Lunch in Hanoi has been getting boring for me recently. You’re probably looking at your soggy sambo with wilted lettuce, or oily foodcourt noodles and thinking I’m a spoilt cow, but when you get used to the exotic, it no longer is. So lunchtime for me lately has either been bun cha or rice from a range of com binh dan joints I’m testing out, but my bun cha habit is getting bad. So one recent morning, a Hanoi lunch starts just past 11am, I took a chance and sat at the only busy market stall around and ordered what the other customers were greedily digging in to: miến lươn trộn.

Mien noodles are quick-cooking, chewy and translucent. Made from mung bean, sweet potato or cassava, they are the basis for dishes from Korean japchae to spicy Thai salads, are eaten everywhere in between and have just as many different names. The word is that these Vietnam produced noodles differ from the rest as they’re made from the starch of the canna lily.

The luon (eel) here is sliced into long fingers that curl and tangle together when they’re deep fried crunchy. Off-putting perhaps, but these spiny lengths taste mild and are well and truly inanimate. But, if it’s all too much this dish can sometimes be ordered with stir fried beef instead.

Tron means dry, but this dish is anything but. It’s just served with the soup on the side.

The still-hot mien noodles are joined in the bowl by blanched bean sprouts, the crisp twists of eel, roasted peanuts and deep-fried shallots with a handful of herbs freshly scissor snipped in. Glugs of this and ladle-fuls of that are added to loosen and flavour it sour and salty. Pickles, sometimes the regular pickled carrot and kohlrabi (củ su hào), other times an almost salad of marinated cucumber, can also be added. A big bowl of chilli sauce, furious red and topped with a layer of oil the same colour tempts, for extra flavour that’s not especially required, but I add it anyway. Mixing this dish turns it into a sparky noodle salad, bright and full of interest, with a portion size perfect to start an afternoon of grazing.

And it just happens to be lunch time now.

Miến lươn trộn.

Available around town.
This version which comes from my local market, Cho Yen Phu, is available from breakfast until early afternoon, and costs 25,000 dong (~$1.15 AU).

Vietnamese cuisine changes with latitude, and the south is a wonderland of long-forgotten specialities and new tastes for this new Hanoian. But with only a fleeting moment in Ho Chi Minh City, this trip became an extended grazing session.

When I first moved to Hanoi a friend from Ho Chi Minh City gave me a list of things to eat if I were to ever visit her hometown. High on that list was Bot Chien, a popular after-school snack. When mid-afternoon hunger struck and with no destination pre-researched, I google maps searched ‘bot chien’ and headed to the closest location.

I’m often confused about how to eat a new meal, especially with language barriers and cultural misunderstanding. So on an initial visit, I take cues from other tables. Sometimes servers will intervene, showing their preferred way to mix a dipping sauce, or flavour a bowl of noodles. Other times, like with bot chien, it’s anything goes.

At Bot Chien Dat Thanh, the situation was confusing. There was a plate piled high with shredded green papaya and carrot. A soy based dipping sauce. Three little pots of chillies, raw, dark oily chilli sauce, and a smooth fluorescent red condiment. A plate of crisped rice-flour-cake fried with egg, steaming hot fresh from the skillet. A quick scan of the room, mostly single male eaters, showed myriad eating styles. Pile the salad on the rice cakes and drench the whole thing in sauce with added chilli. Or dip alternating mouthfuls of the bot chien and salad into your chilli spiked soy sauce. Or a mix of the two.

Whichever method you choose you’ll get a mix of crunchy rice cake edges and chewy centres, mild and steadfast, held together with unremarkable egg and just enough grease. The crunchy, fresh salad and rice cake are enlivened by a dip in the outstanding sauce. Mainly soy, with a touch of sour and sweet, unexpected in this land of fish sauce. Alternate mouthfuls of cool, salty, crunchy salad and hot, spicy, chewy rice cake were my eating choice. And it worked, we ordered another serve before the first was complete.

After this meal I started spotting bot chien stalls everywhere, and it turns out it’s a popular late night snack as well. With good reason. Next time I’m in Ho Chi Minh City, bot chien, whichever way you eat it, is on the list.

Bột chiên Đạt Thành
277 Võ Văn Tần- Quận 3

Bot Chien 18,000 dong (~82 AUCents)
Also, fresh spring rolls and papaya salad with dried beef.

When I first arrived in Hanoi I was invited along on a food crawl with a group of new friends. After about three seconds I became utterly lost, and simply followed my companions sitting where they told me to sit, eating what they told me to eat. This marathon dining session was for a magazine article, so I assumed I’d be able to relive the best tastes from the day when it was published. Unfortunately, the output was mediocre and omitted the one memorable meal of the session, the one that I’d wish to eat again, if only I knew what it was called and how to find it.

Fast forward three years and the narrow alley entrance to 8 Le Ngoc Han is familiar. After selecting the correct eatery (it’s the middle one) we are greeted with smiles. This is a kitchen out the front, eat in someones living room affair, and the place is packed. We sit locked in by the crowds, next to a fish tank, chatting with young Vietnamese ladies and surveying the menu. A range of noodles (bun, mien, banh da) in various seafoody incarnations are available, but we, and most of the customers, are here for the bánh đúc nóng.

Bánh đúc nóng is difficult to describe, but delicious to eat. A thick glutinous rice flour mass, tender enough to be broken easily with a spoon, but with enough structural integrity to hold its own fills the bottom of the bowl. It’s hidden by meaty minced pork cooked with wood ear mushrooms, bright herbs, fried shallots, puffs of fried tofu and just enough mild soup. Add chilli sauce, mix the whole lot, then spoon up this savoury mess. The rice flour slurry is dense without being heavy, enlivened by the textural and lively toppings.

I cleaned my bowl and considered ordering another. But if this joint with it’s smiling older-lady workers has been here this long, it’ll still be around next week for another bowl of bánh đúc nóng.

8 Le Ngoc Han, Hanoi

Bánh đúc nóng: 15,000 dong.