Hanoi Street Eats via Cyclo
I usually avoid guided tours when traveling, but a few years back I signed up for a street food tour of Hanoi’s Old Quarter with provider Hanoi Street Food Tour. It was a total blow-out experience. I highly recommend hooking up with them and opting for the food/cyclo tour option. But if you want to stroll around this area on your own and sample some great dishes, it wouldn't be hard to manage either.
I found it hard to go wrong in terms of food options in Hanoi. To boot, street scenes provide a vivid backdrop between meals, many of which you can snap from the front seat of your slow-moving cyclo.
Decadent smells from the food stalls lining the narrow roads match the vibrant and colorful surrounds. It’s hard not to just leap off your trike sometimes.
While on the cyclo tour, we made about eight stops for snacks which was pretty excessive, but there was a great mix of different local dishes at every small shop. What follows is a beef jerky salad (nộm thịt bò khô). I would not recommend filling up on this one, but it’s a good salty/chewy snack to kick the tour off. Grab toothpicks from adjacent table if you are lacking.
Bánh cuốn is a gooey wide flat noodle steamed up with a filling of fungus and minced pork. It’s quite similar to the changfen (肠粉) you often find at your favorite Canto dim sum locale. It is squishy and fantastic. Loved by all.
Bún bò nam bộ is a Southern dish popular in Hanoi. Don’t miss this one. We had bowls with the Apron Up team at 66 Bát Sứ, where you can also learn to cook this awesome beef and rice noodle dish along with many other Hanoi favorites.
If you want to do your own freestyle snack tour of the Old Quarter, Apron Up could serve as your ground zero — there are dozens of restaurants within a three block radius. Another great place for this noodle dish and many others is the appropriately named Bún Bò Nam Bộ,about two blocks south of Apron. Chả Cá Thăng Long, the legendary (and touristy) fried fish spot is about two blocks to the Southeast.
If there’s one thing you need to know about Hanoi street snacks it’s that they have the most insanely good spring rolls (chả giò) on the planet. Super crispy, bundled up with fresh herbs to be dredged in a mildly sweet dipping sauce. It is often paired with grilled pork and cool vermicelli.
There is also a famous snail soup in Hanoi called bún ốc, but I accidentally did not eat that.
I grew up in California and, at least in my opinion, I’ve had great versions of chả giò, phở and other Vietnamese classics in the States. But what really sets things apart when you’re on the ground in Vietnam is the way the freshly picked herbs add a special dimension to the relatively mild meat and noodle flavors. These critical food ingredients are distributed via a contant and baffling network of scooters, to joints high and low all across Hanoi.
If you are serious about prepping for a Hanoi food experience, check out the definitive Eating Viet Nam by Graham Holliday. Chapter Twenty-two of this book is titled, “Vietnamese Food is Nothing Without Herbs”. Some such ingredients are familiar, such as local mint and chives. Some you won’t find even in the likes of San Jose, CA — such as banana stem, guava leaves and ubiquitous aquatic bits hailing from rice paddies and river beds, the names of which seem to elude even locals.
Hope you have a chance to enjoy awesome Hanoi.
