Food Trip

I've been so busy with 'other' things that I've neglected finishing my Hanoi series. We're now down to our last two days here. After visiting all the points of interest around the city, we now have enough time to relax, unwind and EAT. This post is devoted solely to food and the restaurants that served them! Heehee.



May 12 was my Mom's actual birthday and so I made sure we didn't rush her. Day 4 finds us having lunch at Brother's Cafe on 26 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. It is a quaint outdoor bistro that serves lunch buffets with everything Hanoi for the taking. We wanted to have a feel of the place and so we chose to eat outside even if the weather was HOT. Among those served, my favorite offerings were the bun cha grilled pork meat (can't get enough of them!), the rice dumpling cake with shrimp and pork, the special pancake, the tofu wrapped in salted egg and the shrimp cake wrapped on a sugarcane stalk. What a feast! It was Kenji and Tomo who introduced us to this place and they were our benefactors as well. After lunch, we hopped on over to Khai Silk which is a high end store specializing in everything (you guessed it!) silk. Khai Silk in Hanoi is what Jim Thompson is to Thailand. We found very interesting pieces which I can't wait to use once the weather in Manila gets cooler!



Mom wanted to go first class on her birthday and so we chose La Lua or Wild Rice on 6 Ngo Thi Nham Street for our dinner destination. Wild Rice is not your typical authentic Vietnamese restaurant. In fact, its decor to its menu is a fusion of different traditions and customs. The place looks like an upscale Hollywood restaurant with a touch of Zen, having tall stands of bamboo encased in glass, slate floors and bright white walls.

We all chose Menu no. 5 and ordinarily, each person would be asked to choose one appetizer, one main course, one dessert, etc. But since we were such a giddy group and we kept on repeating my Mom's birthday, they decided to serve everything on Menu no. 5! Hahahaha! For starters, we had Wild Rice soup, fried spring rolls, sea clam salad and pan fried young tofu. Lahat masarap! For our main course, we were served grilled prawns with chili and lemongrass, roasted chicken, pan-fried duck, steamed tofu and braised eggplant with vegetables, pork and spices. My Gad! I don't know how we made it out there alive because we still had dessert after all that!!! We were served coconut ice cream AND violet blutinous cake. Terrible, terrible. One whole day at the gym will not even be enough to burn all the calories gained! But we were all happily busog and we were still raring for some action!



So off we went for a round of cocktails at Restaurant Bobby Chinn (again!) on 1 Ba Trieu Street. BC was no longer around...either that or he was avoiding the rowdy group of ladies who were there the night before. Heehee. Seen here are Mom and her best dancing buddy gyrating while asking over and over again, who the f@#K is Alice! Also seen here is Tita Jean, their number one cheerleader and fan. Not seen here are the thirty something girls who were laughing their heads off while the senior citizens amused everyone in the restaurant. Heehee.





Our last day was super leisurely and we begin our day once again at noon. We are now at the Little Hanoi on 21 Hang Gai Street, a short walk from our hotel. It is a local-style fastfood joint that has basic bamboo and wood decor. Nothing fancy, very different from our dinner venue last night. The restaurant is a noisy but fun place overlooking the busy Hanoi street with roaring motorbikes passing by. We had our baguette fix, spring rolls, noodle soup but our favorite was the banana flower salad. I am told that it is also the specialty of the house.


Despite my pleas to head on over to Cha Ca La Vong for dinner, my companions had just about enough of the local cuisine and was now looking forward to something other than leafy vegetables! Tomo joined us for our last dinner at The Sushi Tokyo on 15 Ngo Trang Tien Street. As mentioned in an earlier post, Tomo is a Japanese national temporarily residing in Hanoi and so we knew she would bring us to the best place for our Japanese craving. We would not be disappointed! Sushi Tokyo served the freshest sushi and sashimi, tempura with the lightest batter, yummy gyudon and for a surprise treat, they even had scallop tempura! Nag-uunahan pa talaga kami! What a great way to end our Hanoi vacation. Although I really feel bad about missing out on Cha Ca La Vong, Reymond says it will be our first stop on our next trip there! Yipee! Looking forward to it already.

Henry, Charlie, Bobby and Alice

Since we knew we would be dog tired from the day before, we decided to go on a private tour and start at 9:30 instead of the typical 8am pick-up time. Today, we had the pleasure of meeting Henry our tour guide and Charlie our chauffeur. Both had given us their Vietnamese names and seeing that we had a hard time pronouncing it, they gave us the option of using their English names. Charlie was a nice middle aged man who didn't talk too much and was a very smooth driver. Henry, on the other hand, spoke with a thick Vietnamese accent which made it very difficult to understand anything he was saying. Add to that was the fact that he spoke with his face inches away from yours. Eeeeewwww.

In your face Henry first took us to the Tran Quoc Pagoda which is located by the West Lake. The Pagoda is the oldest one in Hanoi and is frequented daily by the local Buddhists. It is also a popular stop-over of many foreign visitors and pilgrims.

In the picture, Mom is wearing an oversized sunvisor which could easily pass as a fashion accessory. But in reality, mother kulit did not listen to her smart and logical daughter who asked her to wash her hair the evening before! At 9:30 that morning, she was still frantically blowdrying her wet hair. Due to time constraints, she had no choice but to hide her frizzy locks behind that visor. We were all dying of laughter when she came out of the room (me especially) and she got even more inis with us when she found out that we were on a private tour. She should've been allowed to finish daw her hair! Hahahahaha.

Next on our tour of Hanoi was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. In my previous post on Saigon, I said that HCM is a very important figure in this country since he is the acknowledged leader of the Communist Movement in Vietnam. He is revered by his people even years after his death and so they created this massive crypt to honor their fallen leader.

There was a long line out front but what we didn't realize was that the mausoleum was closing at 11am. We arrived 20 minutes before closing and so the wait was not too long. We had to leave all our bags with Henry because you are not allowed to bring any cameras, cellphones or any electronic devices inside that may take photos or videos of the crypt. As you step inside, you will feel frozen almost instantly. You are not allowed to talk nor mingle while in line and you must be completely silent while in the presence of HCM who lay frozen in a glass enclosure. When we got out, we asked Henry if that was really his body? Henry smiled politely but would not give an answer. Maybe it was unpatriotic to even suggest that and so he just kept quiet.



In the vicinity of the mausoleum is a complex housing the residence of HCM. The sprawling grounds has the Presidential Palace out front with a man-made lake behind it. Around the lake, HCM had his garage, his dining area, his resthouse, his pets and his garden where visitors were allowed to roam. HCM was never married and he didn't have children which I think was intentional given his mission in life was to attain the independence of Vietnam. He probably thought that having a wife and children would distract him from his mission. Talk about devotion to his country!

Our next stop was the One Pillar Pagoda which is within walking distance from the Palace Grounds. The pagoda is a cultural and historic relic unique for its architectural features. It is built in the shape of a lotus blooming on its stem.

A car ride away was the Museum of the Ethnology. This is where they collect the historical and cultural artifacts from the diff. ethnic groups of Vietnam. For the Amazing Race afficionados, the bike containing all those baskets was similar to the detour during Season 3 where Flo was bitching to Zach. Remember? Anyway, it was very beautiful and educational inside the Museum but because it was 12:30 na, we could no longer concentrate on the exhibits!

Upon reaching our lunch venue, all of us started elbowing one another refusing to go down. This incident was similar to the HE3 arrival! The restaurant was old, not very sanitary and they had food cooking on the sidewalk. We tried to convince Henry to bring us to another restaurant and we were even willing to pay for our food but he convinced us to stay and try their specialty dish. Thank God we listened to Henry!

The Dac Kim Restaurant on 1 Hang Minh Street only serves two dishes namely: the Bun Cha and the Crab Roll. The Bun Cha is a combination of grilled pork in cold, sweet broth mixed with rice noodles while cucumbers and fish sauce are added for taste. What the restaurant lacked in ambiance, it more than made up for in taste! What a yummy, yummy meal! The crab roll was plain but we couldn't stop raving about the Bun Cha! What a great food discovery.

After lunch, Charlie directed us to the Temple of Literature. If Henry is to be believed, the place houses the very first University in Vietnam and it also has a Temple for Confucius. While there, we had the chance to see a performance of traditional folk music using their local instruments. It was very interesting. I tried to upload the video but no luck! Grrrrrr.


After the 'concert', we rushed on over to the Hoan Kiem Lake and took a bunch of pictures on the red lacquer bridge. Shown here is some idiot who blocked me!!!! Hahahaha. You can also see the Ngoc Son Temple which is located in the middle of the lake. Next to Halong Bay, I think it is the most photographed image here in Hanoi.






The last part of the tour was the water puppet show at the Thang Long Theatre, a short distance away from the Lake. The show was very entertaining and at times comical--this despite the fact that the entire show was told in the Vietnamese language. The show was very graphic so despite 3/4 of the audience not understanding a word, they were still able to convey their thoughts and ideas thru the puppets. Galeng! I imagined the puppeteers to be underwater holding the puppets from below. Yun pala, they were in waist-deep water hiding behind a curtain and controlling the puppets from there with the use of sticks.


The highlight of this very loooooong post was dinner at Restaurant Bobby Chinn. For those who watch Travel & Living, you would know BC is part-Egyptian, part-Chinese, holds a college degree in Finance but now makes a living as a Chef in Hanoi. His restaurant, not to mention the chef, are known the world over and we felt so privileged to experience dining here!



Since our table was not yet ready, the host lead us to the lounge where we were served yummy ribs and spicy sweet peanuts. On the house, mind you. We also had the option of smoking the shisha which we politely declined. As we are led to our table, we are met by thousands of roses and rose petals which not only looked beautiful, it smelled sweet as well. The ambiance in the restaurant is light, homey and super comfortable. And the food, excellent! I ordered myself panfried salmon on a bed of wasabi mashed potatoes. For dessert, I had some sticky rice with mango which was not as exceptional as my main course pero parang masarap na rin. Iba kasi talaga ang ambiance!!! We also had the pleasure of conversing with the man himself. BC was very warm, unassuming, funny, witty and had initially refused to have a picture with us. Hahahahaha! Joke lang pala. He obliged and as you can see, we were all teeth! Kilig na kilig kami.

While waiting for our cab inside the resto, the song WHO THE FUCK IS ALICE starts blaring over the loud speakers. I had never heard of the song but the tune was really catchy and so in a few seconds, we found ourselves singing and laughing with everyone else in the resto joining in! It was classic! The group from New Zealand was so drunk that they even obliged Mom by dancing with her and Tita Cora. Ano ba. Nakakatawa talaga. When we reached our hotel, we were still singing and dancing that obscene song. Imagine our surprise when silly front desk officer stands up then starts dancing with Mom and Tita Cora. What a way to end our perfect day. Please search for the video on youtube so you'll understand why that song keeps ringing in my ear! Alice? Alice! Who the fuck is Alice!