Food In Hanoi = Good In My Belly

If I had to pick my favorite thing about Vietnam, and Hanoi in particular, I'd have to say it was the food. Specifically, the street food. Dear god, the street food! The fun thing about the street food stalls, is that most of them specialize in one particular dish, and many have been serving that dish literally for decades. So not only do they have that dish pretty much perfected, but you don't have to worry about awkwardly trying to order something off a big menu with your piss-poor Vietnamese language skills. You can just sit yourself down on that tiny plastic stool, ask for "one" and you'll be brought the one dish that they serve. Voila! Delicious yummies in your tummy. And for dirt cheap, to boot. My favorite stall was definitely the one on Hang Dieu street called "Bun Bo Nam Bo", which basically means "dry noodles with beef". The dish that is the stall's namesake is a bowl of noodles, beef, coriander, lettuce, basil, beansprouts, and crushed peanuts with a sweet sauce on top. Or as I like to call it: manna from heaven. Have a look-see:

And if all else failed on the food front, you were always safe going somewhere and ordering Pho Bo (beef noodle soup). Pho is practically the national dish of Vietnam, and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And god damn, it is good. 

In honor of my love of Vietnamese food and for my last day in Hanoi, I thought it would be fun to take a Vietnamese cooking class that actually focused on street food. Enter the Hanoi Cooking Centre. The class was taught by an Australian chef who had been living in Vietnam for over a decade studying the local cuisine. She was really knowledgeable and gave a good tour of the nearby market, but I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed with the class itself. Unlike the cooking class I took in Thailand, this class practically did all the work for you and all we really got to do was chop a couple of things, throw it in a pot, and watch the assistant chefs do the rest of the work. LAME. I did get to make fresh spring rolls, which are great, but easy as pie to make, as well as green papaya salad, which I already learned to make in Thailand. But, I met a nice American girl named Sarah Vine, who was my partner and we took pictures for each other. And, I got to eat something I hadn't tried yet--fertilized duck egg, aka boiled duck embryo. Yum yum!

Typical street food scene. This is actually a place that serves fresh beer (bia hoi), but the setup with the little plastic stools and tables is ubiquitous at all the food stalls. 

A fun little fresh meat display at the market. I love the chicken. 

If you aren't sure exactly what you're looking for, these markets can be pretty intimidating.

Ms. Sarah Vine, my cooking partner. Tragically, she was allergic to carrots, which I'm sure gave her a helluva time during her travels.

Cooking up some prawn cakes. The woman in the black and white stripes is the head chef.

Fertilized duck egg after it was boiled and cracked open. 

Just add a little ginger, and bam! You've got yourself a tasty little snack. The bones were still soft enough that you could just eat the whole thing. There's nothing more satisfyingly savage than biting off a baby's head and eating it. Mmmmmmhmm.