A progressive dinner Hanoi-style

By on Monday, February 10, 2014 in Hanoi | 0 comments

In our on-going attempt to explore more of Hanoi’s street food, we went out on Friday evening to check out a few new places in Truc Bach and the eastern edge of Old Quarter. First up was Hai San Thang Ngoc (seafood place) at 1 Hang Than, where we filled up on a first course of crab glass noodles (mien xao cua) and clams cooked in a delicious chilli sauce (ngao xao ot). I usually find clams more trouble than they’re worth, but these were truly the best clams I’ve had. Two plates of noodles and a bowl of clams came in at 155,000VND (about $7.50). We then walked along the dyke road to Nguyen Huu Huan street, although couldn’t resist stopping at Giang’s for an egg beer, which went down much better than when we’d tried it on very full stomach’s before. Vit29 was closing but they let us in anyway and we sat under its very bright lighting to try out the duck. Being already quite full we just ordered 1/2 a duck, with no sides, and dipped boney chunks into the delicious sauce — I have no idea what it is. 116,000VND for the half duck with a round of ice tea (cha da) on the side. Our final stop was for rice paper ‘pizza’ (banh trang nuong): circle of super thin rice paper, topped with goodies and grilled. We only tried the recommend #7, with cheese, egg, chicken and dried beef, and a bowl of bang trang tron Sai Gon – a slightly sweet rice paper salad with quails egg and mango but will definitely be back with slightly emptier stomachs!...

Brunch at the Intercontinental, Hanoi

By on Monday, February 3, 2014 in Hanoi | 0 comments

As Paul hadn’t had a day off in a month (I wasn’t far off but did go on a Tet tour one Saturday) and we’d had to forgo our Tet holiday for work reasons, we treated ourselves to Sunday Brunch at the Intercontinental Hotel yesterday. We opted for the US$60++ version, which includes free flow beer, house wine and soft drinks and left well and truly stuffed. We will definitely be going...