Pop and Sizzle

A visit to the 100-year-old restaurant is on the must-do list for everyone that pays a visit to the Old Quarter in Hanoi. The story goes that 100 years ago or so, a Mr Doan opened a restaurant selling his speciality of fried fish (cha ca), and he placed a statue of an old fisherman out front who was known locally as La Vong.

Today the fisherman has gone but Cha Ca La Vong is still operating and serving the best cha ca in town. In fact they have changed the name of the street to Cha Ca Street - it is that legendary. Many other cha ca restaurants have come and gone. Adam and I tried other places that served cha ca but they all paled in comparison, notably since the others use MSG.




The fish at Cha Ca La Vong is quite special, they use a type of pike that is white, firm, fleshy, cut into bite-size pieces and marinated in turmeric and a secret blend of spices. It comes out sizzling in a frying pan steeped in oil and then placed on your table on a clay brazier over red hot charcoal.



An enormous bowl of spring onions and dill is added to the pan, which soaks up the oil and brings the temperature down, allowing the fish to stay hot and to caramelise any last remaining herbs and bits of fish.





You scoop some cold rice noodles into your bowl along with some crispy pieces of fish, basil leaves, a few raw peanuts, spoon in some fish sauce with red chillies, stir it in and enjoy.



The longer it takes you to eat each small bowlful, the crispier the fish. The tastiest part is towards the end where the last bits of fish left in the pan are the crispiest and the spring onions and dill are brown and sticky.

It is so popular here they do a brisk trade - it is not a place to linger, it's a one-dish restaurant and if you don't like fish you won't be offered anything else. The atmosphere is bustling and throughout the meal I kept jumping off my seat, frightened from all the very loud popping sounds.




It is a tradition whilst eating cha ca that when you get your complimentary scented hand/face towel in a plastic packet, you must squeeze the air to one end and pop the packet. I popped my packet and it was so loud, I half expected everyone to turnaround and tell me off but I didn't even get a glance.




Don't forget to pop, its all part of the fun.

SHADY SNACKS at 52 ly Quoc Su

Under a giant banyan tree, next door to Ly Quoc Su Pagoda in Hanoi is a small eatery offering bahn goi, a tasty snack of fried pastries. One of the last few places I am told you can still eat these on the street.




An old lady sits fanning herself and splayed out before her is a selection of bahn goi, fried pastries, some of them looking like mini Cornish pasties. There are no menus here except for a small sign in Vietnamese on the wall so, unless you can read Vietnamese, just point to what you would like and sit down.




A choice awaits you – sit inside by a cooling fan or sit under the banyan tree by the street. A plate with your chosen pastries arrives along with cold rice noodles, a mound of fresh herbs and a bowl of sweet sauce made with chillies, garlic, sugar, parsley, vinegar and slices of du du (green papaya).



Each pastry is filled with rice vermicelli, woodear mushrooms – the texture is slimy but crunchy and then there is minced pork. Some are enveloped in a crunchy sticky rice flour dough, looking not unlike small doughnuts without the hole, and others are lighter with an added crispness, but they are all equally good.








Just don't have too many if your watching your waistline.

Pho So Good!

In the 10th Century, Mongol herdsman migrated from China into Vietnam and introduced beef into the Vietnamese diet. Pho (pronounced 'fer') is, simply, beef noodle soup, one of the most popular dishes throughout Vietnam. There is a Pho restaurant or stall on almost every street. Ask any person here and they will have their favourite recommendation for Pho.




Pho begins its life the day before when oxtail, beef bones and scraps are simmered in a large pot for many hours along with a secret recipe of spices and herbs. The recipes varies with each vendor, some recipes have been handed down through generations.

In Hanoi, I am told that Pho Gia Truyen, at 49 Bat Dan in the Old Quarter, has a reputation for producing the best Pho Bo in town. They use purified water with a secret mix of herbs when making their broth, the meat is tender and succulent and they don't use MSG.




It's 9am when we approach Pho Gia Truyen and already there is a long queue out the door. It gives me a chance to check out the place – one central long wooden table and four smaller ones seating about 30 people inside and a dozen or so outside. High ceilings, bare walls and a kitchen counter at the front. The place is full of people, all sharing tables and they seem intensely focused on their Pho, slurping loudly and savouring each mouthful.

Back in line, Adam and I have to decide how we want our beef. We have a choice of raw or well done roast beef or a mix of both. We decide on 'chin' – well done. Behind the counter it looks like chaos but on closer inspection, they are all working in a brisk and methodical way.

Steam rises from an enormous pot on a fire, and one man's sole job for 5 hours is to ladle individual servings of noodles into a wire sieve. He plunges the noodles into the pot for 30 seconds and then places them into a bowl, the next man places some raw beef in his ladle and scoops up some steaming broth to start the process of cooking the beef, he drains the broth back into the pot and places the beef on top of the noodles. The bowl is then filled with the heady broth along with a handful of herbs.




Another lady is in charge of the roast beef. On an old wooden chopping block she deftly slices the beef into thin strips ready to be covered in hot broth.

We pull up some stools and squeeze onto a table. My bowl is filled to the brim, the scent of star anise, ginger, cinnamon and roast beef wafts up in a steamy plume under my nose. I am impressed by the flavour, it is outstanding on it's own, a rich beefy flavour, not too salty. It is perfect as it is but you can add fresh chillies, chilli sauce, lime juice, fish sauce and garlic vinegar if you so desire, or even a raw egg. When the broth is this good you don't need all the added fuss. I prefer mine quite simple with just a few fresh chillies. It is hearty yet light, the perfect breakfast to start the day.

As Adam and I scoff our broth, two young men shuffle in with a heavy side of beef wrapped in netting. They slap it down onto a large butchers block on the floor and begin to trim and prepare the meat for tomorrow's Pho. I really like how they are proud of their produce and they are not afraid to show what they do and how they prepare it whilst you are eating. There are no hidden kitchens here.






It is all on show and it is certainly not for the squeamish, the meat looks so fresh here and the Pho is so good,we will be back.

Follow Your Nose!

The streets of Hanoi are an assault on your senses. The sights, the sounds and then the aromas. Every so often you will smell smoke wafting by, follow your nose and you will see plumes of smoke and flashing flames. You have found Bun Cha.










Squat on a plastic chair at a table and within seconds a mound of fresh herbs and leaves arrives, along with a plate of cold rice noodles, a bowl filled with a light soup of fish sauce, water, vinegar, sugar, thin slices of du du (green papaya) and a selection of grilled pork. Small pork rissoles, thin slices of pork belly and pieces of pork all bite-size and grilled to perfection over a small tin box of charcoal. Its all good, but you can make it even better, you can add some chopped garlic, chillies and even some garlic or chilli vinegar if you like it even hotter.








There are a number of things that make this dish stand out in the North. Firstly the leaves and herbs come from a local village and that means they are stronger and more fragrant than in the South, the mint particularly stands out. The pork is marinated and the cut is marbled so a little fat can drip onto the hot coals to produce a heady penetrative smoke. The result is a charcoal flavour on the outside, the meat stays tender and juicy, with a smoky flavour throughout.



I have been to only one place in Hanoi for Bun Cha, it is so damn good I don't want to go anywhere else in case of disappointment and it's Dac Kim at 1 Hang Manh, just off Hang Quat in the Old Quarter. Not only do they have excellent Bun Cha but they also have spring rolls filled with minced pork, onion and rice vermicelli cut to just a little bigger than bite-size. You can just about squeeze a piece into your mouth. They come with a light dipping sauce with slices of du du. They are flaky, crispy, meaty and yet light, and simply the best I have ever tasted.

Three Elephants and a pair of Aussies

Adam and I had a sumptuous dinner last night at the 3 Nagas restaurant and a few too many Beer Lao, on the way home we stumble across the Three Elephants Cafe, aka Tamnak Lao Restaurant. They advertise cooking classes and since we enjoyed our degustation menu of Louang Prabang specialities and this school, unlike others here, doesn't advertise that Jamie Oliver took a class here, we sign up for a full day of cooking.

We pay our $25 each and meet an Australian who along with her Lao family own the restaurant and hold cooking classes. We sit with her for an hour or so and discuss the next day's timetable and what we will be cooking. We receive a copy of their recipe book which includes 12 recipes, information on essential ingredients, Lao people and culture to study.

The next day we promptly arrive for 10am to be introduced to our teachers Neng and Leng and then we hop in a tuk tuk to arrive at the Phousi market for a tour. Neng takes us through the market and shows us some of the ingredients in Laos cooking and what we will be using today. Asian greens, garlic, galangal, Kaffir lime leaves, lime, coriander, lemon grass, tamarind, basil, oyster sauce, soy sauce, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chillies, Chilli peppers, coconut milk, rice noodles, vermicelli noodles, rice, bamboo shoots, woodear fungus, also known as cloud ear fungus, choko and lastly padak, a pungent, fermented fish sauce using fish salt and rice husks. We pass the bamboo stall where you can buy bamboo steamers especially to cook sticky rice, a sort of conical shape and quite comical when we are told that many tourists mistake them for hats, buy them and wear them around town.(In fact we saw a girl wearing one at the airport and I was dying to walk up and tell her tht she was wearing a sticky rice steamer on her head, but Adam and I were chuckling too hard.)







Traditionally each family has their own special recipe for padak and it would be stored in clay jars in their house. The Laos use padak for its protein, flavour and salt content but now shrimp paste is used as a substitute in most households because it doesn't fill their house with a fishy aroma and it also saves time. Concentrated shrimp paste comes in small tins or plastic containers and is also very salty and pungent, smelling of fish and shrimps but once it is combined with other ingredients, the smell is lost and the flavour remains. According to my recipe book - A Lao saying is that when you can dip a raw bean in the shrimp paste and enjoy eating it you are 'truly' Lao.




Back at the school we have a coffee break and then we are ready to start.There is only Adam and I in the class so we have their full attention and a work station each. But it turns out we only get enough ingredients to cook once for each recipe, so we pair off. This should be interesting, Adam and I have never taken a class together.




The first two recipes are demonstrated by Neng and then Adam and I get the chance to share the preparation of each dish and then eat the food we have cooked.



The first dish is Luang Prabang Salad - usually served at all special occasions. It is basically a mixed leaf salad with watercress, tomato, cucumber, crushed unsalted peanuts, boiled egg, a homemade mayo made from hard-boiled egg, and optional fried ground pork. Neng tips us off and winks and says the more pork in this salad the better. This was easy and the mayonaise was most interesting to me as it was made with hard boiled egg yolk. It was nice but if I made it, I would change the presentation and add the mayo at the last possible moment before serving so it doesn't drown the leaves.



Next we cooked Feu Khua (rice noodles with chicken and vegetables), a tasty dish if you get the texture of the noodles right, otherwise it can go horribly wrong. This dish is a great way to use up the vegetables you have in the fridge.
Adam and I breeze through as they are quite simple dishes to make and we finish early so we sit down to eat our dishes and relax while Neng and Leng clean up our station.




The next three dishes in our cookbook are demonstrated, we have a tasting and need to decide on two to cook. We leave out the Oh Paedak (Lao pork casserole), as it is a very easy dish to cook at home. We choose Chicken Larp (Chicken Salad) and Green Papaya Salad, two of our favourite dishes in Lao, they both have intense flavours.

The Chicken Larp is a traditional Lao cold salad made with mince chicken, pork, fish or tofu, banana flowers, kaffir lime leaves, spring onions, shallots, garlic, coriander, lemongrass, rocket, roasted rice powder, chilli powder, fish sauce, crispy fried garlic and spring onion and lemon juice.

The green papaya salad combines the sweet and sour taste that the Laos enjoy so much in their cuisine. The green papaya salad is one of those dishes that you can tweak the flavours to your own liking. Each person has their own favourite combination, sometimes more chilli and less sugar or more fish sauce, you decide. I like my green papaya salad with a less shrimp paste and fish sauce as I find it a little too fishy for my liking, whereas Adam enjoys those flavours and like the added heat of a few more chillies. So we compromise and we sit down to taste our creations and find that neither of us are satisfied with our green papaya salad. It really is one of those dishes that should be made for each individual. The chicken larp was a success. An intensely flavoured salad but each ingredient is essential to get the texture and the 'wow factor' of flavour. Using the same dressing you might like to substitute the green papaya for green beans or cucumber.

Our last dish that we cook for the day, Khua Maak Kheua Gap Moo (Fried eggplant with pork) is one of those dishes that if you are not a fan of eggplant/aubergine, you certainly will be after you taste it. The aubergine melts in your mouth and compliments the saltiness of the pork and oyster sauce.



At last I get a demo on how to cook sticky rice and the famous jeowbong (the people of Luang Prabang say that their recipe is far superior than anywhere else in Laos and their right, I have included the recipe in a previous entry). I have been keen to learn the technique of cooking sticky rice and the ingredients of jeowbong, it is one of the best chilli pastes I have ever tasted and goes with just about anything and stores well in the fridge.

We feast yet again while Neng and Leng clean up. We enjoyed our day and Adam and I survived working in the kitchen together, the dishes were easy to prepare and we could have just followed a recipe and cooked these at home but it was all worth it for the technique of cooking sticky rice and the recipe for jeowbong.

I Love The Smell Of Pigs Blood In The Morning......

It's 6am, Adam and I are wandering the streets looking for monks in orange robes, if we find them we can observe the sacred morning alms ceremony, where devoted Laos place offerings of food and drink in the monks alms bowls. By doing this they gain merit and the monks get their daily meal.




There are about 32 temples in Louang Prabang and each morning the monks set out on a defined route. We come across a few women lining the street and we find a spot to sit and observe quietly. It soon becomes clear that there are not enough people participating and offering food to the monks and some must go hungry.

We talked to a local woman later and she explains that times are changing here, so many of the women that use to participate, now work so hard, they just don't have the time to get up so early to cook food and then bring the food to the monks. We both feel like we are intruding so we decide to go to the morning food market, I am told that this is the local food market where all the women from the mountains come down to sell their produce. After visiting the evening food market the night before, I am curious to see what the locals are really eating and I am not disappointed.




We turn a corner and the street is lined with women sitting on their bamboo mats each displaying their produce. Some women are selling just one item, others are selling an unusual but small variety, enough for each women to carry down from the mountains.




The first few women are selling fruit and vegetables, violet aubergines – long ones and baby ones, bunches of morning glory, rocket (a smaller variety than ours), pumpkins,dragonfruit, longan, melons, green papaya, banana flowers, sweet tamarind, coconuts and bananas, cucumbers, watercress, lettuce, galangal, ginger, ferns, river weed, green beans, bundles of shallots, a special wood that imparts a special flavour for Or lam stew, palm shoots, okra, kaffir lime leaves, bamboo filled with a sweet dessert of purple sticky rice, coconut milk, coconut meat and banana – a speciality at this time of year.












Baskets of whole grilled fish on bamboo sticks. Dried mackerel fillets, grilled wild birds – splayed in half showing their hearts and all, a foursome of frogs roasted on lemon grass stalks. Buckets of cockroaches, necklaces of baby crabs, grubs and worms, baskets of live frogs. I hear a chicken squawking and a young woman walks past holding a live chicken by its legs that she has just bought from a street vendor, ready to take home for dinner. Small hills of dried squid, barbecued and incinerated bush rat, an enormous catfish, a woman is sitting with frogs in her lap, tying their legs together with ribbons of bamboo.







Varieties of rice in large open baskets, a mountain of soy beans in their pods. In the distance I can see a women with a mound of coffee beans on the ground. She has a mug in one hand and she is scooping them from the bottom of the pile onto the top, many times but on closer inspection the coffee beans are in fact snails.










Rings of edible flowers and then a basket containing one guinea pig (I think). A bucket of live turtles some more okra and sitting right next to it is a snake. There are whole de-feathered duck, chickens and river shrimp. Lastly we arrive at the meat section, women are chopping away. I walk through quickly to avoid the splattering of blood and almost slip over as I gain my balance something catches my eye. I am peering into a bucket of congealed pigs blood, the heady aroma wafts up my nostrils and its time to retire.

This little piggy went to the night market.....

Just off the main street of tourist central is the night food market. I enter fully prepared because I have read - Ant Egg Soup, The Adventures of a Food Tourist in Laos by Natacha Du Pont De Brie and it has given me a basic understanding of Laos food and what to expect.



Laos food is very rural and is based on what is available at the market that day. The market is usually filled with women from the hills that come down into the village to sell what they have grown, caught or picked in the jungle.

Lao people are poor and to get their daily protein intake they will eat anything that moves, slithers, flies or crawls. So I am ready because things can get pretty wild. Who knows what delicacies are in store for us? The first stall serves up a Lao version of Pad Thai, quite simple - egg noodles tossed in Maggi soy sauce, bean sprouts, a pile of chilli, some ground nuts, all served on a banana leaf, wrapped and secured with a toothpick.



Next we have vegetarian spring rolls made with rice noodle paper with a choice of fresh or deep-fried stuffed with noodles, cabbage and bean-sprouts served with a dipping sauce of freshly squeezed lime juice, sugar syrup, dried crushed chillies, fish sauce and ground peanuts. They come in bags of 6 for 5000 kip. (about 30p to you and me) The rice paper is thin and delicate but keeps the ingredients in firmly, they taste light and crispy, not too oily.






Now it starts to get interesting, there is roast pig, crackling and all, chopped into pieces splayed out on the table. The pigs face is staring up at me, skin only and the full snout of course. On a plate, intestines are coiled high, belly, ribs, in fact the entire pig is here, bits and all. The ladies at the pork stand were all crowding around a large woven platter and chatting away. We were curious to find out what they would be eating, each woman took a green leaf - the size of a betel leaf and then selected a piece of chopped pork, various herbs and condiments from the platter.




The Laotians are so friendly, they noticed us peering at what they were eating and decided that we should join in, so they offered to share their dinner with us. I was handed a large green leaf that tasted quite bitter, wrapped tightly around a chunk of roast pork (which part, I don't know) with a pinch of sliced lemongrass, chopped shallots, banana flower and soft rice noodles and a dollop of sweeet chilli sauce and all bite size and very tasty. Adam was lucky, he chose his own pork piece, leaf and condiments, then wrapped it all up to eat. It was really good and seeing the look of satisfaction on our faces, they all laughed and we were offered some more. The Laos love to share their food. In fact the Lao believe that food eaten alone is not delicous and I would have to agree with them.




There are whole roast ducks stuffed with banana leaves and herbs. The grill section has whole fish, pork belly, quail, chicken and something that looks like eel all skewered with lemongrass stalks and grilled to perfection. Adam tried grilled pork belly on a lemongrass stick, the pork was really sticky and chewy on the outside with an intense musk, and very salty pork flavour.






The dessert stand was filled with various soy or coconut milk jellies, custards and pumpkin in coconut milk.



The Buffalo stand had a variety of buffalo - dried, sticky, or glazed with sesame seeds and alongside, the famous jaew bong - a condiment of red chillies, shallots, garlic and dried buffalo skin. (recipe in previous blogpost)





The curry stand has at least a dozen or so containers of various fish, meat, egg or vegetable curries that you can take away in plastic bags ready to be eaten. We are nearing the end of the market and have seen no signs of bush rat, frogs or even snake. To be honest I am a little relieved but disapponted at the same time. I also feel like a tourist because I have just noticed the locals don't eat here and it is just that - a tourist version of a Lao market. The soft version.



At the end of the market there were two vegetarian buffets layed out on long tables with wooden benches and they were packed with people. I can understand why you would want to eat vegetables after walking through all those displays of roasted meats and flies. The aromas were quite intense and it's hot and humid here, there is no refrigeration and to keep the flies away all the women had long sticks with plastic bags attached and they would wave them around like fans to keep the flies off the food but with not much effect.



Laos food looks great and I am sure tastes amazing but I am erring on the cautious side at the moment. So for 5000 kip you can pile your plate with an assortment of noodles, rice, pumpkin, aubergine, watercress, morning-glory, stir-fried vegetables and spring rolls and, of course, beer Lao. Call me a lightweight but I love my vegetables.