Travel Like Bourdain
Vietnam
The table is still there. The one where he sat with a president and ate six dollar noodles.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
The table is still there. The one where he sat with a president and ate six dollar noodles.
Anthony Bourdain came to Hanoi and sat down at a plastic stool at Bún chả Hương Liên. The man sitting across from him happened to be the President of the United States. They ate six dollar noodles and drank Hanoi beer and the photograph of that meal went around the world. The table is still there. The restaurant marks it with a small sign. But that is almost beside the point. The point is that Bourdain chose this place, this dish, this city — and when you arrive and taste it yourself, you understand exactly why.
Vietnam is my favourite country in the world to eat in. No question.
Anthony Bourdain
Get up before the city does. Walk the Old Quarter when the streets are still quiet and the vendors are setting up their stalls and the smell of pho broth that has been simmering all night is drifting through the alleyways. Each street in the Old Quarter was historically devoted to a single trade — Silk Street, Paper Street, Tin Street. Some still are. The architecture is a compressed stack of French colonial, Chinese merchant house, and Vietnamese vernacular. It makes no sense and it is completely beautiful.
The rule is simple: eat where the plastic stools are. If there is a laminated English menu in the window, walk past it. Find the place where the only menu is a handwritten sign and the person next to you is eating something that smells extraordinary. Point at it. Order that. Hanoi specialises in dishes that are specific to Hanoi — bún chả, phở gà, bún ốc, bánh cuốn. None of them taste the same anywhere else in Vietnam, let alone the world. This is food that is inseparable from the place that made it.
Give yourself at least four days. You will want more. Everyone does.
Thirty-six streets, each one historically devoted to a single trade. Chaotic, beautiful, and the best place to eat breakfast you will find anywhere in Southeast Asia.
Where the expats and the wealthy Vietnamese live. Quieter, wider streets, excellent coffee shops, and the Trấn Quốc Pagoda sitting on a small island in the lake.
Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, the One Pillar Pagoda, and the Temple of Literature — one of the finest examples of traditional Vietnamese architecture in the country.
The restaurant. The table. The dish. Order the bún chả Obama and do not feel self-conscious about it. It is genuinely one of the best things you will eat in your life.
A queue forms before it opens. You will stand in it. You will not regret it. The phở here is served with no frills and tastes like nothing you have had before.
A restaurant that has served one dish for over a century. Turmeric-marinated fish, grilled at the table, eaten with dill and rice noodles. Order it. Eat slowly.
The bánh mì here is considered by many people who have eaten a great many bánh mì to be the best in the world. It costs less than a dollar.
Vietnamese communist-themed coffee chain that sounds like a gimmick and is actually excellent. The coconut coffee is outstanding.
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