The Great Hue Street Food Derby

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.