Hoi An and Hue--Central Vietnam [pics]

I had one of the best meals of my entire life outside Hoi An, Vietnam last week. Two or three years ago, Amanda Hesser had written an article in the New York Times about central Vietnam. As she is one of my favorite food writers, I was determined to try the restaurants she recommended. She described a seafood restaurant several kilometers out of town with no English menu. She walked in and drew pictures of crabs in order to get served. She recommended the crabs with ginger and lemongrass. Needless to say, I was comfortably seated in this restaurant approximately 15 minutes after arriving in Hoi An. This was a lovely little open air restaurant with really welcoming proprietors. They had Hesser's article posted at the front of the restaurant and now have a (partial) English menu. The first meal we ordered stir-fried garlic shrimp, a soup with fish and rice, and tamarind crab. The crab and the shrimp were some of the best stuff I've ever put into my mouth. We returned for dinner the next day and attempted to order crab with ginger and lemongrass, the garlic shrimp and a spicy grilled fish. We actually received tamarind crab again due to the language barrier (probably my error in pointing to the wrong thing in the phrase book), but no matter, it was soooooo good, we happily ate it again. The grilled fish was great too. And, the hostess actually put on a plastic glove and PICKED the crabs for us! These meals were relatively expensive by Vietnam standards (about $45 for two people for a lot of seafood) and we probably payed tourist prices but I would gladly pay three times that to have those dishes again. Absolutely wonderful!

Live crabs presented to the table before the meal:


Li, one of the very friendly hosts:


Tamarind crab:


Garlic shrimp (lousy picture due to flash doesn't do this dish justice)


These meals were definitely a highlight of our time in Hoi An.
We also enjoyed a regional specialty called Cau lau which features rice noodles, pork, little noodle croutons and pork. Supposedly, this dish is only authentic if well water from the Bale well in town is used to make it. I'm not sure if ours was made with well water but it was quite tasty.


Nearby Hue had some interesting food as well but we would have gladly stayed in Hoi An for a few more meals at Quan Nhan.

Hue was the capital of Vietnam during the Nguyen dynasty (early 19th to mid-20th century). Apparently one of the emperors demanded very elaborate, multicourse meals. Hue continues to be known for it's imperial cuisine which tends to emphasize impressive presentation. We tried a 7 course meal at Y Thao. The setting was lovely and the dishes looked lovely, but the food was pretty average (a la Arun's in my book--but def. worth trying at about $20 US for the meal). Even so, it made for nice pictures:

Imperial Cuisine at Y Thao:

Garden Setting:


"Fig tree" (didn't look like the figs I'm used to-has anyone seen these before?)


Spring rolls in a pineapple shaped like a pheasant (the inside of the pineapple was carved out and there was a candle inside, jack-o-lantern style):


Shrimp dish


Lotus seed fried rice:


Pineapple and Flower (edible, made of green bean cake)


Our guide in the Imperial City told us about some dumplings or "cakes" Hue is known for and sent us to the most popular place in town (among locals) to get some. These included banh beo, banh loc and banh nam. She described these as steamed cakes of rice flour with cassava mixed with shrimp (ground or whole, depending on the type). This place was packed with Vietnamese people which we took as good sign. We ordered the Banh beo--small cups of the rice flour and cassava mixture with ground shrimp, and the Banh loc--the same dough mixed with small whole shrimp in banana leaves. The banh loc shrimp had the shell on and it seemed like everyone was eating the whole thing. We didn't love these (I think the authenticity was lost on us--acquired taste?) but we enjoyed the experience nonetheless. Afterwards, we headed to another Amanda Hesser pick for some pork chops (sorry no pics).

Banh at Ba Do in Hue:

Menu:



banh beo:


banh loc:

Thank you for sharing. The seafood looks amazing. My wife and I are taking a trip to Vietnam in November and are very excited about it. We will be in Hoi An and Hue, and will have to look into trying to visit one of these restaurants.

It was a great trip. I'd spend more time in Hoi An than Hue. Hoi An is very charming. We also heard from another couple that the seafood restaurants on the beach near Hoi An are terrific. Chi Teo on Ha Bai Trung is the restaurant in Hue Amanda Hesser recommended. Make sure you bring a good phrasebook if you go there. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. I'll post about Ho Chi Minh City and Siem Reap, Cambodia as well.

I will add a phrase book to the list of things to buy before the trip. Any recommendations on which one to buy?

We will be in Ho Chi Minh and Siem Reap also, so I look forward to hearing about your time there.

We are going on a tour. My wife and I have never been to south east Asia and felt most comfortable taking our first trip with a little guidance to help out. We do have a few free evenings though, and I plan on either skipping some dinners or going out again after them. We are doing 3 days in Bangkok on our own before we go to Hanoi, air fare was cheapest to Bangkok.

I bought the lonely planet phrasebook. But probably the most helpful thing we did was have locals write things down for us. The pronunciation was very difficult so even when I thought I'd "learned" to say something, I sometimes had difficulty making myself understood. I would ask anyone who spoke some English about local specialties and restaurants. It tooks some time to convince people that I did not want to eat at tourist restaurants. So, I kept a few pages of notepaper and when someone would translate something or recommend something, I'd have them write it down with proper accents, spelling so I could point at the paper, at least until I got better with my pronunciation. Usually, I'd point at one thing on the paper, then the restaurant proprietor would take the whole sheet, read it, and chuckle at my list of Vietnamese delicacies.

We only spent a few days in Hoi An, and I think it wasn't raining for approximately 3 hours of our time there. Our beachfront hotel, The Victoria, was beautiful, but the sea was pretty angry for our entire visit. The main objective of our visit to Hoi An was not food, but clothing...and there's nothing that will curb your appetite like being repeatedly fitted for tailored clothes in 90+ heat with 100% humidity. That said, we did manage a couple stops at Banh Mi Phuong on the east side of the market. Easily the best $0.95 I've ever spent, these sandwiches are a triumph, and the woman working there on our visits was one of the nicest people we met in a country full of exceedingly nice people. During our second visit, she determined that the bread she had was no longer suitable and proceeded to jump on her moto and go pick up a fresh basket of still-warm bread from which to make our sandwiches. The quality of her mayo and pate (the black 'cake' on the left-hand side of the shelf in the second picture below) were out-of-this-world, rustic perfection. The freshness of the herbs/veg and fried egg pushed it over the top into my top 5 sandwiches of all time. It might be hard to believe, but that's my happy face...

Banh Mi Phuong






We had high hopes for trying Quan Nhan Crab Shack and Ba Le Well, but the former did not open at any point during our stay and the later seemed to be jammed to the gills with other tourists every time we walked by. I asked our taxi driver about Quan Nhan on one trip into town, and he mentioned that most of the clientele aren't locals, and with all of the recent rain, very few people were traveling to Hoi An, so the proprietor had decided to keep the restaurant closed and do some renovations.

There was other good food to be had, but nothing that I remember as worth going out of your way for...a very nice French pastry shop on Nguyen Thai Hoc, various places with Mango in the name that all seemed to serve as welcome respites from the rain, from which to observe the traffic on the swollen river or a funeral procession making its way through the nearly equally flooded streets of town, with very good coffee, or Saigon beer (green for me, red for her) and a plate of fresh spring rolls. But, one of my most endearing memories of Hoi An was just wandering the quiet streets further from the hectic market area, past the covered bridge (which no, you don't have to pay to walk across). There are quaint, occasionally tree-lined streets which at first contain a few small shops selling stranger things for tourists, like vintage propaganda posters, but a bit further on there's not even that, there's just daily life in a relatively peaceful town.

Our clothes came together perfectly in just under 48 hours (after 3 fittings for me, and maybe 5 for my wife). I can highly recommend A Dong Silk on Tran Hung Dao if you need fast results and are willing to pay a bit more for exceptional quality (it's still not close to what you'd pay over here...Armani Cashmere Suit made to measure for $400?). Wherever you might go, I recommend coming with pictures or firm ideas of what you want them to make. It will save a lot of time of paging through magazines and combing websites in the store looking for the right design. Many places offer a discount if you make an appointment prior to your arrival in town, so do plan ahead.

Will I be back to Hoi An? I hope so...I also hope that the rain will have stopped by then.

ETA: I did try the local specialty of cao lau, but I don't recall where that was. In any event, I had an extremely negative reaction to one of the herbs used in this dish. I've never tasted it anywhere else, so I have no idea what it was, but it sent off immediate signals of "poison" in my mouth/brain when I tried to eat it. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy my cao lau experience.

kl,

Fantastic seeing Banh Mi Phuong. To continue our previous discussion re: Bourdain approved travel eats -- I walked "into" BMP from behind, the market side. Almost freakin' missed it. Having done no research on the small town, it was kind of surprising when we later watched the AB episode. It was like: heeey, we ate there. And then I googled only to find "best banh mi in the world" repeatedly uttered.

Let's not forget the fantastic ground pork jus (stewed with fish sauce?) that tops the pork + pate + mayo. I think that's the meal ticket right there. That little ladle of slow cooked porkiness elevates this particular sandwich over any banh mi I've ever eaten.

You missed the banh xeo stand [this is euphemistic -- I don't know the proper word for a girl squatting over a row of coal fired pans frying up banh xeo while being surrounded by 1' stools & her ingredients] in the old market, behind the cao lau stalls. It was being cooked by a truant 10 year old while her mother ran errands. We were f'ing up our cuons, and the fellow lady diners yenta'd in to save us. Stuffed our face full of crunchy rolls for < $2. That was a life changer; we didn't make it into a $100/pp restaurant in '11 because of that purveyor.

Note: for those who are visiting, try not to ride your rental scooter through the market. You can. But you'll look like an orangutan, and people will glare.

Also, commenting on thaiobsessed's US$45 Hoi An seafood dinner: homey don't play getting whited in Central Vietnam. US$45 feeds a family of 3 for a week on com binh dan. I'd feel like a dirty capitalist sitting in that dining room waiting for the crab to be disemboweled.

TonyC wrote:Let's not forget the fantastic ground pork jus (stewed with fish sauce?) that tops the pork + pate + mayo. I think that's the meal ticket right there. That little ladle of slow cooked porkiness elevates this particular sandwich over any banh mi I've ever eaten.

Is that the stuff that's in the bowl in the foreground of pic #2 above? If so, you're absolutely right. That stuff was magic sauce.

TonyC wrote:You missed the banh xeo stand [this is euphemistic -- I don't know the proper word for a girl squatting over a row of coal fired pans frying up banh xeo while being surrounded by 1' stools & her ingredients] in the old market, behind the cao lau stalls. It was being cooked by a truant 10 year old while her mother ran errands. We were f'ing up our cuons, and the fellow lady diners yenta'd in to save us. Stuffed our face full of crunchy rolls for < $2. That was a life changer; we didn't make it into a $100/pp restaurant in '11 because of that purveyor.

Okay, now I have to go back...just as soon as I need some new suits.

TonyC wrote:Also, commenting on thaiobsessed's US$45 Hoi An seafood dinner: homey don't play getting whited in Central Vietnam. US$45 feeds a family of 3 for a week on com binh dan. I'd feel like a dirty capitalist sitting in that dining room waiting for the crab to be disemboweled.

Nonsense. How much did your Hoi An hotel room cost you? Did you consider average rental cost in the nearby rural village for a 1 bedroom, 1 bath, thatched-roof hut?

When I visited Vietnam, I enjoyed my fair share of cheap market eats on tiny plastic chairs, as well as a few dirty capitalist feasts. Good times.

--Rich

Regarding the unfamiliar figs -- there about 900 species of figs, not all of them edible. I don't know about the culinary value of the figs you have pictured above, but they certainly appear to be part of that large family.

And thanks for sharing. Certainly looks like you had a splendid time.

TonyC wrote:US$45 feeds a family of 3 for a week on com binh dan. I'd feel like a dirty capitalist sitting in that dining room waiting for the crab to be disemboweled.

I'm pretty sure thaiobsessed's US$45 ultimately went to a very similar purpose...unless Nhan is running a front for foreign owners. I find it hard not to be exceptionally relativistic when it comes to paying for food (or anything, really) in less developed countries, but I don't get upset when I pay $1 for my amazing breakfast and the old man who's clearly been eating there for years pays $0.30. It's still $1. Would I feel like a "dirty capitalist" or that I'd been "ripped off" paying $45 for crab in that shack outside Hoi An? If the crab is that amazing, I'm sure I'd be more than happy to fork it over. Unfortunately, I didn't even get to the option. Flush with their capitalist earnings, those folks were too busy renovating their restaurant to cook me dinner at any price. That certainly does say something about economics, but I think it's considerably more complicated than the point you're making.

RAB wrote:Nonsense. How much did your Hoi An hotel room cost you?
--Rich

Do ya really wanna know?

Hotel Name: Hoi An Pacific Hotel (let's just say it didn't have an ocean view ala kl's choice)
Address: 321 Cua Dai Str,Hoi An Town, Quang Nam province
No. of Rooms: 1
Breakfast: Included
Total / Room Charge: USD 37.50

Agoda.com is your friend. Obviously comparing foreign real estate to foreign food is illogical. I can eat $2 tacos while visiting Chicago, but have no choice but to fork out $50/night for a dink room. Chicago, Hoi An, same poop, different day.

kl1191, of course you're right, it's a personal dogma. Dinner for 3 at Restaurant Jesse ran US$100+. Having just visited some factories in Shenzhen for work, it upset me to no end & ruined my Shanghai stay. I'm no leftist hippie, but...

We spent 5 amazing days in Hoi An with our family and friends. We had kids ages 1-7 along, who did great traveling and ate a lot of the local food, although due to their ages and bedtimes we didn't stray too far out of the main parts of Hoi an.
Our kids ate calamari at almost every place, and it was very good. Never rubbery or greasy. They also enjoyed all of the fresh juices everywhere, especially the lime and mango. We enjoyed the local Biere Larue regular and Export version.
A brief summary of where we ate:
Mermaid cafe - Shrimp with garlic greens was fantastic, as was the Hoi An wonton - filled with crab, shrimp and peppers.
Ba le well - Our favorite, set menu, they just keep bringing you food. Grilled pork, pork satay, crispy vietnamese pancakes, everything was delicious.
Banyan bar - This was on An Bang beach owned by a former Parisian, really nice guy. Hubby and my friend had burgers which were amazing. Fresh chopped ground beef with chorizo and egg on a freshly made baguette. I had the seafood salad, which had a very fresh filet of mahi mahi, calamari and shrimp.
Secret Garden -really nice outdoor cafe. We enjoyed the fish curry, water spinach salad was amazing as well. Pork filled rice noodle was a hit with the kids.
Hai Cafe - really fantastic grilled beef and grilled pork ribs. Nice outdoor patio as well.
Cargo cafe has delicious sweets, we had an almond carmel cake and they delivered a chocolate mousse cake to our hotel for our daughter's birthday. Cakes were not as sweet as in the US, and i really enjoyed that. They also make a perfect pick me up, called the Cargo coffee - Coffee with fresh whipped cream and grand marnier.
As others have mentioned the Banh Mi at Banh Mi Phoung were crazy good. No idea what was in the sauce(s) but I still dream of them. We didn't have a bad meal anywhere and the people are so friendly.
We took a cooking class at Gioan that was perfect. it started with a trip to the market then we made Pho, Spring rolls, and Lemongrass chicken. It lasted 2.5 hours which was perfect, and we learned a lot, received a lovely mini cookbook and overall had a great time. The owner was very sweet.
We spent a ton of time just walking through the market. The fish were so fresh, there weren't any unpleasant fishy smells. Didn't try Durian though, but enjoyed Squid Apple, kind of a mushy sweet interior with large black seeds and lychee which the kids loved as well.
Only 1 person got sick, thankfully it wasn't a kid, and it wasn't my weak stomached husband. It was a mystery b/c we ate all the same things. We spend over a week in Singapore as well, will post in that subject area. We did get sick there off of chili crab at a very nice Chinese restaurant.