Weird foods with friends in Hanoi, highly recommended.

How strange to meet friends from Sydney in exotic Hanoi. We met up for some beers at a streetside bia hoi joint in the evening. I was not hopeful for dinner, yet when I gently asked about their regular state as vegetarians I was pleasantly surprised. “No, we’re eating meat, these holidays. We would have starved in Russia as vegetarians”. Well, it’ll be strange meat for dinner then. Oh, yes.

Floating on a two beer cloud we dodged traffic and wandered right, right and then left, i think. A bustling alley-way eatery looked like the place to be, settled in and ordered the most interesting items on the menu.

Prawns with wood ear mushrooms, not out there, but normally I don’t like weird mushrooms and prawns aren’t my favourite, sometimes taking a chance pays off.

Deep fried frogs legs. Oh yeah, now this is the weird eating. A too thick layer of batter encased a beautifully tender frog leg, bones and all. I peeled my batter off, and sucked the sweet flesh out from between the bones. The ‘jumping muscles’ were the most delicious, everyone agreed.

Outdoor kitchen setup.

Roasted Pigeon, complete with feet and beak. This was a little dry, but add the dipping sauce and it disappeared. Well, all except the head.

Sometimes it isn’t about how delicious the food was, but the novelty and the company made this meal memorable. I highly recommend going to a random streetside eatery and eating some unusual animals with a couple of lapsed vegetarians.