Coffee dripping.

It’s days like today that I miss Hanoi. Sleepy Sundays after a long stressful work week and a sweaty dance-filled Saturday night. Today I’m in Seoul, shivering and dreaming about a good coffee to pave the way for thoughts of food. Here, I’d have to spend an eternity layering up with warm clothes, then catch a bus and maybe a train, getting lost a few times along the way, just to find a weak americano or an inexpertly executed too-milky latte from a franchise. On days like this in Hanoi, I could sleepily wander down the road to any number of local cafe’s, dodging motorbikes and construction detritus. Or I could ride my bicycle to more picturesque locations farther afield and still be drinking incredible coffee within the hour.

The kind of cafe’s I frequented in Hanoi were on the plain side of the fancy scale. Rickety cane chairs or plastic stools, laminated tables boasting faded pictures of fruit or Britney Spears, fans blowing a gale and a TV invariably blasting in the corner. Mostly they only served coffee, tea and fruit drinks (sinh to, or chopped fruit with yoghurt) and they do them very well. Coffee especially.

Sua chua cafe

Vietnamese coffee is strong and rich, chocolatey and smooth when paired with condensed milk, and devoid of the most unpleasant bitterness. It is scarily easy to drink and I often found myself ordering seconds and later, thirds, before rolling away shaking and giggling on the kind of caffeine high that defined much of my time in Hanoi. In an attempt to reduce my caffeine intake I would often order Sua chua cafe, which I’ve discussed before. Sweet and yogurt sour, with only a kiss of coffee, as opposed to cafe nau da’s punch in the face, this drink is a great snack to pull you through mid-afternoon in the tropics.

Cafe nau da, with a complimentary glass of tra da (iced tea).

With thoughts and dreams of cafe nau da swirling, I’m going to face the cold to enjoy what Seoul does well: organised public transport, shopping malls and Korean food.

Ordering coffee in Vietnam

Vietnam knows coffee and the best stuff is to be found on the side of the road, in small local cafes where English is probably minimal. You will likely not need to say these words, but being able to recognise them on a menu will help immensely, especially in an early morning pre-caffeine fog.

Cold drinks:

Cafe nau da “brown coffee, iced” (in the north), also known as Cafe sua da (in the south) - the Vietnamese equivalent of white coffee. The milk is, of course, condensed milk and the outcome is delicious. 10,000 – 40,000 vnd

Cafe den da Black coffee sweet, iced. I only rarely drank this, preferring Cafe nau da. 5,000 – 10,000 vnd

Sua chua cafe (or cafe sua chua, I’m pretty sure either way works) – Yoghurt with coffee. I talked about this earlier, but that is a special frozen yoghurt version. Most coffee shops here will do less complicated, but still satisfying glass for you. A tub of vinamilk yoghurt, a splash of condensed milk, strong coffee and ice. ~10,000vnd

Hot drinks:

Replace da (iced) with nong (hot) and hope for the best. Unless you’re in the deep dark depths of the short, but bitterly cold, Hanoi winter, iced coffee is better in my opinion.

Xoi with pork floss and lap cheong

I’m a big believer in breakfast. Avocado on toast, porridge with brown sugar and banana, bircher muesli, crunchy cereal with ice cold milk, fruit salad and yogurt. Refreshing sustenance that returns you to the land of the living after sleeping the sleep of the dead.

The early morning, for me, is a time for comfort and habit. I want familiar, easy flavours and something filling to start the day. Marion Cunningham says, we are all defenseless at breakfast, so a different early morning food culture can be confronting, even to the most open-minded and adventurous eaters. After some months in Hanoi I got used to switching cold breakfasts for hot, dairy for meat, sweet for savoury and eating out instead of my usual bleary-eyed, pyjama-ed morning meal.

My favourite xoi lady, serving up.

Xoi, sticky rice roughly translated, is my favourite alternate-breakfast. A little shack near my school in Hanoi manned by a lovely old couple. A few tables out the front, where people eat trung vit lon, and feed small spoonfuls of sticky rice to children. The toppings are limited, which isn’t an issue because my favourite stewed pork is here in abundance. I’d order xoi, mime ‘take-away’ and inspect the available additions. Lift lids at will here, her prep-station becomes yours when the crowds show up and she hands over a pair of long serving chopsticks. She removes a small bowl of sticky rice from her pot and places it in a prepared banana leaf. A few fatty pieces of caramel stewed pork are added to the side, as well as a smidgen of its cooking liquor. Grab her before she wraps your parcel up, because you need to add a side of the sweet, spicy freshly pickled cucumbers. Just grab a spoon and pile some in there, DIY Hanoi.

These portions are small yet satisfying. Sticky rice is one of those delicious, yet deceptively filling foods and I welcome this serving size, right on the verge on minimal. It’s just enough to keep you going until lunch time, 11:30am early in Hanoi.

Sticky rice comes in many different forms, another favourite is cooked with beans or peanuts and served simply, plain and dipped into a dry salty roasted peanut mix. You’ll see ladies with enormous cane baskets, serving out plastic bags full of sticky rice. Some varieties are even giant sticky rice balls filled with beans and meat. Search them out, because a sticky rice breakfast is one of the best.

Sticky rice on the street.

Bun noodle soup

To be honest, I don’t know that much about this bun noodle soup, except that it is indescribably good. It went like this. A grouping of low tables under cover in a residential courtyard. The soup lady squats on a low stool behind stacks of bowls, ingredients and bubbling pots of stock. She exchanges perilously full soup bowls for money, fielding orders not only from left and right, but also from behind, with enviable ease. See her house shares a fence with the neighbouring kindergarten which is filled in the early morning with parents feeding their children breakfast. People line up behind a handy hole in the fence waiting to be served, before rounding up their children and feeding them on tiny colourful seats. My colleague ordered for me, a strange mix of pork meatballs, sliced beef and unidentified foamy squishy delicious vegetable.

Perhaps it is just novelty, but I enjoyed this bun much more than other comparable noodle soups. It was hearty and interesting, the little pork meatballs, like miniature Lion’s heads, or meatball-ified banh cuon filling, were a highlight.

Beef pho

Of course Vietnam’s national dish pho is an incredibly popular breakfast option. During the early morning rush, pho shops overflow onto the streets, tiny red and blue plastic furniture loaded with steaming bowls and slurping customers. It seems sacrilegious admit my distaste for this noodle soup, but it’s true. I just don’t love it. Maybe it’s the overabundance of noodles, the limited ingredients, it’s enduring heat, or just rebelling against the norm. Whatever the reason, pho is still essential eating.

Crowd at a local mediocre pho joint.

Banh mi is the go-to breakfast of the busy, time-poor masses. Quickly assembled, portable, affordable and just plain delicious. You’ll see people waiting on parked motorbikes for their sandwiches, and others driving off with a sweating plastic bag full of warm banh mi hanging from a handlebar. There are any number of porcine variations, but my favourite is banh mi trung. Fried omelette, greasy inside a warm, crusty bread roll, crunchy sweet slices of fresh cucumber and a smattering of chilli sauce. Wrapped in a square of newspaper or scrap from a local school and fastened with a rubber band this is just the thing to wake you up on a humid Hanoi morning.

I’m glad that I broke out of my breakfast habit while I was in Hanoi, so much so that as I write this I’m ravenous, expectantly awaiting the possibility of a bountiful Korean breakfast tomorrow morning.

Breakfast stall, Trung vit lon and xoi