Stickyrice

The Vina Buffet

The ubiquitous com binh dan restaurant is the lunch experience that Hanoian workers gravitate toward, whether they toil carting coal, selling lychees or pushing a pen in a government office. Translating roughly as "rice at a reasonable price", these lunch outlets replicate the home-cooked meal which, not all that long ago, most Vietnamese returned home to consume.

But life is busy these days and times have certainly changed in this developing country. Going home for lunch with mum, where there could be some nagging about housework or the boyfriend or a dish one doesn't like but she insists on making or a stint with the dish cloth...all this can now be avoided.

Because there is a bit of money about and the streetside Vina buffet is inexpensive.

Like at home, rice is central at these eateries and it is served in big old communal buckets when eating with the colleagues and only slightly smaller ones when eating on one's Pat Malone. The latter is rare as the Vietnamese consider the lone diner a cause for concern, even pity.

I am far from concerned as I make myself known to the buffet choices. Pork is done all ways; there are fatty slices of boiled pig, ribs caramelised and juicy, pork with crackling, mince stuffed in tomatoes, bits from inside stir-fried and turmeric stained trotters not trotting anymore. The pig is dead but very well-utilised! Chickens have lost their heads, too, their flesh also figuring pretty prominently. Stewed eggs, omelettes and tofu offer a respite from the meatfest, with vegie content coming in the form of standard water spinach and steamed cabbage served with boiled egg and soy sauce. Snails, squid scattered with dill and a soup containing bitter melon round out the selections.

Do not take pity on me. I don't have time to talk.

Com Binh Dan
Dinh Liet St
Old Quarter

Evening Market Madness

At my local market in the late afternoons, the vendors clear out. Meat and produce sellers alike vacate the stalls they rent in the market building and cart their stock to the side of the narrow road on which the market is situated.

It's a monotonous and painstaking process. Perfectly displayed merchandise, having served the pre-lunch shoppers well, is packed carefully into baskets, styrofoam boxes and all manner of containers and hauled fifty metres or so, where it is again artfully organised to attract the consumer eye. In the current heat, this mad daily operation zaps the energy and patience of these small business operators. They are curt to even the most polite bargaining.

They make this move because their customers no longer want to stop, park their motorbikes and walk into the market stalls, preferring instead to do a drive through pit stop shop. A few years ago, one vendor set up a small satellite sample of produce from her main stall and started garnering large handfuls of dong from the evening traffic. Others followed suit and now, the actual market is a dark empty cave at five o'clock while the road outside is gridlocked with motorbikes spewing fumes, sweaty butchers weilding cleavers and forthright shoppers poking and pointing.

Amongst a smorgasboard of the essential flavours of Vietnam.

Poor Man's Cakes

I know what food looks like because I've really been exposed to it. I take note of what goes in my piehole. I examine food flavours on my palate and savor them, mostly. In some lobe of my brain, a complicated classification process occurs, recording smells, textures and tastes. One category becomes the realm of my gag activator, where nasties are noted. These nasties are divided into two sub-categories: those I can get down, if I don't think too hard, in a one-chew, one-swallow manoeuvre and those I have to spit out or I'll park the tiger.

What I'm trying to say is that I've developed, as have you, prejudices and pre-conceived ideas about food. These can evolve into lifetime barriers; for many years an olive was a salty rubber bullet to me and I'm still not convinced about oysters au naturale. The Vietnamese, in general, think that cheese is stinking rancid crud.

So, in a similar vein, I've had my suspicions about these peanut-studded discs for some time. Dense white spongy looking stuff, while not posing much of a threat to the gag activator, does not promise the tastebuds much in my experience. The preconception here is bloody bland and boring. But in the interests of research I'm willing to give these cakes, called banh duc, a try.

They are made from rice flour which has been soaked in water (and lime, as in the mineral, according to the vendor). Boiled while being stirred constantly to remove lumps, the mixture is poured into moulds or shaped into rounds, some of which contain peanuts. When prepared by this vendor in the Old Quarter, the rounds are cut into pie pieces and served with tuong, a fermented brown sauce made from beancurd and peanuts. The fermentation gives the sauce a mild hint of alcohol. The fresh chili clipped in gives it heat. The sauce appears to hold all the potential with this dish.

And the verdict?

While I can't say "I told you so", I can say "I told myself so!" There's an element of silky nothing to it, I'm afraid. The sauce makes banh duc palatable. As a culinary episode, it gets the thumbs down. I will defend its importance in this still developing country's foodscape, however. Not everyone can afford to eat like me. The shoeshiners, coal-carters, fruit-vendors and less fortunates of this city have to eat, too. 
Banh duc is traditionally poor man's food. It also has its own proverb:

                    "May doi banh duc co suong, may doi di ghe lai thuong con chong"

...which is difficult to translate into English.

Loose Change

One serve of banh duc - 8,000-10,000VND (USD45-56c, AUD57-72c)

Banh Duc
Ta Hien St
(near the corner with Hang Bac St)
Old Quarter

The Beach Supermarket

The beach is a supermarket in Nha Trang, Vietnam's south-central coast beach resort town. Earlier this year, I spent two weeks in its aisles. As is the case in much of the country, particularly the major towns and cities, there's no need to actually physically go shopping. From my front gate in Hanoi's West Lake district or indeed from my banana lounge on Nha Trang's golden sands, I let the shopping come to me.

This morning in Hanoi, where the variety of travelling vendors pounding the pavement meets virtually all my retail needs, I could've bought hot corn on the cob, a studded dog collar, a wedge of pumpkin and a handful of chilies, a padded pink bra, a cornetto, a bunch of flowers and a hoola hoop, among other things. As I stood on my doorstep, I could also have had my shoes shined, my knives sharpened and my cockroaches exterminated.

In Nha Trang, the beach supermarket caters more for tourists and holiday-makers. One afternoon as I laid about like a sloth on the beach having just turned the last page of a fantastic book of food stories, I scribbled down a list of the products walking by. From this list I could eat huge rice crackers as big as dinner plates, fresh fruit peeled and cut, sugar coated cakes carried on aluminium trays on the vendor's head, boiled peanuts, chewing gum and candy, potato crisps and, for the main course, a seafood buffet served under the fine spray of the sea on yellow plastic plates.

Other vendors offer to adorn me. Bead and shell bracelets, fake gucci sunglasses and straw hats would ensure that I return home looking like I'd been on holidays. More cerebral stimulation can be purchased in the form of photocopied Vina-themed literature and mass-produced asian landscape paintings from a vendor whose catch-cry is "Hello...is it me you're looking for?" I can get fags, tissues and postcards that will never be written on. If I'm feeling lucky, another vendor will sell me a lottery ticket. The list goes on and the shopping keeps coming to me. If I bought everything on offer, I'd need a trolley.

And that would be a real bastard to push through the sand to the carpark.

The alluring deep frying of food

In Hanoi, at one of my favourite soup slurping stations, one of the teenage helpers was on wonton duty. A blackened wok on a high gas flame was set up on the footpath and extra long cooking chopsticks were keeping the hot oil safely at bay. Trays of limp uncooked wontons lay nearby awaiting crispification.

The alluring deep frying of food.

In Australia on Friday nights, I'd volunteer to go with Mum to the fish and chip shop to witness the same kind of action. The Greek proprietors would turn white fish and potatoes into magic golden brown via a finely tuned system where raw product entered the first bubbling oil vat at left, gradually moving right before being lifted, drained, salted and wrapped. "Can't you drive any faster?" I'd say to Mum on the way home. I would be salivating like a rabid dog.

A recent TV program on Discovery T&L showcased America's love affair with grease. They take the technique to a whole new level with anything from bacon to mars bars to a Texan creation known as a chicken fried steak getting slathered in batter and immersed in oil. I did watch in horror at some points but more at the eaters than the food.

I could see myself in them.

I do love a good fry-up. The heat, the bubbles, the crispy crunchy outcome, the possibility of third degree burns, the oil stains on the groin of my tousers, ill-fitting trousers struggling to house my expanding arse... the onset of obesity. It all adds up to excitement, adventure, risk, living dangerously. Some people jump out of planes. My personal favourite extreme sport is eating deep fried food. 

And these cracking giant wontons (banh hoanh thanh), filled with minced up pork and liver, are a fine exponent of this cuisine.

Herbs and Tubes

I seem to be facing a few of my culinary demons lately. Chewy is the demon here. It's not often that I find myself attacking the garnish with gusto before that which lies beneath it. I'm making the same choices as a rabbit.

But it becomes rather obvious to my eating companions. They are chewing with relish as I continue to mow through the botany. I do eye the cuts of tube trying to identify a piece that is small, that I can get down with minimal chewing and a trap-door swallow. I don't want my mates to place a gnarly thick bit in my bowl for me. In these situations in the past, there has been an expectation that I demonstrate some kind of adverse reaction. I want to be brave. I don't want to offend. I want to communicate a 'water off a duck's back' kind of vibe.

It's hard, when I know that poo used to travel these tubes.

Pig intestines (trang) are commonly available across the city, along with other organs and offal. They are not a delicacy but something eaten on an everyday basis. They are clean, all traces of poo long flushed out. If I'd been born Vietnamese like my friends, I wouldn't be getting so worked up about this.

I do eventually bite the bullet...and it is kind of rubbery like a garden hose.

But it has had me thinking since. What has happened to me and my ilk? Why is it such a challenge to eat these parts of an animal? Surely they were part of the diet in generations past. In parts of Europe they probably still are. Where do these parts of the pig end up in my country? Perhaps I have regularly eaten them disguised in a sausage or spread on toast as liverwurst, in an altogether different form.

Can I acquire a taste for them in their original form, before any processing, when they were not that long ago clearly related to the vital functions of a living thing? Pulsing, beating, belching, farting living things!

I would have to practise long and hard.

Vina Drinks List: A Revelation

Under a bang tree canopy of green on a still grey summer day, I sit thirsty, a healthy sheen on the brow.

It's imperative to keep the fluids up in Hanoi as they disappear fast via the pores. Some days, simply standing up sets the perspiration oozing. It's definitely the season for 'Vina Drinks List' research.

At my current location, I sit facing a pyramid of coconuts cut back to their husks, precariously resting against the cafe wall. One abrupt move and the coconuts become rogue bowling balls, cracking the ankle bones of passers-by, skittling the traffic into a deeper state of chaos, if that's possible.

I order one.

Now, by West Lake or beachside down south, the coconut would be delivered just as it falls from the tree, with the top hacked off and a plastic straw inserted into the hole. The juice would be tepid and not very refreshing. In such circumstances, I don't think it's crazy to push a few chunks of ice through the hole. When I do, my coconut purveyor thinks I've escaped from the funny farm.

In a metaphorical sense I have, which gives me license to behave like it when the situation calls for it.

Today there is no call. The preparation of my coconut is a far more intricate, sophisticated process at this humble kerbside cafe in the Old Quarter. A coconut carpenter is on hand, chipping the green skin of the fruit away with a heavy cleaver. Once the juice is poured off, he pulls a vegetable peeler from his toolbag, which he expertly uses to scrape the luscious white flesh from the coconut's bowl. I admire his handyman skills, for one slip would surely result in a deep cut, a fountain of red and a bloodied pile of coconut meat.

I do not want gorey medical emergencies on my morning break. I want refreshing cold coconut juice with ice. And that is precisely what I receive, albeit with a twist. The juice (nuoc dua long nhan) is served in a large handled glass containing a longan or two, some lotus seeds and a divine tangle of shiny coconut ribbon on top.

I experience a revelation.

Cafe Hieu
Cnr. Hang Thiec & Bat Dan
Old Quarter

Pretty Food

It could be a delicate celebration dessert, the invention of some enfant terrible in a Michelin starred kitchen. The gastro-poetry might allude to raspberry coulis, hints of mint, crushed peanuts, lime. Creme fraiche could be dolloped on top. The restaurant critic might describe it as risky, triumphant or crazy.

But currently I am not of that world.

I am in the goat restaurant.

The crimson circle before me is drained from this hollow-horned mammal. Bottled in used la Vie plastic, it is poured into the bowl over a diced mix of other goat bits, mostly chewy ones, and clipped up coriander. Peanuts and lime juice finish out this delicacy, known as tiet canh de.

I have eaten blood of goat.

Let's not forget pho

An acquiantance of mine is leaving Hanoi after three years. Last week at a farewell lunch, we got to talking about food. It was me who guided the conversation there as I'm fairly shallow on other topics. I'm always intrigued by how little exposure some medium-to-long-term ex-pats have had to street food. I wanted to interrogate the acquaintance, see what her form was like.

Not that this is how I judge people, of course.

I try not to, anyway. But I got the sense that the acquaintance's excitement about Vietnamese cuisine and the local specialties was limited to her first year here. She claimed to have overdosed on pho, admitting to knocking off three bowls a day on occasion, one for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The acquaintance was fast becoming a friend, or at the very least an inspiration for a future post. Even I have not attempted this 'pho three-peat feat'.

While the acquaintance lost her pho mojo early on, citing some kind of MSG giddiness, I have soldiered on. I may not have written about it for a year or more but be assured that noodle soup is still slurped and sipped regularly at stickyrice HQ. I still revere the pho ritual. I feel excited when waiting for my bowl to arrive, chopsticks cursorily cleaned with paper and ready. Juice is extracted from a wedge of lime. Hot red sauce is passed over in favour of a few slices of fresh chili. A drop of garlic-infused vinegar, a shake of pepper. The ceremonial lifting and dropping of the noodles with the sticks and spoon to mix the condiments in signals that the preparation is done. Afterwards, I wipe my mouth with a square of flimsy napkin and insert the toothpick.

And I feel as if I should genuflect as I back out onto the street.

Is there a need to resurrect the Hanoi Pho Swoop, to revise it with a chapter or two, to suck up new noodles and spit out new words?

I wonder.

Mango Sheets

I don't know what was wrong with me when I was a child. I didn't like mangoes. I can't recollect the issue exactly but it was the flavour rather than texture that had me turning up my nose. Also, handling them was disconcerting for a Melbourne boy bought up on a mostly temperate climate fruit diet of apples, bananas, oranges and the odd pear or grape. What was exotic tropical fruit in those days rarely hit the green-grocer's display trays and when we got them home, things turned messy and sticky. Slippery bits of mushy mango flesh shot from our hands directly to the floor.

I gave up on mangoes for a long time.

Of course, in Vietnam and elsewhere in the region, mangoes dominate the fruitscape. I've learned how to handle them and I can appreciate them all ways, shredded fine and green in a salad with duck, dipped in salt and chili as an afternoon snack, in smoothies with ice and condensed milk and even over-ripe and dripping, just the way I didn't like them all those years ago.

At the Nha Trang market, I can pick them up in a sheet, a stunning orange pane of dried mango jam.

At the mango farm, a simple process sees ripe mangoes peeled, wet flesh roughly pared and stone thrown away. In a big pot on the heat, some sugar is added to the flesh and the mixture is brought to the boil. This hot molten mango lava is poured onto a flat surface where it is trowelled even. A day or two in the sun dries the sheets before they are cut into the desired shape and layered on top of one another for packaging.

Known as banh xoai (mango cake), this addictive chewy fruit sweet really pushes my buttons. In fact, I reckon I've eaten a decent square metre of the stuff in one sitting.