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Food & Drink
Since the mid 1990s, Vietnamese cuisine has been catching up again and is now very diverse and most delicious. Most famous remains “Pho Ga” (chicken noodle soup) or “Pho Bo”(Beef noodle soup). There are various dishes including chicken, beef, fish and seafood.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of restaurants nowadays in Hanoi catering to everyone's taste. Be careful in your selection of eatery as most often the food on offer is utterly appalling and prepared in the most unhygienic conditions. Often Western travelers need to contend with recurring bouts of diarrhea and should prepare themselves for the eventuality.
On Tô Tich, a small street connecting Hang Quat and Hang Gai, you can help yourself to a refreshing fruit milkshake (sinh tố) at one of the stalls.
You can also try BBQ pork (slice) in soup with vermicelli and lots of vegetables at DAC KIM (24, Hang Ga, Hoen Kiem, Hanoi; open 8.00-20.00). They serve spring rolls too.
The community of Le Mat (aka the Snake Village) has numerous restaurants specializing in cobra foodstuffs. Live cobras are stored on the premises much the same way one would find live lobsters at a Western seafood restaurant. If one orders cobra blood wine from the menu, the waiter will take a live cobra, kill it on the spot, drain the blood into a shot glass of rice wine, and top it off with the cobra's still beating heart for you to gulp down! Not for the faint hearted. Le Mat is about ten minutes across the river from downtown.
A local delicacy in the Hanoi area is dog meat which is especially popular in the winter. There are a number of restaurants along the Red River that specialize in it. Another exotic regional taste is ca cuong, an extract from the giant water bug.
Look to the Old Quarter for atmospheric street stalls:
Hebe cafe' 33: Luong Van Can street, near the Hoan Kiem lake, in the center of Hanoi Old Quarter (inside Hanoi Youth Hotel), local and Western food at prices to suit travelers.
Huy Café & Pizza Inn : 32 Dinh Liet Street, offers a large Italian dinner combo (garlic bread, soup/salad, pizza/pasta, drink)
Cha Ca La Vong : 14 Cha Ca Street, also 107 Nguyen Truong To Street - This establishment is so famous, the street is named after it, instead of the other way around. There's only one dish on the menu, fried fish in grease, but they've been serving it now for five generations.
Kaiser Kaffee Restaurant: (34A Ba Trieu) is an interesting little place which has excellent Vietnamese and Western food.
Pepperoni : near the Hang Gai end of Nha Chung is part of a small international chain of pizza restaurants. Locally run, they do regular special offers such as free desserts, eat-all-you-can buffets and loyalty schemes, whereby collecting tokens with east take-out entitles you to a free pizza.
La Restaurant & Bar: 25 Ly Quoc Su, Situated near St. Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi's old quarter, this elegant, air-conditioned restaurant has a choice of delicious Western and Vietnamese dishes. While the selection of vegetarian dishes is somewhat restricted, the food is excellent, if pricey by Hanoi standards.
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