HANOI, VIETNAM – After a stimulating morning at the Museum of Ethnology and a “quick stop” at the gigantic VinMart supermarket that turned into an epic hour-plus meander over the entire store, we were finally back on the street, and more than ready to find something to eat.
Our experience so far in Hanoi is that any given block will have multiple street stalls offering a variety of food options. But the street we were on seemed to be the exception to this “rule” – there were no food booths whatsoever for the next two long blocks.
At last, across a large, busy intersection, we could see a streetside cafe displaying the typical large “Bia Ha Noi” banner across the front. Yes, they all seem to serve Hanoi Beer, but at this point we were more interested in food. The sidewalk hawker/motorcycle-parking attendant smiled and waved us in.
“It’s good?” I asked.
“Yes, good,” he replied.
We sat down near a table filled with happy drinkers, with multiple glasses of beer and plates of partially eaten food in front of them.
A young waiter approached with his order pad and asked, “Two bia (beer)?”
“No bia,” we answered. “Food.”
“Bia?” he repeated.
“Do you have food? Can we see a menu?” we asked. Our English questions were repeatedly answered in Vietnamese. Neither of us was understanding the other.
“Beer?” the waiter asked in Vietnamese. “Food,” we answered in English
We decided to use our never-fail approach to ordering food when there’s not an English-language menu or a signboard with pictures. We pointed to the people at the other table and said, “Two,” while holding up two fingers.
Seemingly satisfied with our response, the waiter disappeared inside. We wondered just what we were going to get.
Our answer came almost immediately when another young man showed up with two glasses of cold beer! He returned shortly with a small plate filled with peanuts.
“I guess we’ll start with this,” I said to Melanie, and cracked open a nut. “They’re raw,” I said. “Not what I was expecting, but tasty.”
We both had eaten raw peanuts before, but these were really raw! Still quite moist within the shells and slightly sweet. Mel had never had such fresh peanuts, but the taste brought back happy memories from many years ago when I lived with my grandmother in Ohio and had grown a few peanut plants in our garden.
We finally got a menu — all in Vietnamese…
By now, another young man had at last brought us a menu – all in Vietnamese, with no pictures in sight. Right away we eliminated some of the choices as too expensive. And I recognized the word “lau” as being associated with hotpots – way too much food for the two of us, and usually more pricey.
Mel pulled up the translation app on her phone and set about trying to decipher some of the other items on the list.
The first few attempts were not very successful, yielding words like “fried” or “mixed” – not very descriptive of what we might get. We dug deeper into a couple of the listings, concentrating on the ones with more modest prices.
We weren’t having much luck trying to translate from Vietnamese, so I suggested we go the other way. “See what ‘fried rice’ is when translated from English.” Mel showed our waiter the translation on her phone, and his one-word answer was, “No.” We showed chicken, then beef and still, “No.”
Back to the drawing board/menu.
We finally managed to translate one of the dishes as “mixed fried noodles.” We pointed to the listing on the menu and asked for “two.” The waiter disappeared again, and we sipped our beer as we waited.
After a while, the other waiter appeared and pointed to another item on the menu, also pointing to the happy people at the other table. Mel was able to translate the words as “fried corn” – our waiter was trying to accommodate our request for fried rice. We agreed, holding up one finger. “One.”
After a time we began to wonder if our first ‘order’ had been successfully accepted. Would we now only get one plate of fried corn?
Our answer came quickly; two plates mounded with yellow fried noodles and greens, with small pieces of meat and mushrooms mixed in. We also each got a small dish of sweet brown dipping sauce with just a little spicy heat to it. And then our platter of fried sweet corn kernels arrived. We had ordered more food than we could possibly finish.
Everything turned out to be delicious, as we always hope. And the cold beer turned out to be just the right accompaniment for our meal. In fact, before we were through eating, we ordered another.
Chalk it up to another successful food experience in Hanoi. Our street food explorations have been uniformly satisfying so far – if not always what we expect.
Have you been that brave while traveling?