One of the many appealing things about Ha Noi is that it is in effect several distinctly different (but nevertheless very Vietnamese) urban areas, all within close proximity of Hoan Kiem Lake.
Most famous (as well as most exhilarating, and at times even frustrating) is the Old Quarter, a series of labyrinthine little thoroughfares with names that harken back to its origins are a trading centre a thousand years ago.
There’s Silk Street, Paper Street, and the street you visit to buy bun (Noodle Street). And while some of the streets are now not quite as exclusive to the trade that gave them their name, you can still find enough remnants to turn your head in wonder, no matter what street you happen to find yourself on.
One of my favourites is Hang Quat (or Celebrations) Street. This is a place where the people of Ha Noi have always shopped when they need the various bits and pieces for weddings, funerals, the mourning rituals that require families to get together monthly for a year after a loved-one dies, and. . . the things you need to send skyward so your ancestors don’t run short in the after-life!
You can buy fake money, paper models of cars, and whole suites of tiny furniture. And once you’ve paid over your (real) money, you can take everything to the nearby pagoda (or just the handy receptacles provided on the curb outside the shop), and send them up to the heavens with the strike of a match.
Hang Quat Street also has the most beautiful array of flags and banners, in bright primary colours and gilt, as well as great stacks of sticky rice cake, and pyramids of lacquered boxes just right for a bridal trousseau.
And in December, with Christmas near, and Tet (Viet Nam’s great lunar new year festival) looming the following full moon, there are lights and baubles and fake flowers literally dripping from the eaves.
ooOOoo
In the Old Quarter you’ll also find Cha Ca La Vong, one of Ha Noi’s most famous food purveyors (supposedly on Paint Street, but now also called Cha Ca Street, of course). But this is no Michelin star restaurant, with silver service (although over the years the French in particular have flocked to the place).
It claims to have been founded 150 years ago, by a local family who must have been well connected with the local government. How else would they have survived all those years of privation and collectivisation?
And while I can’t vouch for what the place looked like back in the 1870s, it hasn’t changed at all since I first visited it in the company of my Vietnamese workmates in 1994.
There’s no neon light outside to help you find it (although a competitor across the street hasn’t been so reticent). And the inside looks like it hasn’t had a paint job since well before the Americans started bombing the nearby rail bridge that leads over to Hai Phong.
As you try to enter, there’s a man blocking the doorway. You’re not sure if he’s the doorman, since he looks more like some guy off the street who’s just stopped for a smoke. He casually makes way for you, and simply points up to the ceiling.
What he means, of course, is that you need to go to the second floor. But to get there you have to take a set of stairs that, based on the lack of uprights and hand rail, as well as the steep angle, seem more like a ladder to the attic than the public entrance to a famous place to eat.
When you get to the top, you’re “greeted” by an unsmiling waitress who motions you to sit at one of any number of chairs set along an ancient wooden bench. If you don’t want to dine next to someone you don’t know, you’d better go somewhere else.
And when you do take your seat, the waitress flops a dog-eared piece of paper in front of you, which states in food-stained English: “This cooking only have one meal, price VD150,000.” Below that there’s also some Vietnamese, which for all I know says something like “half-price if you can read this in our language”.
But no matter whether you’re an overseas tourist, or a born-and-bred Ha Noi resident, the service is just the same. It’s the Vietnamese equivalent of Fawlty Towers, and if you can relax, it actually becomes part of the whole experience.
It’s almost as if they’re testing you to see whether you’re worthy. And they certainly don’t have to worry if the odd (especially Western) customer decides not to stay. Because Cha Ca La Vong always packs them in.
The night we went there for a meal (Christmas, as it so happened) it was standing room only, with plenty of Vietnamese looking over our shoulders, waiting to take our place as soon as we made the slightest move to leave.
The reason, of course, is that the “one meal” is a famous Vietnamese dish with such a special taste that you won’t likely find it in other restaurants. In fact, it’s said that whenever a competitor makes the attempt, knowing customers start saying to everyone within hearing, “That’s not the same!”
The best way to explain cha ca is to describe how it’s brought to your table. First your “charming” server plops a big bowl of bun (those rice vermicelli noodles) down in front of you.
Along with it comes two small bowls, some chopsticks, a plate of roasted peanuts, and a typical Vietnamese sauce of nuoc man (fish sauce), lime juice, salt and sliced chillies.
You sit looking at all this for a while, and hoping that the beer you ordered might be coming soon. After a satisfactory period of contemplation, out comes the main event: a little brazier with a spirits-fuelled flame.
On top of this is placed a battered and darkened skillet that contains small pieces of fish sautéing in a bubbling sauce the colour of dark gold.
Another assistant immediately appears, this time with a large plate of sliced spring onions, the leaves and stems of fresh dill, and a smaller selection of fresh coriander greens.
She puts the plate down, and then with her hands pulls out a goodly amount of the herbs, placing them into the skillet and stirring them around with a thin metal spoon. When she’s satisfied with the result, she turns and quickly moves on to someone else.
It’s now up to you, to both know how to deal with all the ingredients (it helps to watch nearby locals), and how to tell when the skillet mixture is ready to eat. This last bit doesn’t really have a right answer.
As with hot pots, you just play around with it from time to time, adding more herbs when the mood strikes you, and playing with the size of the flame to hopefully keep the fish from drying out.
To eat, you first put a dollop of bun into your bowl (and that’s a good way to describe it, given that bun is always difficult to separate), followed by some peanuts, then a bit of the fish sauce, and finally some of the contents of the frying pan.
It’s easy to “fish” out the greens with your chopsticks. What’s harder is dishing out the fish itself, particularly if you haven’t taken the thin spoon out of the skillet.
The spoon takes on heat very quickly, and I have no doubt the waitresses purposely leave it in just to watch customers’ reactions when they try to pick the blasted thing up.
Whatever the pain and inconvenience (and by the way, where is my beer?), the wait is worth it, since cha ca tastes like nothing else. The dill especially goes so well with the fish, and the fish is a special kind, native to the local area, that while fresh-water is also very firm.
And then there’s that golden yellow colour. It gives the sauce a taste like, well, savoury caramel. When you first see the colour you think it’s probably turmeric, but when you taste it you know absolutely that it is not.
The colour and the flavour are obviously related, and many people have speculated about it (including those restaurants elsewhere in Viet Nam).
The theory I like the most is that the secret ingredient is something that can only be found in the Ha Noi area, and is dried and powdered before being used.
My Vietnamese friend disagrees, however, and insists that it most definitely is not water bugs!
~originally composed in December, 2011~