Vietnam - Cuisine (Hanoi & Hoi An)

Hanoi is a city that is full of street food. Sadly it is void of vegetarian street food; the concept of vegetarianism is unfathomable to most Hanoians. This meant that our time in Hanoi was spent dining in small restaurants, rather than munching local dishes bought off a cart or a street corner.

I got to enjoy a delightful vegetarian Pho at the Aubergine Cafe, a place that we visited multiple times. In addition to the noodles it comes with a variation of vegetables (bok choi, bean sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower) and some delicious tofu. The Aubergine Cafe also serves the traditional versions with chicken or beef. Their fresh spring rolls come with slices of pineapple, giving them a nice fruity twist. In addition to that there menu displays a variety of creative aubergine dishes. The tables are glass topped, und beneath the glass, guests have left lovely notes commenting on the dishes they ate and the lovely service they recieved there. Reading them all is an endearing pasttime while waiting for your food to arrive. Generally it's a well priced and extremely well frequented restaurant. The first time we got there, there was a 30 minute wait, which we spent strolling through old quarter, as we had just landed in Vietnam an hour ago and were glad to have found something with good vegetarian options. It was definitely worth the wait.

Another Vietnamese specialty are their rice pancakes. The ones we had were the deliciously crispy ones at Mr. Bay. We went to Mr. Bay since a friend, that had recently been to Hanoi recommended it to me. The rice pancakes are filled, cut into stripes and eaten by wrapping them in rice paper. They are a crunchy delight of juicy vietnamese flavours. I would recommend Mr. Bay to anyone and happily go there again as the rice pancakes are a lot less oily and a lot more crispy than others we tried in Vietnam.

The only street food we had that was vegetarian was a dessert at the night market. A banana wrapped in sticky rice and covered in some kind of coconut goo with peanuts. It was really very yummy.

The last thing I wanted to mention food-wise from Hanoi was the egg coffee and the coconut coffee, that was recommended to me as a must try by Timothy. There are certain places that will do this well, and certain places that will do these not so well. We wanted to get both types of coffee to try so we had to hunt through a few places before we found one that also served coconut coffee (egg coffee is purchasable at any cafe).

Coconut coffee is an Iced coffee with coconut milk or cream. It’s quite delicious, sadly you cannot order it without ice, I think either the coconut milk is frozen or the crushed ice is already incorporated into the coconut. We only drank it once and it is something I’d love to recreate at home.

Egg coffee is a warm beverage that is rather like warm non-alcoholic eggnog and coffee. Im not sure how to describe it and I’ve had some delicious egg coffee and some quite quiestionable egg coffee. Probably for the same reason I don’t like eggnog, the more eggy it was the more disgusting I found it.

The one I had that I found heavenly was the egg coffee at Lapin Cafe in Hoi An. A little place we frequented for breakfast during our stay there. It was a delicious blend of creamy coffee that was - most importantly - non dairy.

Other than that the Lapin Cafe serves good breakfast at a midrange price, and was located down the street from out Hotel in Hoi An. The owner is very open and friendly, speaks fluent English and is happy to give you tips about what to do in Hoi An and answer any questions you may have.

Other than that a must try in Hoi An are the white rose dumplings, a very delicate filled rice noodle that sort of melts in your mouth a little bit. It’s very tasty, or at least the vegetarian version in the Minh Hien Vegetarian Restaurant was. The tourist traps in Ancient Village are places we generally steered clear from and Minh Hien’s white rose is a dish that particularly struck me as quite delicious even as I’m writing this now. The Vegetarian options in Hoi An were a lot more plentiful than in Hanoi (Though the won ton are boring and plain (both vegetarian and not)(but I do admit, that I am spoiled by my Chinese Grandmother's own version of the dish)) and in terms of street food we tried the rolled potato and the banana and mango pancakes. The sweet street food is usually the way to go as a vegetarian.

Like in Hong Kong we found a good Indian restaurant called Ganesh. The Indian food in Asia is really very up to par, and restaurants offer more variations than in Europe.

One more (pricy-er) place we went for dinner was Hola Taco, a Mexican restaurant with exquisite nachos, soft shell tacos and enchiladas - perfect on a night you’ve just about had enough of asian flavours.(again I am spoiled from growing up in a city with an extremely colourful food and flavour palette)

Food in Vietnam was a lovely surprise to me and Darius (Who remembers it very differently) and especially those rice pancakes at Mr. Bay are something we will wistfully look back to for a while to come.

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Em

20/01/2018

Siem Reap

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