Some final snacks, meals, and feasts from life in Vietnam! Some American/Western, some Viet, a LOT of Indian, and more....
One of my first truly Western meals in Hanoi and still one of my faves: the cheeseburger from Ete. Always comes with their amazing garlic (like, chunks of it) covered french fries and a small salad. All this for like, $6. Such a good deal and so delicious. Damnit my mouth is already watering and I've barely even started writing!
My favorite cơm gà (rice and chicken) from a place a few blocks away from my workplace. Cơm gà and most other non-soup meals in Vietnam almost always come with a little cup of soup (the green, brackish looking cup to the left) which I rarely ate because to me it tasted like stewed socks. But this place's sauce was the bomb and although usually their amazing barbecued chicken comes with fried rice if you ask awkwardly for "cơm trang" (white rice) enough times someone may be able to understand your terrible Vietnamese enough to switch out the fried for white. Also, under that chicken is cucumber and some kind of pickled lettuce stuff that is delicious.
Bánh mì from one of the fancier shops, also near my workplace. You may notice this is a common trend with the places that I eat. This one was a chicken one with a creamy/garlicky sauce that was okay but the cuts of chicken were not great (bone/gristle included). Later they added a barbecue one that was delicious and the meat was cut much better!
Walking around one night in the Old Quarter, checking out the night market, with a friend. Chè is super popular in Hanoi and it's offered in every variety from little carts with like, two options for toppings to larger displays like this woman's to shops with dozens of choices. I never went in for it because I generally dislike squishy-textured stuff and if I'm gonna have dessert, it damn well better have chocolate in it.
Ngoc Anh was not at ALL interested in participating in my photographs. Party pooper.
She did, however, take me for some flan. I had no idea that it was popular here before she did! But yeah, this was pretty good.
We also had these, which she tried to be all like, "Oooh, you have to try this delicious Vietnamese food, it's called Phô Mai Que! You'll love it!" So I said, yeah, okay, you know your stuff, I trust you. She ordered them and they showed up and they were just cheese sticks. "Phô Mai" is another one of those cases where it didn't exist before the French got here so the Vietnamese just took the French word, "fromage", and converted it into smaller, monosyllabic chunks, and dropped the pesky consonant at the end. Phô Mai!
So many baked good smells coming out of this little dessert place she took me to!
GOTCHA.
Walking around the night market some more, taking in some of the exceptionally good-looking food and desserts being sold here. Up top you can see slices of fruit which are pretty popular to buy on the street. I was really partial to the green mangoes coated in chili salt. So, so good.
Just a very tasty bowl of chicken phở I had one afternoon.
Yet another cheeseburger, this one I believed was purchased while in the death throes of a gruesome hangover. It's from Daluva which was a little pricier but the cheeseburger has bacon, the salad has radishes (yum), the ketchup is made from bell peppers, and there's another pesto mayo dipping sauce so you've got french fry dipping sauce choices. Daluva is the bomb dot com for a little pricier, indulgent junk food in Hanoi.
One of my favorite "pick-up-some-lunch-on-the-way-into-work-so-I-can-procrastinate-lesson-planning-for-a-little-longer" meals, the takeaway bowl of bún thịt nướng from Vu Canu, which are literally everywhere in Hanoi. Their juices/smoothies are also delightful, and I often paired this huge serving of noodles (which was like, $2) with a carrot juice, my favorite!
Another favorite delivery joint, which I ordered from so often while at work that I knew most of the delivery guys by sight and they knew my name: Joma Cafe. Oh, Joma Joma Joma. How do I love thee? I could not begin to count the way. They had a seasonal offering going for most of November and December that was like catnip to us Americans: Thanksgiving-y turkey sandwich with stuff and cranberries and gravy dipping sauce, plus pumpkin pie. Everything that is right and good.
Chillin' with some pain au chocolate and a beautiful cappuccino, plus the view of a back alley to offer much in the way of entertainment, at The Kafe Village. This chain has a few locations around Hanoi and they each have a slightly different name (Kafe, Kafe Box, etc.) but this one, in the Hạ Hồi alley, was closest to my workplace. The trend, remember?
This cake was beautiful and hazelnut-y. That is all.
Towards the end of my year, when planning became easier because I was repeating courses I'd taught before, I found myself having time to actually go out and eat slightly more interesting fare on the weekends at lunchtime. I believe I went to Quan An Ngon on this afternoon with Lenna, Sam, and Sam's mother who was visiting him. This place is cool because it has such a WIDE variety of foods from all over the country, and although the dishes may not be the best of whatever you're eating, everything is still made pretty well and the benefit is that you can sample from so many styles/places. We all shared the papaya salad (above) which was great and then I got bánh cuốn. It took me a long time and a few tries to finally decided where I fell in the bánh cuốn issue but ultimately I find it too bland and kind of unsatisfying, regardless of how much of it I eat. Quan An Ngon's presentation of it was very nice though.
Another weekend, another salad with a side of veggies and hummus from Joma. One of my favorite Saturday afternoon lunches.
On a less healthy note, I was so hella-homesick on Thanksgiving that I ate a sleeve of chocolate chip cookies and a pepperoni pizza with french fries, among other things.
A few days later, however, thanks to the diligence of Lenna and Sam, the three of us plus his mom celebrated Thanksgiving in proper style with chicken from Chicken Street (and also pickled veg because it came with it) and Lenna's preparation of all the delightful accouterments: stuffing, corn, broccoli, cranberries, gravy, and mashed potato. She is a queen.
I contributed as well, with some pies and whipped cream that I picked up from Joma (one apple, one pumpkin). I am a bum. A Thanksgiving-loving bum.
Beautiful, beautiful whipped cream.
Another Saturday, another salad... this one was the apple, bleu cheese, pecan and balsamic. It is... the best. Just the best.
A very tasty (and whimsically decorated) version of phở xào rau I had on the way back from a day trip to Phu Lang pottery village! I was a little hungover when Lenna, Sam, and their friends and I shuttled ourselves out there to take in the pottery of it all, which was good time, but this delicious infusion of vegetable, grease, and ricey starch was much needed.
Seen in the gift shop: peanut butter cheese crackers.
Me:
Chicken Palak.
Tikka Masala I think?
Butter chicken. Oh my sweet summer child, butter chicken.
One night I decided to branch out and try some Viet snacks, so I went for coconut-covered peanuts. The first ten were amazing and then I hated them with a burning passion. I can't exactly explain it but I think it may be because the combined oiliness of the peanut and the coconut kind of creeps up on you, so at first you think you're really enjoying yourself and then it just knocks you out.
Adorable, but the shine here is not from chocolate coating (as one might hope) but just the natural shellac of these pretty flavorless biscuits (they deserve neither the title of cracker nor cookie as they are too flavorless for either, so I am relegating them to the category of food to which I designate most things bland: British).
Veggie teriyaki bento box and veggie sushi from Daikon, a Sunday afternoon favorite that helped me conquer the four classes (7 hours) of teaching that usually left me gasping for alcohol by 8 PM.
Another, more successful experiment in snacking. These just tasted mildly herbal and salty. Perfect.
For Christmas the Teaching Assistants organized a tea party one night after class. Unfortunately it was the same night Dan and I and some friends had planned to go see Star Wars: The Force Awakens (so good) but we hung around for a little while to socialize and delight in the same free Lipton tea provided by ILA that we always drank and some interesting snacks provided by our friends! I think the cell phone was jokingly thrown in there to add excess and a hint of luxury to this spread. Lifestyles of the rich and famous, you know?
Phuong's face is pretty much my sentiment towards this chewy milk candy. Insert Leslie Knope "No!" gif here. Again.
You're not fooling anyone, little cow. This candy is not right.
That thing where your British coworker Steve says the weirdest stuff.
Enjoying his own milk-flavored treat.
Melissa had herself some tea at the party and in her usual Canadian fashion, was quite pleased with it!
During the New Year's Eve party that our company threw for us there was an amazing buffet, my only regret of which is that I did not go back and load up my plate like this a second time. Still, I think I did pretty well for only one round:
Another night out, another serving of khoai tây chiên or french fries, with Chin-Su chili sauce for dipping. You can order these and a ton of other stuff from almost any bia hơi place and I'm pretty sure they fry these in butter because there's something oddly sweet about them. Which makes them go perfectly with the sweet/hot tang of the Chin-Su. God I love that stuff. It also gets used a lot for bánh mì sandwiches.
One last cà phê with my coffee homie at our favorite place, Coofee 86 or Cafe Henrry, on "Green Lake" or Ho Dam, near our house. Dan had to make it weird.
Trying Chả Cá (fish with sauce and noodles) with some friends at Chả Cá Anh Vũ, a place that is supposedly famous for it! It was funny because when we arrived it was obviously the lunch rush and this place was packed, and by the time we finished there are maybe a dozen people in all three floors of the huge restaurant. They basically seated us in the attic. The Vietnamese are really efficient about lunch. In any case, this place deserves its fame because it was delicious and while pricier than eating on the street, it was still pretty affordable and they basically fed us until they saw we couldn't eat anymore.
As Melissa said, "Gotta snap before you snack!"
And finally, my last phở xào (rau) and a mango smoothie, plus puffy, golden deep fried phở noodles to share. I ate with Melissa and her boyfriend Geoff as a goodbye before selling my beloved bicyle, Kis Ló, to her. It was a very befitting final meal.
Also from my last day, although this happened earlier I thought it was a good picture to end with: cà phê trứng, or Vietnamese egg coffee, or as they sometimes offputtingly translate it, chicken egg coffee (we really don't need to know animal, guys). This is from Giảng Cafe, a modest place tucked away in the second story of a nondescript building in Old Quarter where supposedly the drink was invented. It is everything you could want from an egg coffee drink. The top layer is like a creamy, rich custard and the coffee underneath is dark and bitter. It's served in a little bath to keep it warm. They recommend stirring the two before drinking although I'll admit I helped myself to a fair bit of the top before stirring and that probably made the remaining drink a little bitter, which is fine by me.
Of all the things I ate and drank in Vietnam, and there were a lot, the coffee was by far my favorite. I'll miss it almost as much as I'll miss the sights of senior citizens exercising at dawn, people living their lives on their motorbikes, entire city blocks worth of night markets selling every product Asia has to offer, the light in my little three-year-old students' eyes when I gave them their sticker at the end of class, the warm smiles of people crouching around me on plastic stools, all of us enjoying our bia hơi and decompressing from the long, hot Hanoian summer days together, and a million other details that have been burned into my brain by the Vietnam heat.
So far in my life I've lived in a lot of places and it is my intention to live in a lot more before I'm done here, but I don't think I'll ever live in a place like Hanoi again. I don't think I could. It's one of a kind.
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