Xin Chào Hanoi! 7D6N

Hạ Long Bay, Vietnam

It’s winter, but Hanoi hasn’t gotten the memo. The weather’s mild enough to put on jeans if you want to, but even that’s not strictly essential. And you wouldn’t need, say, a cardigan or a jacket.

What you do need is gumption and nerves of steel in order to thread your way through the city amongst the cars, vans and scooters that come in every direction, traffic lights and pedestrians be damned. Hanoi’s busy as ever; We saw a few accidents during our visit. We stayed in the Old Quarter on our first night, which sounds peaceful but is in fact not. It’s incredibly chaotic, with swatches of frantic motorbikes and hectic delivery trucks running through the district as soon as day breaks. But if it sounded like Hanoi should smell of exhaust and dirt, it doesn’t either. There’s a florist on near-every street. We can smell the fragrance of the flowers several storefronts away. They’re a welcome sight, but I’ve got to ask: who’s buying all these flowers? 

Cafe Dinh, Hanoi

The other thing that you need is a huge appetite for the wonderful food of Hanoi. Hanoi is a food destination, and the locals are rightly proud of their cuisine and their heritage. Everybody we met, from the hotel concierges to the day trip guides, have a list of recommended restaurants that they hand out to their guests. I certainly had my fill of some of the best Bún Chà, Phö, Chả Cá and Vietnamese coffee in Hanoi.

We went in December, which was just the right season to see the famous limestones cliffs of Northern Vietnam. We first headed eastwards to the coastal region of Hạ Long Bay, and then down south to Ninh Binh. After the frenzied air palpable in Hanoi city, Hạ Long Bay (and its less-congested cousin, Bai Tu Long Bay) was just the antidote that we needed. 

Bai Tu Long Bay, in dusk

It was serenity out there on the bay. We spent two days on an old-fashioned wooden cruise out in the waters. Schools of small fish skipped above the waves. We swam in the bay, and kayaked to pockets of beaches with pristine soft sand. We visited Thien Canh Son Cave, a limestone cavern on an island that doubled as a radar station during the Vietnam War. As the sun set, splashing streaks of pink and purple over Halong Bay, we chatted and dined on the top deck of the ship. The next morning, the guide led the guests in a tai-chi session on the deck amongst the limestone cliffs. 

I remembered Ninh Binh from my previous trip about a decade ago, where we sat in rowboats as porters rowed us through the canals past the limestone cliffs. The Tam Coc region was just as beautiful as I had remembered. 

We also visited Mua Cave, where after about 20 minutes of intense steep climbing, we reached the scenic lookout point, with the fields and town laid out beyond us.

We stopped at the city centre on the way back, where we caught the sunset lighting up Unicorn Temple like a backlight.

We spent 7 days in Vietnam in total, which gave us plenty of time to eat around and tour the city. Vietnam has quite the bustling street food culture. In a city where space comes at a premium, it’s pretty common for the patrons to spill out of the restaurant and eat on foot-high tables and stools out on the sidewalks, which was where we found ourselves sitting at most of the time, slurping down bowls of Pho, Bún Chà and Chè. There’s a ton of online opinions on where to find The Best so-and-so, and I don’t want to add too much more to the chatter, but from our experience, I know that we’re in good hands when an eatery only serves one type of food, and all we have to do is to indicate to the server how many persons to serve.

Bún Chà - our favourite Vietnamese food. It’s grilled chicken and vermicelli served in an addictively fragrant broth with the obligatory deep-fried spring rolls. Tuvêt Bún Chà 34 and Bún Chả Hàng Quạt are our favourite places.

In a cramped alleyway, the cooks of Bún Chả Hàng Quạt were grilling meat patties over white-hot charcoal. This humble setup served me one of the best food of my life.

 

Phö ranks up there along my favourite foods, and the northern regions make the Phö broth lighter than the ones that I’m used to. This one is from Phö 10 Ly Qude Su. 

A bowl of Chè is the traditional Vietnamese dessert - it’s a glutinous sticky concoction drizzled with coconut milk and ice. Our favourite dessert place was from a small place called Little Bowls. The sweetness level was more muted, and the other flavours came through better. We had both the caramel mixed bowl, a bowl of soft flan with coconut ice cream which really was not sweet, and prompted us to also order traditional mixed bowl. It was so good, we went back for one last fix on our second last day. 

Little Bowls

Chả Cá. it’s one of those dishes that I’ve not heard of before coming, but it’s now one of my favourite dishes in Vietnam. It’s fried fish that is then pan-fried with lots of greens and served with vermicelli. It’s incredibly delicious, and Chả Cá Thăng Long is a multi-storied restaurant that is hugely popular with the locals, and only serves this dish. 

The grandest meal we had was at Senté, a contemporary Vietnamese restaurant that incorporates lotus into all their dishes. 

We had minced snail patties rolled in piper lolot leaves and then grilled, to be served with fresh lotus leaves (a play on the traditional dish, where the snail meat was packed in rice paper rolls). My favourite was with their take on Xôi Yến, the local version of glutinous rice. Here, it’s tender beef short ribs with black rice baked in lotus leaves, and served with onsen tamago quail eggs. 

Unagi black rice sushi, with grilled lotus root. My friend didn't like it, which left more for me. I thought this dish was just swell.

The best drink I’ve had in Hanoi was found here: coconut and lotus water served in a grilled coconut. 

Lotus Seed Ice Cream, Crème Brûlée with lotus purée and silk tofu in lotus juice. 

We were also fortunate that six months before we came, the Michelin guide published their first-ever recommendations for the country, awarding several restaurants in Hanoi the coveted Michelin stars. We had lunch at Tầm Vị on our last day, which specialises in traditional Vietnamese fare. It may not bold, or transformative, or whatever else online commenters think a Michelin star should represent, but I like it: it’s simply Vietnamese traditional cooking done well. 

Tầm Vị

The traditional version of snail meat patty, wrapped in rice paper rolls together with lettuce and vermicelli 

Cau Go was a recommended restaurant in the Old Quarter. It’s cunningly hidden, but eventually we found that taking the lift located in the middle of a Cantonese restaurant Fu Rong Hua would bring you to Cau Go on the sixth floor. The restaurant’s full of old-world charm, and overlooks Hoàn Kiếm Lake. My favourite dish here is the lotus root and pig ears salad, which was well-crafted - the crunch of the toasted peanut, and fresh vegetables and the sweet unami sauce. We also really like the grilled squids: the squid was served above a small charcoal stove, and the meat is delicate and not at all rubbery. There was a spicy mint sauce with a lot of kick. We will skip the hotpot the next time around, which was decent but not particularly noteworthy.

And the restaurant with the best presentation? Look no further than Bếp Prime, and order their Flambe Chicken. 

We remained well-caffeinated throughout our trip: we start every day with a cup of Vietnamese coffee (cà phê), and continued drinking until well into the afternoon. The local specialty is the egg coffee, which was created in response to the wartime shortage of fresh milk and condensed milk. The egg is sweetened and then beaten until well-frothed, and tastes like a dessert. We tried the original version at Cafe Giang, and also the heavily spiced version at Loading T Cafe, where the coffee beans are roasted with cinnamon sticks, and each cup had a hint of nutmeg. Perfect for Christmas, if it hadn't only been so hot.

 

Loading T Cafe - both their hot and their iced coffee were excellent. The egg portion of their hot coffee is silkier, and the coffee is more cinnamon forward and with a hint of nutmeg. The iced one is foamier but perfect for this warm winter. Your choice. 

 

My favourite coffee shop is the Hidden Gem Coffee, not only was their egg coffee terrific, they also have a wonderfully-crafted concoction called salted coffee with an addictive mildly-salted savoury foam. 

One morning, we also sat down at a coffee shop next to the railway track, and boy, that was an experience. Both of the warmth of the Vietnamese grandma running the store, and the exhilaration/fear of having a train barrel thisclose towards you at full force. I stepped back involuntarily. 

Our hotel manager recommended Kem Trang Tien, an ice cream shop that is popular with the locals. Both the pink guava stick ice cream and the green bean ice cream were pretty delicious. The storefront is gigantic, with a capital G. It looks like a Parisian boulevard, entirely indoors, with mini streets. Patrons on motorbikes drive into the store, park their bikes next to an empty table, and purchase ice cream.

Can you spot the rows of parked bikes on the right side of the picture? 

We took in a few local attractions over our stay. I’d been to the mausoleum before, and my friends weren’t keen on going, so we gave it a miss. We did go to Hoa Lo, which translates to fiery furnace. It was a prison first used to house political prisoners, and during the Vietnam war, housed American POWs, earning itself the nickname ‘Hotel Hanoi’. (The site has photo-documentation of its rather gory past, and our hotel manager was rather taken aback when he first heard that we wanted to go to it. We concurred afterwards - it is a local attraction, but perhaps isn’t the most conventional tourist thing to do.) We walked around the West Lake, and then the French Quarter and the Old Quarter. The traditional water puppet show... wasn’t half-bad. This is a small auditorium and music and singing was live. Was it also because we had been walking around the entire day and I was glad to be sitting down? Absolutely. We walked by Maison Marou, a bean-to-bar chocolatier in the area, and 1 month later, as I'm digging into their chocolate bars and daubing their cacao spread onto bread, I'm reminded how terrific chocolate products can be produced from all over the world.   

Street carts hawking fruits are a common sight on the roads of Hanoi.

Over the week, I fell in love with the cuisine all over again. We love the fresh coffee. The Bún Chà in the mornings and the Chả Cá late at night. The abundance of greens with every meal. Our tailored clothes from Văn Hùng Tailor (even though they took a month instead of the usual 3 days, which is the standard of Bangkok's Alex Fashion or Paul's Fashion. But the quality was undeniable.) Hanoi, it’s been an absolutely incredible trip.