Xôi Yen
I went to Laos recently and you know what I was most excited about? Eating sticky rice every day. When I was in Thailand most meals finished (or even started) with sticky rice with mango or custard. I like rice, I adore sticky rice.
Sticky rice (xoi) is eaten in Vietnam, not as an accompanying starch with a meal as in Laos, but combined with ingredients for a snack or light meal savoury or sweet. One of my favourite Vietnamese desserts is kem xoi, sticky rice with a scoop of icecream topped with peanuts and shards of roasted coconut. My colleagues often eat sticky rice for breakfast in the office, flavoured with pork floss or peanuts. Plus I just discovered a stall nearby that serves up bowls of sticky rice with pork mince and pickled cucumbers in the mornings. Everything is coming up sticky rice here, perhaps eating more will make me enjoy my time in Hanoi more?
There is a famous savoury sticky rice joint on the periphery of the old quarter called Xoi Yen. I’ve eaten here a bunch of times and enjoy it well enough, but don’t have much to compare it to. I often order the sticky rice with chicken and a fried egg, and by order I mean point, I don’t think there are any fancy menus here. Yellow sticky rice (does the colour come from corn?), satisfyingly savoury and rib sticking is topped with shavings of a strange dense yellow mung bean cake and fried shallots. Then the toppings you choose are carefully reheated and loaded on top of the whole heavy mess. The chicken is tender, fatty and flavourful, the egg fried with a wonderfully oozey yolk. Other toppings include slow cooked pork, pork floss, sausage and minced pork. Great hangover fare I think.
Even though this dish seems perfect for winter and sounds like it would be revoltingly heavy for hot weather, I actually prefer to eat it in the heat. The yellow mung bean cake seems to melt a bit more in the heat and the whole mixture is more coherent and delicious. Plus the spicy pickled cucumber cuts the grease and heaviness wonderfully. The place was pretty packed at lunchtime on a recent sweltering Saturday.
Xoi Yen is open all day, perfect for a sticky rice fix and much more accessible for me than Laos.
Xoi Yen
35b Nguyen Huu Huan,
Hoan Kiem, Hanoi
27,000vnd ($1.60AU) for sticky rice with chicken and a fried egg.
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6 Comments
These looks delicious!! I’d love to be able to have this everyday! Haha… I love how pointing and hand signals are universal! Hope you’re coping with the heat over there!
.-= Betty @ The Hungry Girl´s last blog ..Foveaux Restaurant & Bar, Surry Hills =-.
Wow I wish would could get treat stuff like this here for $1.60. That gooey eggs looks so good, my mouth is watering now.
.-= Mark @ Cafe Campana´s last blog ..Footy Fare – Lamb and Harissa Sausage Rolls =-.
One of my favourite breakfasts in Sai Gon was ‘xoi cuc Ha Noi’ from a lady with a cart on my walk to work. It had a little chunk of pork and a couple of cubes of pork fat and some mung beans inside, and there were chrysanthemum petals through the sticky rice which encased the fillings. She’d top it with what I concluded was a shrimp-salt, and fried shallots. It was a little heavy, but that’s what I liked about it – it would see me through until lunch time.
.-= Billy´s last blog ..Babka =-.
Man that looks freaking good!
I love sticky rice too! Being force fed normal white rice 3 times a day as a kid makes me like white rice much less – but sticky rice – that’s so un-Chinese and thus covetable.
.-= Forager´s last blog ..Rabbit borscht =-.
Yep that’s the one, “strange dense yellow mung bean cake and fried shallots.” Yummo. Ta.
.-= Frances Jones´s last blog ..The Disposable Age of Technology =-.
Hey Lili, fantastic writing and great photos. I’m doing the same in Hanoi, although not with as much experience as you yet. Have a look at my blog and let me know what you think.
Stephen
.-= Stephen´s last blog ..Around Hanoi in 30 Dishes 3- Oyster Cháo =-.