The previously-promised street food eating spree was derailed back in Hanoi when my stomach rebelled and called for a hamburger, which I enjoyed in a neon-lit bar called "The Pinky Moon", feeling awfully guilty after all my hoity-toity no restaurants with English names talk. I made up for it later, in Hue. My first few days in the former imperial capital I spent sick with a bad cold, and I mostly just lay around my hotel room, watching tennis and periodically saying rather angrily to the empty room, "yes, I am having a good time!" Feeling better, in body and mood alike, I decided to put my stomach right back to work and embark on a street food bonanza here. Hue is ostensibly the nation's food capital, but in the previous 2 days I'd had nothing but lousy meals (but I'd only gone to the places within about 100 paces of my hotel, where the music was loud enough no one would notice me honking my nose every 45 seconds). I have a hunch that in Hue you either have to aim high and splash out on an imperial feast (in which you dress up in Ngyuen Dynasty-era caps and gowns) or aim low and head for the street kitchens. I was not about to get dressed up in a costume to eat dinner, so the choice is clear. Roped into my scheme is Sean: Russian-Irish Australian philosophy major. Got all that?
The derby begins at the "Why Not? Bar", in Hue's European city (Hue divides into 3 distinct areas: the European city, south of the Perfume River; the Imperial city, north thereof; and Phu Cat, the largely-Chinese merchants' quarter). At the Why Not?, I ordered Banh It, little steamed dumplings of glutinous rice flour, stuffed with shrimp and pork. Sounds like a winner, yet banh it proved to be that rarest of items: something I find so gross I cannot eat. The rice dough was so glutinous I felt I was going to choke on it, the shrimp was ultra-fishy and still had the shell on, and the pork was not so much pork meat as subcutaneous pork fat, or something. Overall it succeeded in being too fishy, too crunchy, too chewy, and too porky, all at once. (And by "so gross I can not eat it", I mean I could only eat half of it.)
Not a great start, but onwards: Sean and I take cyclos across the Perfume River to the Imerial City side, where the central market is. I said I would not pay more than 20,000 dong (about $1.25) for the ride across, which in hindsight I think is a little like saying "I'm only paying $10 for that banana, and not a penny more!" Our first stop marketside is for Chao, purchased from a little old lady with her portable kitchen of 2 baskets, a gas burner, a big pot, and a few plastic stools. Chao is a soup made of rice, similar to congee, but whereas I've always found congee dull as can bee, this was excellent. Rice, beef broth, chili, a big hunk of beef shank, fresh herbs & scallions, and a cube of - oh yummy - congealed blood (I gamely took a bite of the blood and left the rest; Sean, good man, ate the whole thing.) It's excellent comfort food - hot and spicy, slightly creamy from the rice, and I probably would have done well the days I was sick to toddle out here for this.
No time to linger over the chao, however, so we pay our 50 cents and move on. The next street kitchen presents us with Bun Bo Hue. Bun Bo is to Hue what Currywurst is to Berlin, or accursed Crab Cakes are to Seattle: the city's official dish. Spicy beef broth, spiked with aromatic spices, along with another hunk of beef shank, herbs, chili, all heaped upon bun (thin white rice noodles). Again with the comfort food, the spicy broth seeming to warm me up after about 2 weeks of being too cold, and (against all my expectations) wrapped up in my Berlin woolies. I'm a fan of the occasional currywurst, but Bun Bo offers much more to be proud of in a city-wide dish.
Next I want to try something called Banh Khoai, usually listed on menus as "traditional vietnamese pancake". I ask the bun bo lady where we can find said dish, by saying "banh khoai?" over and over and shrugging my shoulders up to my ears. She points down the street, away from the market. Heading that direction, our same cyclo drivers materialize out of nowhere and seem surprised when we say that we're not heading back across the river yet, we still want to eat. They seem to know this banh khoai place we're in search of, and I'm not sure how it came about, but a minute or so later I'm driving the cyclo down Hue's main drag, while my driver reclines, smoking, in the passenger seat. Much to the laughter and stares of everyone. (I charged the (erstwhile) driver 15,000 VND for the service, got back a little on my pricey banana.) After a few blocks, the driver indicates that I should turn right and stop, but I find that there are no brakes, so I stop by driving my cyclo straght into Sean's (which, BTW, seems to be the way people dock their boats here, so I figured that's just how it's done here). But on to the traditional pancake!
Banh Khoai looks like an omelette and behaves like mu shu pork, but is neither. You take rice batter, tinged with turmeric for the deceptively eggy color, and fry it crispy in a little omelette pan, with pork, shrimps, and bean sprouts. It arrives at the table golden and sizzling, along with fresh lettuce and herbs, rice paper wrappers, and bowl of peanut sauce. Tear off a portion of the pancake, place in a wrapper, add greens, roll up, dunk in peanut sauce. It has that sort of floury flavor I notice in mu shu, but with the fresh aromatic herbs and the spicy peanut sauce, it's much more flavorful.
(A note about the language barrier, when dealing with places that don't have an english menu, or, for that matter, any menu at all, nor a name, nor a fixed address. I find I can get almost everything I need by knowing, first of all, the names for most foods I am on the lookout for. Beyond that, I know please, thank you, hello, and goodbye, and saying these with as much ebullience as I can muster (=plenty), seems to get me real far. "Xin Chao!!!!! Bun bo Hue? Bun bo hue!!!!! Cam on!! Tam biet!!!!")
For a last blast before the cyclo guys wheel our stuffed & bloated forms back across the bridge, I order a plate of Banh Cuon. I'd had these in Saigon on my first morning in the country, and found them kind of chewy and lackluster. These made up for it: sheets of rice paper (the thick, fresh, flobbery kind), a layer of basil and mint, all wrapped around a few morsels of marinated char-grilled meat. There was nothing lackluster about these, and I think they might embody what's great about Vietnamese food: an all-around perfect balance of flavor and texture - chewy, crispy, bland, spicy, minty, all in one little roll of rice paper. The same can be said for everything we've eaten tonight: chao, bun bo, banh khoai.... even the banh it, though I found it virtually inedible, had everything... just too much of everything.
At this point, I think it's safe to say: I'm full.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Lost in Sapa
Sapa, in the Northwest Mountains not far from the Chinese border, boomed in the 19th Century when homesick French discovered its alpine charms. The place swiftly became a resort town, with visitors arriving in sedan chairs borne by natives. Now it's still a resort town, or should I say it's again a resort town, and it still smacks of a sort of colonial unsavoriness. The primary recreation here is no longer tennis, it's visiting the villages of the local ethnic minorities (primarily Black Hmong, Flower Hmong, and Black and Red Dao) and being beguiled by the little Hmong girls. These little girls throng the streets, tanned and apple-cheeked, bedecked in beautiful brocades and embroidery, and a wealth of huge hoop earrings. Their resplendent appearance is the first thing you notice about them, the second is how friendly and inquisitive they are (with better English than most of the people working in tourism in Hanoi). Thirdly, you realize they have the best sales pitch ever, and somehow you see your wallet opening up and the 100K Dong notes flowing out. No surprise I'm a great big sucker, but these kids could probably have sold me a Cadillac if I'd stayed an extra day or two. There's an unspoken exchange policy I noticed in effect: you buy something from a little Hmong girl, you get to take a picture of her. It's a system that seems to leave both parties satisfied, but it made me uncomfortable. (This taps into a larger issue I've been thinking of a lot, the ethics of tourism, but if I go into it now I will never get to the Sapa parts, so I'll save it for later.)
My first morning in Sapa, having arrived on the night train from Hanoi, I headed out of my hotel to go walk around the market (my usual pastime), and was"picked up" by 2 girls, May and Pie, who took me by the hand and hammered me with questions. By the time we'd gone 2 blocks, they knew all about my family, my siblings, my boyfriend (BTW no one here ever asks what my job is). They asked if I had any babies, and I was surprised to discover that Pie, whom I'd taken to be about 16, had 4 kids, the youngest of whom was strapped hidden on her back. He was tiny (then again so was she - I towered over her by about 18 inches) and she told me his name was (what sounded to me) "Hugh". I told her where come from there are many people named Hugh, and she laughed. In the spirit of our new friendship, I though I'd buy a pair of the earrings Pie was selling, and to be fair, a mouth harp from May. I made the gross error, however, of pulling out my wallet on the main street above the market, and in seconds I was surrounded by about 12 other women, all holding up bags, bracelets, pillowcases, etc and very much "invading my dance space". In fact, they were quite literally backing me against the wall, all clamoring "you buy something from me." Finally I handed Pie her money and broke out of the group, which followed me, I held up my hands to indicate that I was done with business for the day,and eventually most of them fell back. One older woman stayed glued to me, insisting I buy something, seemingly angry that I had looked at her stuff without buying anything (which, being as I had not looked at it so much as had it thrust under my nose, was an unfair charge). I said I didn't want anything. This went on for blocks and blocks. I finally just asked her to go away, and she said that she would follow me, all day if necessary, until I bought something, and if I really wanted her to go away, I had to buy something. (Note: I would NOT buy a Cadillac from this woman!) Finally, I turned down a side street,and the woman drifted away, muttering in Hmong.
By now, it's just 9:30 am.
But I haven't gotten to the really strange thing about Sapa: a mountain-top town, in the shadow of Mt Fansipan, Vn's highest peak, and I had seen nothing of the mountains, nor anything of Sapa. We were in deep cloud: not fog, not mist: cloud. Like when you're in a plane, descending to land and you fly through the cloud cover and for a minute or so you can see nothing, not even the wing of the plane, just the blinking red light at the end of the wingtip. I could see the road beneath my feet and about 3 shopfronts ahead of me, but otherwise all was white. Even looking at my map was difficult. (Perhaps that's why the Hmong dress so splendidly: to see each other in the mist.)
Later I met up with Brian, an American I'd met in Hanoi. This was his 4th time in Sapa, and he knew people there, 2 Hmong women, So and Thu (pron."choo", like the suppressed sneeze of a dainty lady). Thus the 4 of us began a long strange evening. We went for dinner at a place they all had been the previous night, a little shack on an unlit street.There were 2 tables, one of whihc was given over to 10 little children glued to a Chinese soap opera playing on the TV. Hmong words were exchanged, and dishes started coming out; we all spooned rice and little bites from the dishes into one another's bowls (I played it off like I do this every Tuesday night, or something). When the soap opera ended, the kids all dashed out of the shed in a hurry. Dinner for 4 of us cost a total of about 30,000 VND, which comes to $1.85. Then we headed for the foodstalls by the market, walking across an open space I was told was the main square but of course could not see. Talk had turned to Vietnam's famous rice wine, specifically the Hmong Apple Rice Wine, and we sat down at one of the stalls and ordered a bottle. We got an Aquafina water bottle filled with a dim, cloudy liquid with sediment at the bottom, like unfiltered apple cider. (Didn't taste like apple cider!) I ordered a round of sticky rice, which is packed into a bamboo tube, heated on the grill, hacked out of the bamboo, and then toasted further on the grill, cut into pieces, and served with a gravel of ground peanuts, salt and pepper for dipping. It was dense, chewy, crispy, smoky, salty: in short, the perfect bar food, and the Aquafina bottle was soon enough empty. Later, we wound up playing darts at the Tua Bar, the kind of bar that would probably be a hit in Seattle or LA.
I'm not sure if I can make it clear the very strangeness and pure surreality I felt at this moment: I'd come on the night train to Lao Cai through unseen landscape, taken a bus to Sapa trough the misty dawn, arrived in in city I could only see in 20-foot increments, surrounded by mountains whose existence I could only take on faith, playing darts with 2 women from a small Hmong village and 1 Los Angelino, while all about me more beautifully dressed girls challenged Aussie frat-boy types at pool, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billy Joel blasted from the speakers. It's the kind of moment that makes me think that surely there can be no such thing as fate, because this arrangement was as random as any that I could possibly imagine, or perhaps its very unlikeliness was proof of just that: how else could one possibly wind up here if not destined?
Soon the 4 of us decided to call it a night. Brian headed off for his hotel, and So and Thu linked arms with me and we all headed in the direction of our various lodgings. I though they were walking me back to my hotel, but they abruptly let go of my arms and said "Good night!" And I was suddenly alone (though my hotal, it turned out, was just a block away). The cloud was just as thick as before, but in the night time it was different: the light from all the invisible houses and shops had suffused the cloud with light, so the air itself was a source of brightness, and solid, seemingly almost gelid, and utterly isolating, as strange and beautiful as anything else I'd seen that day.
My first morning in Sapa, having arrived on the night train from Hanoi, I headed out of my hotel to go walk around the market (my usual pastime), and was"picked up" by 2 girls, May and Pie, who took me by the hand and hammered me with questions. By the time we'd gone 2 blocks, they knew all about my family, my siblings, my boyfriend (BTW no one here ever asks what my job is). They asked if I had any babies, and I was surprised to discover that Pie, whom I'd taken to be about 16, had 4 kids, the youngest of whom was strapped hidden on her back. He was tiny (then again so was she - I towered over her by about 18 inches) and she told me his name was (what sounded to me) "Hugh". I told her where come from there are many people named Hugh, and she laughed. In the spirit of our new friendship, I though I'd buy a pair of the earrings Pie was selling, and to be fair, a mouth harp from May. I made the gross error, however, of pulling out my wallet on the main street above the market, and in seconds I was surrounded by about 12 other women, all holding up bags, bracelets, pillowcases, etc and very much "invading my dance space". In fact, they were quite literally backing me against the wall, all clamoring "you buy something from me." Finally I handed Pie her money and broke out of the group, which followed me, I held up my hands to indicate that I was done with business for the day,and eventually most of them fell back. One older woman stayed glued to me, insisting I buy something, seemingly angry that I had looked at her stuff without buying anything (which, being as I had not looked at it so much as had it thrust under my nose, was an unfair charge). I said I didn't want anything. This went on for blocks and blocks. I finally just asked her to go away, and she said that she would follow me, all day if necessary, until I bought something, and if I really wanted her to go away, I had to buy something. (Note: I would NOT buy a Cadillac from this woman!) Finally, I turned down a side street,and the woman drifted away, muttering in Hmong.
By now, it's just 9:30 am.
But I haven't gotten to the really strange thing about Sapa: a mountain-top town, in the shadow of Mt Fansipan, Vn's highest peak, and I had seen nothing of the mountains, nor anything of Sapa. We were in deep cloud: not fog, not mist: cloud. Like when you're in a plane, descending to land and you fly through the cloud cover and for a minute or so you can see nothing, not even the wing of the plane, just the blinking red light at the end of the wingtip. I could see the road beneath my feet and about 3 shopfronts ahead of me, but otherwise all was white. Even looking at my map was difficult. (Perhaps that's why the Hmong dress so splendidly: to see each other in the mist.)
Later I met up with Brian, an American I'd met in Hanoi. This was his 4th time in Sapa, and he knew people there, 2 Hmong women, So and Thu (pron."choo", like the suppressed sneeze of a dainty lady). Thus the 4 of us began a long strange evening. We went for dinner at a place they all had been the previous night, a little shack on an unlit street.There were 2 tables, one of whihc was given over to 10 little children glued to a Chinese soap opera playing on the TV. Hmong words were exchanged, and dishes started coming out; we all spooned rice and little bites from the dishes into one another's bowls (I played it off like I do this every Tuesday night, or something). When the soap opera ended, the kids all dashed out of the shed in a hurry. Dinner for 4 of us cost a total of about 30,000 VND, which comes to $1.85. Then we headed for the foodstalls by the market, walking across an open space I was told was the main square but of course could not see. Talk had turned to Vietnam's famous rice wine, specifically the Hmong Apple Rice Wine, and we sat down at one of the stalls and ordered a bottle. We got an Aquafina water bottle filled with a dim, cloudy liquid with sediment at the bottom, like unfiltered apple cider. (Didn't taste like apple cider!) I ordered a round of sticky rice, which is packed into a bamboo tube, heated on the grill, hacked out of the bamboo, and then toasted further on the grill, cut into pieces, and served with a gravel of ground peanuts, salt and pepper for dipping. It was dense, chewy, crispy, smoky, salty: in short, the perfect bar food, and the Aquafina bottle was soon enough empty. Later, we wound up playing darts at the Tua Bar, the kind of bar that would probably be a hit in Seattle or LA.
I'm not sure if I can make it clear the very strangeness and pure surreality I felt at this moment: I'd come on the night train to Lao Cai through unseen landscape, taken a bus to Sapa trough the misty dawn, arrived in in city I could only see in 20-foot increments, surrounded by mountains whose existence I could only take on faith, playing darts with 2 women from a small Hmong village and 1 Los Angelino, while all about me more beautifully dressed girls challenged Aussie frat-boy types at pool, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Billy Joel blasted from the speakers. It's the kind of moment that makes me think that surely there can be no such thing as fate, because this arrangement was as random as any that I could possibly imagine, or perhaps its very unlikeliness was proof of just that: how else could one possibly wind up here if not destined?
Soon the 4 of us decided to call it a night. Brian headed off for his hotel, and So and Thu linked arms with me and we all headed in the direction of our various lodgings. I though they were walking me back to my hotel, but they abruptly let go of my arms and said "Good night!" And I was suddenly alone (though my hotal, it turned out, was just a block away). The cloud was just as thick as before, but in the night time it was different: the light from all the invisible houses and shops had suffused the cloud with light, so the air itself was a source of brightness, and solid, seemingly almost gelid, and utterly isolating, as strange and beautiful as anything else I'd seen that day.
Things I've Seen Carried on a Motorbike
- A full-length mirror
- A crateful of clucking chickens (live fowl!)
- 4 potted kumquat trees
- A glass-fronted china hutch
- A family of 6
- 3 dead pigs
- Silk flower displays, heading for delivery, surrounding the driver and looking like the Rose Bowl Parade gone lo-fi
- Bales of fresh herbs packed tightly as hay
- A huge pane of glass, just waiting for a slapstick movie mishap
- 20-foot-long lengths of 2-by-4s
- Dozens of tropical fish tied into individual plastic bags, all of different colors, hte globes of the sacks reflectng the sky and the flash of the traffic, as if he's carrying a rack of prisms or crystal balls
- A tree of cotton candy, lit somehow from within, the pink and white tufts glowing like... like... like a tree of cotton candy tufts lit somehow from within
- Another motorbike
[Watch this space for more!!]
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Primordial Soup
In the course of doing a little check-in with myself yesterday over a plate of Nom Du Du (green papaya salad with dried beef), I find I've been truant when it comes to my grand eating project. I've been too reliant on my Rough Guide which, for its many virtues, plays it easy on its restaurant recommendations, preferring to list places where you can get spaghetti and meatballs or a steak, or otherwise thoroughly westernized Vietnamese food. Witness last night's dinner at a place called "Little Hanoi" in the Old Quarter: I ordered the "traditional Vietnamese shrimp cake", which turned out to be 6 flat rounds of fried batter with a shrimp pressed into the top of each and, pinwheeling from the edges of the rounds were a dozen french fries. It wasn't horrible, it was just a little TGIFridays, which I needn't fly around the globe for.
So, having an unexpexted extra day in Hanoi before moving on to Halong Bay, I resolve to be a little more agressive and adventurous in my eating. I've listed a dozen (actually traditional) things to eat and drawn a little map for where to get those items. The rule I've made is that I won't go anywhere that has an English-language name: no Little Hanoi, 69 Bar, City View Cafe, etc etc. No places where groups of Americans and Australians sit around playing cards over plates of fries. If the kitchen serves only 1 item, and all ordering is done by pointing, all the better.
Deciding there's no time to lose on the matter, I head out to a place down the street from my hotel. The kitchen is at the intersection of several very busy streets, facing the Hang Da Market. Though recommended by Rough Guide, there is certainly no English menu to worry about, and nary a white person to be seen. Tiny plastic tables and chairs (what in Seattle would be considered little kids' booster stepping-stools) spill out of the crowded kitchen. The dish I'm here for is Mien Luon, which I understand will be "spicy noodles with crispy eels". Well, it was that, but so much more. I was brought a bowl of soup with a great nest of mien noodles (thin, translucent, flat, and gummy - not to be confused with bun noodles), a spicy & briny broth (much lighter than that of pho), the obligatory fresh herbs and bean sprouts, and last but not least, a whole school of dark, crinkly items about the size and shape of anchovies, but dark green: the eels. Whether these were many little eels, or several long thin eels sectioned into 3-inch lengths, I'm not sure. They'd been dredged in flour and fried; very chewy, they gave me more time than I needed to linger over their slightly brackish flavor. There were people already queueing up for the tables, and eating dinner somewhere much more metaphorically hectic than Grand Central Station wasn't really conducive to lingering, so I added my chilis and pickled garlic and dove in. If eating pho is (in Bobby Radboy's words) like "eating an ecosystem", then mien luon is like eating the precontinental primordial ooze: with its seaweed-like swamp of noodles, and its sea serpents. The matter of whether or not I liked it, exactly, seems a moot point. There's food, and then there's Erlebnis-food. Meanwhile, the scooters blazed all around me, the walking market of fruit-hawkers passed by, taxis blared their horns as if that would part the crowds, as I perched on my little plastic stool in the middle of Hanoi.
TOMORROW: The Great One-Woman Hanoi Street Food Derby!
So, having an unexpexted extra day in Hanoi before moving on to Halong Bay, I resolve to be a little more agressive and adventurous in my eating. I've listed a dozen (actually traditional) things to eat and drawn a little map for where to get those items. The rule I've made is that I won't go anywhere that has an English-language name: no Little Hanoi, 69 Bar, City View Cafe, etc etc. No places where groups of Americans and Australians sit around playing cards over plates of fries. If the kitchen serves only 1 item, and all ordering is done by pointing, all the better.
Deciding there's no time to lose on the matter, I head out to a place down the street from my hotel. The kitchen is at the intersection of several very busy streets, facing the Hang Da Market. Though recommended by Rough Guide, there is certainly no English menu to worry about, and nary a white person to be seen. Tiny plastic tables and chairs (what in Seattle would be considered little kids' booster stepping-stools) spill out of the crowded kitchen. The dish I'm here for is Mien Luon, which I understand will be "spicy noodles with crispy eels". Well, it was that, but so much more. I was brought a bowl of soup with a great nest of mien noodles (thin, translucent, flat, and gummy - not to be confused with bun noodles), a spicy & briny broth (much lighter than that of pho), the obligatory fresh herbs and bean sprouts, and last but not least, a whole school of dark, crinkly items about the size and shape of anchovies, but dark green: the eels. Whether these were many little eels, or several long thin eels sectioned into 3-inch lengths, I'm not sure. They'd been dredged in flour and fried; very chewy, they gave me more time than I needed to linger over their slightly brackish flavor. There were people already queueing up for the tables, and eating dinner somewhere much more metaphorically hectic than Grand Central Station wasn't really conducive to lingering, so I added my chilis and pickled garlic and dove in. If eating pho is (in Bobby Radboy's words) like "eating an ecosystem", then mien luon is like eating the precontinental primordial ooze: with its seaweed-like swamp of noodles, and its sea serpents. The matter of whether or not I liked it, exactly, seems a moot point. There's food, and then there's Erlebnis-food. Meanwhile, the scooters blazed all around me, the walking market of fruit-hawkers passed by, taxis blared their horns as if that would part the crowds, as I perched on my little plastic stool in the middle of Hanoi.
TOMORROW: The Great One-Woman Hanoi Street Food Derby!
Friday, January 11, 2008
Dawn in Hanoi
I arrived in Hanoi Thursday afternoon, after the world's best airline delay in Saigon - I had a foot massage, and the airline unaccountably paid for a meal in the airport, presumably by way of apologizing for the hour and a half delay. Amazing! (I imagine United Airlines will start buying meals for delayed passengers the same day Starbucks startes marketing Weasel Poop coffee.) I spent most of my first night in Hanoi lost, wandering around in circles, trying to find either the restaurant I was after, or at least my hotel to recoup. The wandering would have been easier going had not all my energy and concentration gone into dodging motorbikes. It's not that there's more traffic than in HCMC, it's that the streets here are so much narrower (though I swear a few bikes have swerved at me). Finally I found my hotel, drew myself an idiot-proof map to the restaurant, headed out, and promptly turned the wrong direction again - idiot-proof, or proof of an idiot?! But I found my bearings and my quarry, a restaurant recommended by my guide book that serves only Cha Ca, which means fried fish. It's a hands-on affair, the fish cooked right there at your table on a little brazier, along with heaps of green onion and fresh dill. On the side are a plate of cold rice noodles (bun), a bowl of fresh herbs (cilantro and something minty), more shredded scallions, sliced orange chilis, peanuts, and thick, tangy sweet nuouc mam. You put a clump of the noodles into your little cup-sized bowl, then top with, well, everything. The servers at the restaurant were very sweet and kept coming over and adjusting the flame on my brazier, adding more greens to the pan, putting more fish in my bowl. I felt like a little kid which, come to think of it, I am, in terms of Cha Ca. Later, as I was taking notes on the dish, one of them came peeking over my shoulder and checked my work, made a few corrections. It was worth an hour of wandering around lost, but oh my I was happy to get back to my hotel.
Thanks to jetlag, I was up by 5:30 the next morning, and had to have the daughter of the hotel unlock the front door and gates to let me out. I was looking forward to walking around sans moto, but was a little surprised to find myself walking along in a very dark, no-streetlight dawn. First thing I saw was a large rat nibbling some refuse; we startled each other and both scuttled off on our separate ways. Dawn seemed to take forever, but as I walked down the tree-enclosed street towards the open sky above Hoam Kiem Lake, many others were out and about too: sweeping out shopfronts in the dark, setting up their big pots of pho broth, a few tangerine-and-yam sellers with their scale-like yokes heaped with wares. There was a sort of lovely anonymity in the dark, after 3 days of sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb; and I was just another dark faceless figure moving along in the dark. Compared to Ho Chi Minh City, with its broad boulevards and stark communist architecture, Hanoi is much more cramped, ancient, and beautiful. The signs of colonialism and communism are here, certainly, but Hanoi seems to have not been taken over by these things so much as allowed them in and then absorbed them. There's more trees and green here than HCMC, in fact at times it seems the city is a thin layer of civilization over the deep bedrock of the jungle, and the sinuous vines of trees that creep over rooftops and telephone lines, the roots that pop up between the sidewalk slabs, are poised and ready to take over again, once these pesky humans are done with the place.
I arrived at Hoan Kiem Lake: think of Greenlake, Central Park, Gold's Gym, and the Venice Beach Muscle Beach rolled into one. Bo Hoan Kiem means "Lake of the Restored Sword" (all that in 3 little syllables), and legend has it that a giant tortoise lives in the lake (there's much more to that legend, but I won't go into that now). Here the change from night to light was a little startling, and the sense of solitude and isolation evaporated instantly. There were hundreds of people at the lake, walking and stretching, playing badminton, and exercising en masse. One group of about 25 people stood still, eyes closed, tapping their faces as if trying to wake themselves up. In a large open plaza, about 60 people were bouncing away at aerobics, in front of a towering, sober statue of Confucius.
For breakfast I found my way to a street kitchen serving Bun Reiu Cua. This is a soup made of bun noodles, crab, spring onions, tomatoes, and big hunks of meat product that I might delicately call Vietnamese mortadella. Chris Hatch, ever good for a blunt, vivid description, would have called it "butts and beaks". Anyway, better to eat it than to think about it. I eventually figured out that the mossy scum-like stuff floating on the top was the crab - not what I was expecting after seeing the succulent crab meat at the market...! (In the cooking class I attended later in the day, I learned how the crab winds up that way: the tiny blueish crabs, plucked from the rice fields, are mashed up with with a mortar and pestle, raw, wriggling, shell and all, to a grey paste. Then you put the mush in a big bowl of water and "wash" it to separate the shell, then boil the liquid. The meat cooks and rises to the top to be skimmed off; the shell stays at the bottom.) On the side was a nice big bowl of chopped lettuce and herbs: sisho, basil, that ubiquitous mystery mint. I worried briefly about whether I should be eating raw lettuce, then said the hell with it (I say "the hell with it" quite a lot, and so far so good, knock on wood), reasoning that all the MSG I spotted her pouring into the broth would kill any microbes anyway. There was also a plate of fried stuff that looked like churros. Didn't taste like churros, though.
So, by now, it's 8:30.
There was a market going on nearby, so I plunged in. Again, I am just amazed by the variety of veggies available, so many things I've never seen before, and the things I have seen before, I've never seen looking so fresh or so good. Also mountains of fresh herbs, green and bright and wet. I saw a man ride in on a scooter with a gigantic payload of greens bundled into a brick that must have been 3' high and 3' across. Again, the live fish and crabs, a basin of squirming eels, another full of salamanders. A wire cage with 2 sweet grey and white bunnies NOT, alas, destined to be household pets. Still no live fowl.
Thanks to jetlag, I was up by 5:30 the next morning, and had to have the daughter of the hotel unlock the front door and gates to let me out. I was looking forward to walking around sans moto, but was a little surprised to find myself walking along in a very dark, no-streetlight dawn. First thing I saw was a large rat nibbling some refuse; we startled each other and both scuttled off on our separate ways. Dawn seemed to take forever, but as I walked down the tree-enclosed street towards the open sky above Hoam Kiem Lake, many others were out and about too: sweeping out shopfronts in the dark, setting up their big pots of pho broth, a few tangerine-and-yam sellers with their scale-like yokes heaped with wares. There was a sort of lovely anonymity in the dark, after 3 days of sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb; and I was just another dark faceless figure moving along in the dark. Compared to Ho Chi Minh City, with its broad boulevards and stark communist architecture, Hanoi is much more cramped, ancient, and beautiful. The signs of colonialism and communism are here, certainly, but Hanoi seems to have not been taken over by these things so much as allowed them in and then absorbed them. There's more trees and green here than HCMC, in fact at times it seems the city is a thin layer of civilization over the deep bedrock of the jungle, and the sinuous vines of trees that creep over rooftops and telephone lines, the roots that pop up between the sidewalk slabs, are poised and ready to take over again, once these pesky humans are done with the place.
I arrived at Hoan Kiem Lake: think of Greenlake, Central Park, Gold's Gym, and the Venice Beach Muscle Beach rolled into one. Bo Hoan Kiem means "Lake of the Restored Sword" (all that in 3 little syllables), and legend has it that a giant tortoise lives in the lake (there's much more to that legend, but I won't go into that now). Here the change from night to light was a little startling, and the sense of solitude and isolation evaporated instantly. There were hundreds of people at the lake, walking and stretching, playing badminton, and exercising en masse. One group of about 25 people stood still, eyes closed, tapping their faces as if trying to wake themselves up. In a large open plaza, about 60 people were bouncing away at aerobics, in front of a towering, sober statue of Confucius.
For breakfast I found my way to a street kitchen serving Bun Reiu Cua. This is a soup made of bun noodles, crab, spring onions, tomatoes, and big hunks of meat product that I might delicately call Vietnamese mortadella. Chris Hatch, ever good for a blunt, vivid description, would have called it "butts and beaks". Anyway, better to eat it than to think about it. I eventually figured out that the mossy scum-like stuff floating on the top was the crab - not what I was expecting after seeing the succulent crab meat at the market...! (In the cooking class I attended later in the day, I learned how the crab winds up that way: the tiny blueish crabs, plucked from the rice fields, are mashed up with with a mortar and pestle, raw, wriggling, shell and all, to a grey paste. Then you put the mush in a big bowl of water and "wash" it to separate the shell, then boil the liquid. The meat cooks and rises to the top to be skimmed off; the shell stays at the bottom.) On the side was a nice big bowl of chopped lettuce and herbs: sisho, basil, that ubiquitous mystery mint. I worried briefly about whether I should be eating raw lettuce, then said the hell with it (I say "the hell with it" quite a lot, and so far so good, knock on wood), reasoning that all the MSG I spotted her pouring into the broth would kill any microbes anyway. There was also a plate of fried stuff that looked like churros. Didn't taste like churros, though.
So, by now, it's 8:30.
There was a market going on nearby, so I plunged in. Again, I am just amazed by the variety of veggies available, so many things I've never seen before, and the things I have seen before, I've never seen looking so fresh or so good. Also mountains of fresh herbs, green and bright and wet. I saw a man ride in on a scooter with a gigantic payload of greens bundled into a brick that must have been 3' high and 3' across. Again, the live fish and crabs, a basin of squirming eels, another full of salamanders. A wire cage with 2 sweet grey and white bunnies NOT, alas, destined to be household pets. Still no live fowl.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Eels, Miss? Offal, Miss?
Day 2 in Saigon. The traffic that I'd heard so much about, unhindered as it is by stoplights or rules of any road, is nevertheless not as bad as I'd anticipated. It's just a matter of screwing up your courage and stifling some of your instincts of self-preservation. When it seems like there's a break in the vans and taxis and the whizzing flocks of scooters, you just start walking across the street. Bizzarely, it seems to work best if you don't look too much - the scooters wil avoid you, but if you stop like the proverbial deer, it will throw them off and you're in worse shape than if you keep walking. I've taken to wedging myself in between 2 Vietnamese folks crossing at the same time. This works particularly well if they're carrying babies, reasoning (without evidence) that the drivers will be more lenient. It's almost easier just to walk along the side of the (smaller) streets anyway, as the sidewalks are choked with street kitchens, parked scooter, fruit sellers, you name it. [Editor's note: I wrote the above paragraph in Saigon. Now in Hanoi I would like to say for the record that in fact you need to turn your instincts of self-preservation all the way up to 11, and rubberneck like mad. Though wedging self between women with babies still effective.]
I started the morning at 3:45, waking up with jetlag, and when the sky brightened 2 hours later, I stopped pretending I was asleep and got up. I headed out to Binh Tay Market, just across the street and up from my hotel. I sat down at one of the little stands and ordered Pho Bo - very exciting, to be getting my first bowl on Pho in Vietnam. Apologies to my buddies at Vietnam Restaurant in Ballard, but this was so much better. The broth was rich and fatty, not too boney-tasting, and the beef was tender and delicious, both tai (rare) and chin (less rare). To go with that, sitting around on the table for all to partake of, was a massive platter of lemongrass stalks and wet basil, as well as a bowl of lime wedges, cups of chopped red chilis, saucers of sliced green and orange chilis, cruets of fish sauce, squeeze bottles of hoisin and sriracha. The best part by far though were the noodles: delicate and tender, they dissolve in the mouth and have obviously never been dried, bagged, and reconstituted, are ragged in places as if just sliced by hand. And to go with it, ca phe sua, coffee with (condensed) milk - hard-won to get it without ice, and, consisting of a great whack of sugary condensed milk with espresso, was a bit like drinking a shot of Hershey's syrup. (I would say the hell with this no-ice policy, but then the horrifying words "amoebic dysentary" bubble up in my mind and I shut up and drink my Hershey's.)
Meanwhile, my breakfast was taking place in the larger context of the daily market, in full swing by 7 am. Inside the covered section were stands of clothes and shoes, as well as the hard sellers: "Miss Shoes, miss? Dress, miss?"Outside, however, were what I was after: the meat and produce stalls: great stretches of green veggies I can't name, heaps of fruits, many of which I can: apple pears, papaya, durian (on which more later), the famous crimson and green dragonfruit. My old nemesis mango was not to be seen, though his buddy the pineapple was everywhere, which the vendors top & tail, then peel whole, then score in a sort of tight barberpole fashion, thus removing the pits of rind in the flesh. Then came the rows of fish vendors, with angry carp crammed by the dozen into shallow pans; pearly translucent grey and pink shrimp piled according to size; little pointed peaks of something meaty which prove to be piles of pure crabmeat, again divided by "cut" - big rosy chunks of claw meat, flaky pink leg meat, the white oily meat from the body itself. And many of their live scuttling brethren as well, pissed off and trying to get free. One of my favorite sights in a packed day was the woman who was swiftly scaling fish, occasionally pausing to take a swift whack with the side of her knife at a crab who was unwilling to go without a fight. Frogs, live frogs, twitching sporadically in an aborted leap, having been bound to each other, chain gang style, at the ankle. My Rough Guide promised me doomed-for-the-block hens running about, and I was disappointed to see no live fowl at all (and little dead fowl, for that matter.) The meat section was plentiful, too, and inside, with the shoes and clothes: a batallion of ladies hacking away at big hunks of meat.
Unsurprisingly, I don't get the hard sell in these parts of the market. No one touches me on the wrist saying "Eels, miss? Offal, miss?"
I started the morning at 3:45, waking up with jetlag, and when the sky brightened 2 hours later, I stopped pretending I was asleep and got up. I headed out to Binh Tay Market, just across the street and up from my hotel. I sat down at one of the little stands and ordered Pho Bo - very exciting, to be getting my first bowl on Pho in Vietnam. Apologies to my buddies at Vietnam Restaurant in Ballard, but this was so much better. The broth was rich and fatty, not too boney-tasting, and the beef was tender and delicious, both tai (rare) and chin (less rare). To go with that, sitting around on the table for all to partake of, was a massive platter of lemongrass stalks and wet basil, as well as a bowl of lime wedges, cups of chopped red chilis, saucers of sliced green and orange chilis, cruets of fish sauce, squeeze bottles of hoisin and sriracha. The best part by far though were the noodles: delicate and tender, they dissolve in the mouth and have obviously never been dried, bagged, and reconstituted, are ragged in places as if just sliced by hand. And to go with it, ca phe sua, coffee with (condensed) milk - hard-won to get it without ice, and, consisting of a great whack of sugary condensed milk with espresso, was a bit like drinking a shot of Hershey's syrup. (I would say the hell with this no-ice policy, but then the horrifying words "amoebic dysentary" bubble up in my mind and I shut up and drink my Hershey's.)
Meanwhile, my breakfast was taking place in the larger context of the daily market, in full swing by 7 am. Inside the covered section were stands of clothes and shoes, as well as the hard sellers: "Miss Shoes, miss? Dress, miss?"Outside, however, were what I was after: the meat and produce stalls: great stretches of green veggies I can't name, heaps of fruits, many of which I can: apple pears, papaya, durian (on which more later), the famous crimson and green dragonfruit. My old nemesis mango was not to be seen, though his buddy the pineapple was everywhere, which the vendors top & tail, then peel whole, then score in a sort of tight barberpole fashion, thus removing the pits of rind in the flesh. Then came the rows of fish vendors, with angry carp crammed by the dozen into shallow pans; pearly translucent grey and pink shrimp piled according to size; little pointed peaks of something meaty which prove to be piles of pure crabmeat, again divided by "cut" - big rosy chunks of claw meat, flaky pink leg meat, the white oily meat from the body itself. And many of their live scuttling brethren as well, pissed off and trying to get free. One of my favorite sights in a packed day was the woman who was swiftly scaling fish, occasionally pausing to take a swift whack with the side of her knife at a crab who was unwilling to go without a fight. Frogs, live frogs, twitching sporadically in an aborted leap, having been bound to each other, chain gang style, at the ankle. My Rough Guide promised me doomed-for-the-block hens running about, and I was disappointed to see no live fowl at all (and little dead fowl, for that matter.) The meat section was plentiful, too, and inside, with the shoes and clothes: a batallion of ladies hacking away at big hunks of meat.
Unsurprisingly, I don't get the hard sell in these parts of the market. No one touches me on the wrist saying "Eels, miss? Offal, miss?"
Of course there are all sorts of dry and dried goodies as well: beans and peas and nuts and dried fruits and little sweets, as well as tea and coffee, either straight beans or flavored. Apparently the most reknowned and special of these coffees is made in a very special manner. Once picked from the bush, the beans are fed to a critter in the weasel family, whose digestive processes work some magic on the coffee. When the the weasels poop, they gather up the beans, presumably wash them off a bit, and roast 'em up. That's right folks. I'll start patronizing Starbucks when they start marketing their "Buon Ma Thuot Weasel Poop Roast."
I have many many things to say about fruit, but that will have to wait for another post.
Lunch I ate near Notre Dame Cathedral (the lesser-known Notre Dame). I had Bahn Cuon, which are sort of like spring rolls, rice wrapping rolled around minced pork and black mushrooms, topped with crispy fried shallots and served with a light nuouc cham (fish sauce based dipping sauce. We shall be hearing a lot about this later). The rice wraper, however, is much different from a spring roll wrapper. Thicker, softer, and sweeter, it's the consistency of pad see ew noodles, but in sheet form. These came with a side of cilantro and some mystery herb: crispy & green, petals the size and shape of cooked orzo, tasting a little like mint but deeper, earthier, more umame. I also ordered Xoi Ca, sticky rice with fish. I was brought a bowl of white rice topped with a heap of salty ground peanuts, a bowl of pickled daikon, but no fish in sight. I was a third of the way through the bowl before I realized that the" peanuts" were the fish, dried and salted and ground fish.
So, after all this, it's only 11:30.
Nam
"Saigon. Shit."
--Martin Sheen, Apocalypse Now
So here I've been spending the past 2 weeks holed up in a hot little hotel room in Saigon, staring at the revolving fan, lying around in my underwear, chain smoking, pissed drunk, talking to myself, when not weeping or muttering angrily. The other day when I was really out of it I smashed the mirror with my fist. Yesterday 2 guys in uniform came to my room and hauled me to my feet, stuck me in a cold shower. They want me to do a little job for them upriver so I have been trying to sober up a bit. I'm afraid that smashed mirror will show up on my room bill when I check out.
I'll keep you all posted on how this little job goes. TTFN!
--Martin Sheen, Apocalypse Now
So here I've been spending the past 2 weeks holed up in a hot little hotel room in Saigon, staring at the revolving fan, lying around in my underwear, chain smoking, pissed drunk, talking to myself, when not weeping or muttering angrily. The other day when I was really out of it I smashed the mirror with my fist. Yesterday 2 guys in uniform came to my room and hauled me to my feet, stuck me in a cold shower. They want me to do a little job for them upriver so I have been trying to sober up a bit. I'm afraid that smashed mirror will show up on my room bill when I check out.
I'll keep you all posted on how this little job goes. TTFN!
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