cold drink with some sweets. We stumbled upon this cafe at a corner of a busy street and ordered the cream caramel and apple tart. This apple tart was more apple than tart and the apples were sliced so thinly and warmed to the right temperature with the perfection of matrimony with the cool and melting ice-cream was heaven....

5. Grilled pork rice with egg and shredded pork @ Quan An Ngon

This rice dish I first ate in believe it or not in Brisbane and ever since I've not had the full works (grilled pork with egg loaf and shredded pork). Mainly in most Vietnamese restaurants in Singapore, they leave out the egg loaf and shredded pork, so sinking my teeth into the much missed complements was pure bliss :)

4. Banh Cuon Gia Truyen @ 14 Pho Hang Ga

Vietnamese version of Chee Cheong Fun

LR enjoyed this dish much more than I did and I blame the fried shallots while LR thanked the fried shallots. The skin is made on the spot and stuffed with minced pork and mushrooms. You dip this in a somewhat similar to the dim sum kind of chee cheong fun sauce that is probably a mixture of soya sauce and sugar.

3. Bun Bo Nam Bo @ 67 Hang Dieu St

I was surprised by the size of the bowl. It was huge. This is a noodle dish (bun) topped up with saute beef and bean sprouts with nuts and pickels and very flavourful sauce that I do not know what but am just grateful that I had the chance to eat it as my first lunch meal in Hanoi!

This auntie basically sits there to saute the beef with beansprouts.

There were some wrapped up thingy that looked like ba zhang but I never got down to trying it.

Probably the only street food place that had long benches instead of the usual plastic too small for a non-local's butt stools.

2. Pho Bo Xao @ Nua Hang Phu Ny, 45B Bat Dan

1. Bun Cha @ 34 Hang Tha

Vietnamese pork chop rice

why?

LR just simply cannot live without pork and Vietnamese cuisine. It's the sweet and savoury combination that he adores. Whenever we visit Le Viet, we would both order the Grilled meat with vermicelli and douse the dish in the fish sauce without fail, unless on a really cold and rainy day (very unlikely in Singapore), I might go for the Beef Pho! So anyway, I wanted to do the 'exact' dish that we always order, but LR who is so particular about textures in food, insist that the usual beehoon is not the same as Vietnamese vermicelli *sigh* So to get around this, I will focus on the Grilled Meat and serve with rice!

success?

Yummmmyyyyy!!! LR gave his stamp of approval and even LR's mom who eats really little, finished up the 4 pieces given to her.

Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Pork Chop (serves 3)

INGREDIENTS

400g of pork loin sliced 1/2 an inch thick

3 tomatoes, sliced

1 Japanese cucumber, sliced

(A)

3 stalks of lemongrass, use the bottom half and save the top part of the stalk

5 cloves of garlic

5 small shallots

(B)

2 tbs of brown sugar

1 tbs of fish sauce

1 tbs of light soya sauce

A dash of pepper

2 tbs sesame seeds

(C)

1 carrot, very thinly shredded

3 tbs of lemon juice

3 tbs of water

1 tbs of white vinegar

White sugar to taste

METHOD

1. Use the back of a cleaver, hammer gently the pork slices to tenderise them
2. Pound (A) together in a a mortar and pestle
3. Mix (B)
4. Marinate the pork slices thoroughly with (A) and (B)
5. Leave in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours
6. Cook rice with the top half of the lemongrass stalk for fragrant rice
7. Prepare the sauce with (C) and refrigerate.
8. Fry/ Grill the pork till slightly charred on each side
9. Serve with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, rice and sauce at the side

failure?

My sauce still needs tweeking... maybe it's the fish sauce, I've been using the Thai fish sauce instead of the Vietnamese one. Don't know!

Fried Viet Spring Rolls

saigon baguette

why?

I remembered the first time I had a sample of this sandwich with Rach, we knew we would be back! I brought LR to try it, and he proclaims this is the best sandwich he has ever eaten his whole life! Haha... and it only about time I try my hand at making it. What if the shop closes down? Would we need to fly all the way to Vietnam for our sandwich fix?

success?

LR said it tasted almost like the real thing! I knew I would never be able to produce the real thing because I don't have those ham that they use. I substituted with marinated pork and I used very good Pate that I bought from Cold Storage. On a scale of 1 to 10 of being like the real thing, I would rate it a 7.5 :) I included the recipe, do try!!

Saigon Baguette Recipe

Ingredients

Ciabatta bread (I bought mine from Giant at a steal! $1.70 for 4 small ones)

Mayonnaise

Pate De foie (I bought 100g from Cold storage)

Corriander

White vinegar

Sugar

2 Carrots

1 Radish

2 Cucumbers

200g Lean Pork

1 Lemon grass

Cornflour

Fish sauce

Method(Start at least 3 days before eating)

1. Peel the carrots and radish.

2.Slice the carrots, cucumbers and radish into 3 inch by half inch rectangular shaped.

3.Place the vegetables into an airtight container.

4.Mix 2 cups of white vinegar with 1 cup of sugar, then dilute with 1 cup of water.

5.Pour the mixture into the container with the vegetables and preserve for at least 3 days.

6.The day before, marinate the pork.

7. Slice the pork thinly and marinate with 3 tsp of cornflour, pounded lemon grass, 3 tsp of fish sauce, 1 tbs of sugar and 1 tsp of sesame oil. Cover with a cling wrap and sit overnight in the refridgerator.

8. Fry the pork with some vegetable oil and set aside.

9. Toast the bread and slice into half.

10.Spread some pate, then mayo, put in the pork, pickled vegetables and corriander.

11.Drizzle some fish sauce over the sandwich and you are good to go!!

failure?

The real deal doesn't use pork, but 3 different kinds of ham. Maybe next time, I'll go get some salami and try. I know it isn't regular ham, because the pork taste is much stronger than the common ham we eat.