The Street Food Guy

The win pillars of civilisation, street food, and travel

Eating

5 of the best street foods in Hanoi you must try

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Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital city has a lot to offer, from the mausoleum of Uncle Ho Chi Minh, the One Pillar Pagoda, the crazy new buildings being built in the business district, and of course the great food and drink that can be enjoyed in the fabulous old quarter. Even Donald Trump and Marshal Kim Jong Un decided to come here.

But if you really want to understand the life and attitude of the Hanoiians, then the only way is to jump head-first into the fabulous Hanoi street food scene.

There’s a lot of sights, sounds and smells to deal with when sampling Hanoi street food, but don’t be put off! Let The Street Food Guy guide you to the top 5 spots for Street Food in Hanoi!

The Best Street Food of Hanoi

Bia Hoi

Old Quarter, Hanoi

Our first entry might not exactly be street food – in fact it is not at all; it’s beer –but this is no ordinary beer. Ba Hoi is not only brewed and delivered daily, but has to be drunk that very day. You will see Bia Hoi bars throughout Hanoi, but the best place to get drinking is in the Old Quarter.

Oh and get this! It costs 5000 dong a glass! Now that might sound a lot, but it’s 20 cents a glass. Let that sink in a bit. The glasses are small though, and there’s a 100-beer challenge if you’re so inclined.

Phở  Bo Gia Truyen

Old Quarter – 49 Bat Dan

Frankly you’ve not been to Vietnam unless you try Phở  at least once. Phở  was inspired by the French settlers and can be called your quintessential fusion cuisine. It’s basically a soup with meat and noodles.

You can (and will) see and eat Phở  everywhere, but at Phở  Gia Truyen it’s so good that people line up around the street to get it every morning.

Lẩu Thái

Seemingly most backstreets of Hanoi

I guess the best way to describe this dish would be Vietnamese hot pot, and it is a particularly big thing in Hanoi. When you’re walking along many a backstreet you will see a sign that says “Lau” and then the words for beef/ fish etc, and then a price from anywhere between 99000 and 150000 dong, which is between about $4-6 and is enough to feed at least two people.

Vietnamese hot pot differs from its Chinese cousin in that you get your salt, and calamansi (small lime), pineapple, and Vietnamese hot sauce! A fine Vietnamese meal.

Nuöng

Old Quarter

French colonial rule might not be looked upon that favourably, but holy moly did they do Vietnam a culinary solid! Nuöng – or Vietnamese BBQ – has you sitting in front of a hot plate and a fire with foil on the plate. You then add lashings of butter. Comes in three flavors: meat, fish, or vegetarian, although all come with vegetables regardless.

This is some of the best fusion cuisine you can have in Vietnam; to read more about it check out this link.

Bánh Tôm

Bo Dinh District and most backstreets

Bánh Tôm is another Vietnamese favourite that originates in good old Hanoi. What is Banh Tom? It’s battered sweet potato and shrimp!

The bright colours come from the tamarind and the natural colours of the shrimp and sweet potato, and you can either eat it as it is, or wrap it in a lettuce leaf and then dip it in the nuoc mam cham spicy dipping sauce! As you can imagine this tends to make a great post-beer snack after you’ve knocked back a few in the Old Quarter.

Top 7 tips for travelling (and eating) around Halong Bay

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Ten years ago Vietnam was the reserve of the intrepid backpacker, but since then
Vietnam has gotten itself right on the tourist radar, particularly when it
comes to marauding groups of Chinese tourists coming through. Alas this now means
money is firmly being smelt! Navigating your way around the tourists meccas
(such as Halong Bay) has also gotten that bit harder. But no worries: you got The
Street Food Guy! Here’s my top tips to traveling and eating around Halong Bay!

Traveling to Halong Bay is quite the experience…

So, obviously to get to Halong Bay you need to travel there (duh), this can be done by flying, taxi, luxurious bus, or the local bus. Local buses from Hanoi or Lang Son cost less than $2, but holy shit do they ram-pack those buses! They also drive fast through country roads, but it’s cheap, you get to share with chickens, and they even give out complimentary sick bags! This is the legit way to travel to Halong Bay.

Hotels are a very mixed bag

Hotels are not only a mixed bag of tricks, but they often don’t provide what they say
they will. That being said you can get a great room for as little as $12 (I can
suggest the Four Seasons Halong Bay), but it’s really not expensive ($50) to
get yourself up to 4/5 star, in which case I can suggest the Marina Hotel. Long
story short: Halong Bay is one of those beautiful places where “deluxe” really
does not cost all that much.

Everyone in Halong Bay is so friendly (especially the spivs)

Halong Bay is all about the boat cruises, which seem to be the sole reason for the place existing. A few anecdotal stories: when I arrived at my hotel, the receptionist didn’t speak English and handed the phone to me, where a guy speaking English tried to sell me a tour before I had even checked in! And the same at dinner, before I had even ordered my food. General rule of thumb, if people are that desperate to sell you something they are making BIG money. If you’re gonna do a Halong Bay boat trip, check online, or negotiate down on the bay, and negotiate hard!

Avoid the beachside tourist joints!

Down by the sea there’s a big lit-up street full of life with back-to-back
restaurants full to the rafters with the hungry tourists of Halong Bay. If you
want to pay triple what you’d pay elsewhere for the same food, then will this
place is perfect. Also whilst Vietnamese service is not exactly world famous,
staff here are rude even by local standards.

For street food explore the backstreets

One awesome point is whilst the main streets of Halong Bay might be a complete rip-off, you literally just have to jump onto a Halong backstreet where the outside tables are at, and you will get served a treat at a fraction of the price. That being said: still check the price of everything before you order it.

In Halong Bay it’s all about the seafood

OK, so this might be stating the street-fooding obvious, but Halong Bay is by the
sea, so as you might expect, it is all about the fish! Shellfish particularly.
Big plates of oysters, clams, and shrimps will set you back under $5, with the
most expensive dish in Halong Bay seemingly chicken. I guess you can’t fish for
chicken.

Lime and salt (and vodka)

And lastly! My last eating tip for when you street food here: lime and salt. In most of Vietnam they serve a small dish with salt, into which you squeeze your little lime and then mix your meat or fish. So simple, but really one of the things that makes Vietnamese street food so damned good. Oh and then there’s the vodka, $4 a bottle, and you can even use one of those limes to chase it.

Overall
Halong Bay is no Nha Trang, but it’s well worth travelling and eating here.

Local food and hipster beers – one night in Baguio

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Baguio is known as the summer capital of the Philippines, because in the summer it offers the coolest climate. In the winter though, it is colder than a witch’s tit. But the customers dictated we go there, so go to Baguio we did.

The actual trip was an amended version of our Extreme Philippines Tour, a trip we’re now in our fourth year of doing. It’s therefore fair to say we not only know our way around Baguio, but we got some good local contacts. But first we had to get there.

Leading a private group has a few advantages on a group tour, namely that if your pax don’t like early mornings, you don’t have to leave at stupid o’clock. It was thus about 10am before we embarked on the drive from sin city/Angeles City to Baguio. A good firm 7 hours inclusive of a lunch break meant we rocked up to our hotel about 5 pm, and were ready for dinner.

The Philippines is full of what they call restobars, which are bars that offer poor-quality American food. They’re not awful, but I wanted something local, and our local guide said he had what we needed, so we jumped on the back of his pickup truck and headed up the mountain.

You really couldn’t get much more local then the Farmer’s Daughter Restaurant, a tiny place with barely enough seats and tables for the masses, with the dishes that consisted of all the weird animal parts from pig brain down to bollocks, in BBQ, soup, or adobo form.

The numerous dishes that were supposed to be for 2-3 people were at prices of no more than $3 each. Keep in mind that we didn’t drink any alcohol, but when a meal comes in at under $50 for 9 people you know you have a deal. If you visit Baguio then the Farmer’s Daughter Restaurant is not only the best value, but probably the best food too.

Fuelled up on food we then headed to do tourist stuff, which was largely a failure aside from the Baguio Botanical Gardens. These are basically botanical gardens, as you might expect, and not all that interesting.

As night follows day there comes a time in the evening when we get rather thirsty, and this happened to us around 7pm. Our local fixer thus suggested a “new bar”. I like trying new things, and about 20 minutes later we were there: Baguio Craft Beer Bar.

You know the hipsters have arrived when you get a craft beer bar, and alas this threw up two big problems. Firstly I find craft beer the most overrated thing since Gandhi, but more importantly in genuine effort to be less of a fat bastard I had just embarked on the keto diet. There is no beer on the keto diet.

The bar was also colder than a second, equally chilly witch’s tit! I never knew it was possible to be so cold in the Philippines, of all places. I digress. The next 30 minutes were spent trying to fix the heater and obtain vodka and tequila from another part of the bar, a feat much harder than it sounds. All’s well that ends well though, and we ended up drinking a lot of tequila and dancing (badly).

For a nightcap, I had 4 hot-dogs from 7-11. These were without the bun because of keto and me being a peasant.

Eating and drinking in Baguio: a big success! The Street Food Guy truly recommends travel to Baguio!