Get Your Motor Running...

There are seventeen different dishes laid out, along with three vats of soup that aren’t visible in my photo.

For lunch today I decided to visit one of my favorite local cơm bình dân restaurants.

More than anywhere I've ever been, people in Hanoi love to eat outdoors. They've taken sidewalk eating and turned it into an art form.

I absolutely love these places for their homemade touches, the wide selection they usually offer, the freshness of the food, and the fact that I don’t have to wait at all after placing my order. This is fast food at its fastest, freshest, and finest. This woman is quite nice, too; all the more so after I helped two French tourists last week order food from her.

I placed a takeaway order of sautéed shrimp, sliced potatoes, a small omelet, mustard greens, and of course white rice.

I walked away 20,000 dong ($1.03) lighter in pocket, but with an amazing array of delicious food.

Later in the afternoon I was feeling pretty tired – I think it’s this string of hot days that’s upon Hanoi: today’s high was 96, and for the next five days it’s supposed to hit 104, 106, 105, 103, and 101 – so I decided to visit a café I’ve driven by a few times but never entered. I was particularly curious about the café because of its name: Classic Motor Coffee.

Catchy name for a café, no? I mean, it got my attention.

I’m a fan of strong coffee myself, but I wondered if the coffee here actually did double-duty as some kind of motor enhancer or cleansing agent. With these thoughts in mind, I decided to pay a visit and drink a cup of whatever they sold.

In fact, the name of the café probably draws attention away from how charming the place really is. It seems to be a converted house, though by the looks of it the family still lives here and packs itself happily away in some small corner where customers won’t intrude on them. As soon as I parked my motorbike and went inside, I realized why the café was thus named – the interior is filled with classic motorbikes and photos of people (the owner, I presume) riding motorbikes in various locales (mostly Russia, I think).

It's all starting to come together now. Classic Motor Coffee...a cafe full of classic motorbikes.

I'm virtually certain that motorbike was never property of the U.S. Army...

The decorations are a bit eclectic, but the “motor” theme is pretty consistent throughout. Looking past this, the rest of the interior is quite nice. On the second and third floors, wooden doors and windows open onto tree-shaded balconies overlooking the street, the ceilings are high and airy, and the old wooden tables and chairs are quite comfortable.

Very cozy here. I can't wait for the cool autumn weather to arrive so I can park myself here all day.

The view from atop the stairs to the third floor.

The coffee is excellent, too. I ordered a nấu đá (literally "brown ice"), which came with a complimentary cup of tea, and I nursed both drinks while reading through the middle half of the Soseki novel I brought with me.

The custom of serving complimentary tea with coffee should be followed everywhere in the world...

The café itself doesn’t serve food, though in the mornings, apparently, many customers order phở from across the street and have it delivered to their tables, where they’re already drinking coffee. I’ll definitely have to come back in the morning and give this a try.

The owners and staff seemed to appreciate my taking photos of their café. I doubt this post will bring them extra business, but maybe they were just surprised to see me there in the first place.

Classic Motor Coffee is located at 13A Hàng Bún Street, just a few blocks behind Châu Long Market on Truc Bach Lake. They’re open from 7 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. every day.


Later in the afternoon I wanted some fruit. Thinking it might be a good time of the day to visit the local traditional market and get some photos, I made the long journey (about two or three minutes by foot from my apartment) with my camera dangling from my neck.

I’ve come here quite a few times over the last two months, often just to wander around, but sometimes to buy fish, shrimp, squid, beef, and various herbs and veggies. The market has pretty much everything one needs. Half the time, however, I don’t really know what I’m looking at, and the explanations I’m given often don’t enlighten me. Today I didn’t bother to buy anything, so there’s really not much of a story to share. Instead of rambling, then, I’ll just let the photos (and my captions) speak for themselves.

One of many butcher stalls in the market...

The crabs are all dressed up and ready to hit the town.

Shrimp kept fresh on ice...

Some of the freshest squid I've ever had came from here...

They're looking at me as if they know I had fried frog the other night...

Red snapper...

Cá quả, which I think is mullet...

Two different types of miên noodles.

Various random fish left to sell at the end of the day...

A bucket full of baby eel...

Snails and clams for sale. West Lake snails are considered a local delicacy and are priced like it, too.

One of many veggie vendors...

Egg vendors...

Typical aisle in the market, wet from the constant hosing down...

Another typical vending booth...

This altar, though a bit in the way, is supposed to bring prosperity to the market and offer luck and safety to those who work here.

Charred pigs' hooves, said to go well with mắm tôm (fermented shrimp paste). I love Vietnamese food, but that's a dish I don't think I can stomach...

Outside the market is where all the fruit vendors gather. For some reason fruit never seems to be sold inside the market itself.

Selling custard apples on the sidewalk...

I didn’t have anything particular in mind, so I wandered around until I found a decent selection to choose from.

A nice, colorful selection of fruit...

I ended up getting one mango, two custard apples, and a giant peach. I didn’t bother bargaining, so I ended up shelling out 40,000 dong ($2.06) – admittedly around 10,000 dong more than I should have paid.

From there I ventured to the opposite side of Truc Bach Lake from where I live and found the woman I often see selling bananas. I got her down in price by about one-third, and for five bananas I ended up paying 10,000 dong ($.52) – still a bit more than I should have paid. I also bought a papaya, and again half-heartedly bargained the woman down from 20,000 to 15,000 ($.77) – as usual, more than a Vietnamese person would have paid. But really, for 65,000 dong ($3.35), I did okay, I think – five bananas, one papaya, one giant peach, two custard apples, and one mango. Meh…

Banana Woman with her friends, Papaya Woman 1 and 2...

For dinner I went to what’s probably my favorite restaurant on Truc Bach Lake, though it’s admittedly a bit hit or miss, especially in the way of service. The place is called Hải Sản Vân Oanh and is located at 96A Tran Vu Street.

This place, which is only about a five-minute walk from my home, is always packed. They could up their service, but the food is always excellent.

They specialize in seafood, with an emphasis on shellfish and crustaceans, and there’s never a time when they’re not jam-packed. I was in a party of two, and we headed there at around 8 p.m. Somehow this restaurant (like so many restaurants in Hanoi) uses public space for seating, and while this includes much of the paved space near the water, there wasn’t a seat open. We ended up sitting on the sidewalk, where a car promptly parked next to us and blocked any view we had of that particular side. We ordered a bowl of sò huyết (blood cockles), miên cua (stir-fried noodles with crab), and two thu hai (long-necked clams topped with fried onions).

The blood cockles came with a small basket full of herbs, and it took a bit of wrestling to get to them. After prying them open, and hoping their blood-colored juices wouldn't shoot all over us, we proceeded to suck the juices from the half of the shell without the meat and then dipped the meat into a mix of salt, pepper, lemon, and wasabi, and ate it with the herbs. Cold beer, in case you have guessed already, is a must with sò huyết.

A blood cockle nestled into an herb I can't remember the name of (some people say it tastes strongly of fish).

The miên cua was very good; probably some of the best I’ve ever had. Of course, it helps to pour fried onions over the miên, add a dollop of chili sauce, and finally sprinkle everything with lemon juice. The crab was fresh and de-shelled by the kitchen staff, which was another plus. Crab shell, I’ll have you know, is my number one enemy.

I liked how they provided teacup-sized bowls to eat the miên cua from.

But the highlight of dinner, as it is whenever I come here, was the long-necked clam, grilled in its shell and filled with crisp fried onions and a light sauce I haven’t quite figured out.

Each one of these costs 12,000 dong ($.62). That's expensive for Vietnam, but these are worth it.

There’s no polite way to eat this, so it’s best just to suck the entire, finger-length clam straight from the shell and try to inhale, at the same time, as much of the fried onion as humanly possible. You'll undoubtedly get half of the fried onion on your shirt and pants, but the secret here is to pretend it’s cool to be covered in your own food. Again, beer helps. I might even say it’s indispensable.

For all of this, including beer, we shelled out 243,000 dong ($12.52), which is pretty reasonable for seafood shared by two people.

Afterward, as I walked home, I stopped for a 7000 dong ($.36) glass of mia đá, or sugarcane juice, remembering how in Bien Hoa in 1994 I could get the same for only 500 dong.

There's not much better on a sultry night than a cold glass of sugarcane juice.

Times change, but at least the food gets better along the way…

Living Again in Hanoi (3rd Time Is a Charm?)

The day started here...at least for my stomach.

This afternoon, despite the rain, I drove from my apartment in Truc Bach to an alley off of Doi Can Street, where I picked up Stephen, a sometime-partner in local eating adventures.

The alley in which Stephen lives. I like the mix of old and new here.

Together we were going to have lunch at a local hole-in-the-wall that specializes in bánh xèo and bún thịt nướng.

Bún thịt nướng and bánh xèo.

Both are dishes that can be found in Vietnamese restaurants outside of Vietnam, but nothing outside of Vietnam will compare to either dish served here. (I find it’s true of most Vietnamese food, actually.)

Fortunately, Stephen didn’t complain about my motorbike driving, or the roundabout way I took to get to our destination – Nhà Hàng Tùng Hương. It was pretty busy when we arrived, but we grabbed a table (only one of about six) in the back of the restaurant and I did the honors of ordering one plate of bánh xèo, two bowls of bún thịt nướng, and two glasses of iced tea.

We took the only open table, which was at the back of the small restaurant.

The iced tea arrived immediately, followed about half a minute later by the bánh xèo, and another half minute later by the bún thịt nướng.

The bánh xèo, filled with bean sprouts, grilled pork, and shrimp, and sliced into five pieces, was accompanied by a plastic dish full of washed lettuce, sliced cucumber, mint, perilla leaves, and a small stack of rice paper for rolling everything together. We were also given small bowls filled with a peanut-based dipping sauce. We dove into the bánh xèo first.

What makes this so unique among other bánh xèo dishes I’ve had is that the crepe itself is both fluffy and crunchy. Most bánh xèo I’ve had tends to be a bit greasy, but at this restaurant, although the bánh xèo absorbed the flavors of the ingredients it contained, it never felt greasy or even wet. It had a unique texture we could really sink our teeth into, and with the rice paper and lightly packed vegetables, and the dipping sauce that was peanuty-sweet, this was an incredible dish – all the more so because it only cost 15,000 dong ($.77).

That's what you find inside -- so much colorful goodness.

The bún thịt nướng was excellent, too, mostly thanks to the sweet grilled beef. The sauce that hid at the bottom of all the rice noodles was sweet and sour, and very light in flavor. As with so many bún dishes, it was topped with crushed peanuts and mint and slivered carrots and green papaya. We wasted no time mixing the bun, toppings, sauce, and lettuce and cucumbers and making it disappear in less time than it took to serve us. The bún thịt nướng, too, was cheap – 22,000 dong ($1.13).

The master chef's work station. She's from Hue and says she serves all her dishes in Hue style.

Tùng Hương restaurant is at 3A To Hien Thanh Street. Tel: (04) 2210-1170.

From there, since we weren’t far, we picked our bellies up off the floor and drove through the rain to a café across the street from Ha Le Lake – Café Milano, at 70 Nguyen Du Street.

This photo doesn't really capture the atmosphere of the place.

This is an interesting café and a new favorite of mine, though admittedly I don’t find myself in this part of town very often. Actually, the area around Ha Le Lake is quite charming and pretty and if I weren’t spoiled by my living situation in Truc Bach I’d seriously consider moving there. In any case, we settled down at the only open table – not really a table, but in essence a six-inch high bamboo tray – and ordered ca phe nau da and a yoghurt drink that included crushed ice and brightly colored, flavored gelatin.

This does a slightly better job, possibly. You just can't get the feeling of this place in a photo.

The three drinks ran us 52,000 dong ($2.68). With the cooling breeze that blew through the open-fronted café, the enormous, rain-darkened banyan tree outside, and the view of the lake, I could have stayed here all afternoon.

But I decided to go home before the typhoon off Vietnam’s northern coast ravaged the city with more rainfall. Once I was back in Truc Bach I decided to wander around my neighborhood and take a few quick snapshots, engage with the locals, and keep the food-binge going.

Tran Vu Street. This is the view from the front gate of my apartment. Notice how the lakefront cafés begin almost immediately.

One of the things I love about where I live is that the entire lake is ringed by cafés. Not just indoor cafes, of which there are many, but literally dozens of individually run cafes spread out beneath willow, fish roe, and various other attractive trees along the water.

From up the street a bit. Nothing served here but coffee, ice cream, fruit shakes, and beer. Yum.

This is where I sat and drank passionfruit juice. Directly in front of me is where the café owner said he helped pull John McCain out of the lake in 1967.

More Tran Vu Street.

And still more...

These cafés are hardly fancy; they merely consist of plastic tables and chairs and standing umbrellas, but they’re atmospheric, for a lack of a better word. Birds in bamboo cages hang from trees, singing overhead; vendors on foot or pushing bicycles pass by selling shoeshines, copied CDs and DVDs, steamed corn on the cob, homemade savory rice cakes, fresh bread, fresh flowers, and fresh fruit, among other things; young men fish with bamboo poles from the bank of the lake; older men wade through the water with special nets to collect snails. And farther down the road these sidewalk cafés give way to hotpot restaurants – dozens more set up in public areas, which sometimes force the police to come through and scare everyone back inside where they’re supposed to conduct their business.

Here's my passionfruit drink. It's unbelievably good. And easy to make at home, surprisingly.

After only a month here I already know almost ten of the café owners along my street, and whenever I walk or drive past them we wave at each other. Today, however, I took a seat at one of perhaps ten tables belonging to a couple in their late 50s/early 60s. I’m glad I did. The man, named Lop, who saw I had a camera with me, approached me after his wife went away with my nước chanh leo đá không hạt order (iced passionfruit, seedless) and asked me if I’d like to see his son’s photos. “Sure,” I said.

He left, but pretty soon came back with two small bags of photos. After showing me a number of laminated shots of himself, his wife, and he and his friends on various trips, he brought out a somewhat fuzzy black-and-white photo of around ten Vietnamese men pulling a Westerner, lying on his back atop some long pole-like device, through the water. I knew right away who it was. When I was writing for Fodor’s I spent a day on Truc Bach Lake looking for a small monument commemorating the capture of John McCain, and I’d been aware that his plane, a U.S. bomber, had been shot down over the water. Lop pointed directly in front of us and said McCain’s plane crashed about 30 feet from where we sat. Then he pointed at the photo. “The one in front,” he said, touching his finger against one of the Vietnamese men in the picture, “that’s me. I helped pull him from the water.”

I looked more closely at the men’s faces (McCain’s was hard to see), expecting to see fear, or shock, or hatred, but their expressions didn’t clearly hold any of those feelings. Who can say what they were thinking or feeling at that moment – one would think they might have felt all those things and more – but in the photo they seemed only to be saving McCain’s life. It’s well-documented how McCain was treated shortly after that – perhaps only minutes after that photo was taken, even – and the photo wasn’t what I had expected…not that I’d expected to see the photo in the first place. Like every Vietnamese I've ever met, the man said he didn’t hold anything against Americans, even though America’s bombing campaign displaced his family (and surely did much worse, if not to him then to people he knew), and only wished peace and understanding between both countries. He gave me much to think about as I finished my drink and continued my walk through the neighborhood.

I hope he doesn't eat what he catches. There are lots of fish in Truc Bach Lake, but the water is not exactly what I'd call clean.

This is maybe my favorite small square of space in the neighborhood. This old woman is always out here cooking, her two cats are always nearby sleeping or wrestling, and rice is always drying on threshing baskets in the street.

There was something too lime-green about this house for me not to take a photo. Plus the dog is cute, even though it usually barks at me whenever I walk by.

On a corner behind my apartment.

This little girl seemed suspicious of me, even more so after I took this photo and waved.

This little guy was cute. He waved at me like crazy, but not once did he smile. Not even when I showed him this photo.

From there I walked around the quiet (relatively), tree-lined streets behind my apartment. The area is famous, most recently anyway, for its phở cươn restaurants (look for this in a future post) as well as some old temples. But it also boasts many other things – families spending time together outdoors, neighbors sharing an hour or two playing chess on benches, people cooking, people tending their caged songbirds. Oh, and sandwiched between all of this is a little dessert shop that specializes in fruit shakes and fruit drinks. As I was wandering around, I happened to pass the shop in the photo below.

There's nothing like having a dessert shop less than a minute's walk from your door.

Although the combination of coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk is enough to rot anyone’s teeth, I figured that the fresh fruit in an order of hoa quả dầm was still good for me. And at 12,000 dong ($.62), where’s the harm? Hoa quả dầm has become more popular in Hanoi in recent years, and now it can be found on many café menus, not just in specialty shops like this one. Although the fruits might differ, especially with the season, one always finds crushed ice to add to one’s glass as desired. This particular mix of hoa quả (“fruit” in the north; traí cây is “fruit” in the south) included jackfruit, mango, apple, honeydew melon, watermelon, dragon fruit, longan, and papaya. None of that canned stuff, either. All of it was fresh from the market, which walks by on two legs probably ten times an hour. For such a simple dessert, it’s unbelievably good.

Hoa quả dầm

On my way home, which was only about 100 meters away, I passed by a small table, if you can really call it that, where every day the same woman sells tea, gum, phone cards, bottled drinks, lighters, cigarettes, and probably about 40 other things, too, by the looks of it. She always smiles at me and says a kind word as I pass, and only once have I sat down for tea. I did again today. And why not? It’s only 1000 dong ($.05).

The bird was shy. The people in the background were too busy playing chess to notice I was taking photos. My apartment is behind the two women at the table.

The rain came on after that, ruining my chances to take photos of the local traditional market up the street. There’s always later in the week, though…

Perhaps I’ll be better about posting to my blog now. I hope so, anyway. It’s been too long, I know.