TOP 10 Street Foods in HANOI OLD QUARTER (Vietnam)!! 🇻🇳

But this lady is not on Google Maps, it's a rare find and she sells one of the most beautiful banh mi filled with pork skewers. The most iconic of Vietnamese street food, you can find it at every corner of the streets here in Hanoi. The concept is pretty easy, so it's like a baguette in the most traditional form, it's got veggies inside, usually cilantro, pate, different cuts of cold meat. It's not necessarily something that gets me excited because I'm Italian and a baguette is something that's staple in Italian cuisine as well, but obviously this lady is pretty famous. I actually found it in Curious About Vietnam TikTok channel, which I will link in the description. She's the queen of Hanoi street food, lots of amazing videos, go and check it out. Now if you tell me you're going to put three pork skewers inside my banh mi, then I get really excited indeed. The old quarter is the beating heart of Vietnam's capital, a favorite of backpackers and street food lovers. The historic district, with its narrow streets and centuries-old architecture, is alive and brimming with street food and small shophouses, a sensory overload of sights, sounds and flavors that I will never forget. She always got pork, I don't think she sells chicken or anything, but you can see this kind of tender, succulent looking pork skewers and she's kind of rolling them on the charcoal and the smell that you get of pork is pretty amazing. It's absolutely brilliant. This little stall here, she's got this nice kind of all-in-the-wall kind of room where you can sit. She was kind enough to split my banh mi in two. Thank you. It's just amazing. Very authentic and traditional banh mi just in the streets of Hanoi, like it doesn't get more authentic than this. I think this is chili sauce? Hello. Might very well be ketchup. Yeah, I'm just going to give it a little bit of a squeeze and then I'm ready to have a try of this. But look how succulent the pork meat looks inside. And I think you've got a little bit of cucumber inside as well. We'll give it a little bit of a squeeze and I'm ready to go with this thing. This is the real deal, succulent pork meat, a huge chunk of fat percentage in that meat. That one is ketchup, but there is the homemade chili sauce inside that makes it really spicy. You feel the char of the grilled meat. Because of all of this fat, it's kind of a little bit chewy, but I love it. And the cucumber in there gives this kind of crunch texture and freshness and the ratio of meat in this banh mi, like so much meat and just two thin slices of bread. The baguette is really fresh. They keep it outside, but because they've got turnover of this baguette, like they sell hundreds and hundreds of this over the day, the baguette does not taste stale, it's always fresh. And it's also about the environment, sitting down and having this and watching these scooters, this mess, this chaos. It's an experience on its own. It's part of it, it's eating and part of it, it's just watching life happening and all. Thank you. 15 Thai. Yeah, 15. Thank you. What I love the most about the banh mi was obviously the pork, but also the homemade chili sauce. This lady's got bottles of homemade chili sauce, which really is what really holds that kind of banh mi together. It's really simple, like skewers, cucumber and chili sauce. My incessant search for the perfect bowl of pho in Hanoi has brought me to this spot. From the outside it seemed like a humble and modest little eatery, much like many family run spots in Hanoi. Stepping inside, it was clear that this was no ordinary noodle shop. The polished wooden furniture, round tables and elegantly dressed waitstaff spoke of a middle to upper class family home, blending tradition with a touch of sophistication. And so I'm just going to present you this beautiful bowl of pho. It's got again the clear broth, then there is like strings of soft chicken breast, different pieces like gizzards and stuff. This is a premature egg and we have got pieces of coagulated blood, which looks amazing. Chicken meatball, this is liver and obviously the beautiful rice flat noodles. And mine is a special pho, so the special pho contains organs and blood and stuff, while the normal pho would just be having chicken breast. I want to try the broth first. Clear soup and there's a lot of fresh cilantro. The chicken flavor in this broth. Not like your supermarket chicken stock, not at all. Let's try the vermicelli noodle. Honestly, I wish they were a little bit less cooked. They are extremely soft. In fact, you don't have to chew them. They just kind of disintegrate in your mouth. Usually for noodles, I like a little bit of a chewier texture, to be honest. Little piece of coagulated blood, kind of bouncy and very irony in taste. And you can add some of this chili sauce if you want, but I'm really happy with the chicken flavor here, so I don't want to really modify it. And really like in this kind of special pho, you'd really find many different parts of the chicken. Very interesting. I'll grab this beautiful piece of chicken breast, which has got the skin attached to. It's kind of a muscular chicken breast piece and we've also got a small piece of chicken intestine. To me, what's really striking about this soup is its simplicity, in the sense that there are two, really two elements, maybe three. The chicken kind of broth, which is really intense. The cilantro, the fresh cilantro flavor and the star anise. Simplicity, perfect. So I hope you guys could actually hear what I was saying inside because it's kind of a quiet restaurant and I didn't want to be shouting or disturbing people, but yeah, what I like about this restaurant is just the simplicity and the strong chicken flavor of the soup without overdoing anything. A really nice bowl of pho, to be honest. Now you will know by now if you follow my channel that I like unassuming places. Places that maybe don't have any name or they are not marked on Google Maps, but they are street food places that have gained a lot of respect from the local population because they bring a traditional recipe to the street. A recipe that is passed from generation to generation. And so we're going to have some porridge, essentially it's called congee in Asia, but here in Vietnam it's called chao suon. There are absolutely no words to describe the feeling of sitting into the street with this lady kind of serving your bowl of street food and it's warm and it's what you need in Hanoi in the morning because we've got cold weather. So essentially she's got a big pot with the chao suon, which has been freshly prepared in the morning and then they give you like a small bowl for yourself and then she's topping it with the small pieces of fried dough and then some pork floss on the top, which is this kind of brown thing. That's it. A very simple kind of dish but really lovely. The porridge is very thick and kind of jiggly. We get a little bit of this crispy dough on top and some pork floss and we will try it like this. I'm in paradise, I swear. The porridge has got an extremely porky flavour. It's not only been cooked with pork bone broth, but there are actually pieces of minced pork in it. Extremely yummy. And so you've got three types of texture there. The gooey kind of porridge and then the crunchy bits of fried dough. This deep fried thing is not necessarily that oily, it's just crunchy at the right level and the stringy, fibrous pork floss. There's a feast happening in your mouth, I can tell you. You can also put some chili powder in it if you kind of want some extra kick. I actually wanted to try the whole thing like before, you know, seasoning anything but yeah, with some chili I think it will make it even nicer. Chili flakes, quite spicy. I love everything, this kind of bites in the streets in the morning. This really fills my heart with love for life. There are few things in the world that excite me more than stepping into a narrow alley brimming with street food vendors, especially on a chilly day. The air is full of incredible aromas of sizzling grills, fresh herbs and rich broths. When a stall stands out, a humble setup run by an old lady who has been perfecting her Bun Cha for decades. Her reputation draws a steady crowd and here I am, patiently waiting for my turn. There is only so much space on the bench so I'm soaking in the atmosphere. Bun Cha is the ultimate Hanoi dish, a rich, smoky bowl of grilled fatty pork served in a tangy broth accompanied by rice noodles and fresh herbs. It's a harmony of textures and flavors and soon it will be my turn to experience it. Beautiful blend of vinegar, sugar, fish sauce, piece of ginger and cucumber but it's really the vinegar that comes really strongly here. And obviously look at this beautiful kind of grilled pork pieces wrapped in some kind of leaf which I'm not entirely sure what it is but it looks really beautiful. The smell is really coming here, really coming here. Really fatty pork, big component of fat in this. With the ginger in there, black pepper, look at that. The component, the fat component in this is absurd. So what I like doing with my noodles is soaking them in this kind of vinegary sauce but not too much, just for a second. And then follow up with a piece of pork. Pretty much my favorite Hanoi street food so far I would say. We'll see how it goes but so far it's just the combination of vinegary and ginger of this soup that really holds together the fatty and greasy kind of component of the pork. These are bites in Hanoi that you cannot describe and to be honest the soup is really magic but sitting here this kind of atmosphere with his auntie preparing this famous dish with all the ingredients around there. There are huge kind of snail shells, there are some other kind of snacks. She's got skewers, she's got pots of food which you don't even know what it is. Difficult to describe. This is the first time that I come to Vietnam. This is just a life experience. I think you're supposed to mix some herbs into the soup if you want. Even better I've made this kind of vinegary sauce a little bit red with all these greens. Look at this piece of pork now all coated in herbs. I'm craving a sweet snack and these candies shops around the city surely do a good job at grabbing my attention but myself I will always go for something which is freshly baked. One of these right? Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Another very common thing that you will be stumbling pretty much every day during your walks around Hanoi is this Banh Ranh things which are kind of glutinous rice balls sometimes covered with sesame seeds and stuff and I think inside they are stuffed with some kind of sweet mung bean paste. These very famous balls. Okay now you have to eat this in the chaos of Hanoi. Possibly in the middle of the street so you can get run over by a car. Some of them are colored in a different way. I'm not entirely sure what's the difference. This has got like sesame seeds on top. Kind of sweet, starchy inside. A little bit fruity. Not bad. The next thing we are gonna have with my good friend Paz is some shrimp cake. I don't think he's gonna try them but essentially this is a very simple concept. Vietnamese shrimp cake especially a combination of butter or tapioca and deep fried and then with some shrimp on the top. The funny thing is that the shrimps are essentially with the shells and apparently they eat them like this. It's a little bit crazy but that's apparently how they serve them here and it's fresh shrimps. You can trust me they are fresh shrimps and this place is pretty popular, crowded with locals. They sell lots of this every day and we are sitting on some stools. We are blocking the sidewalk essentially and that's how you do it in Vietnam. I had initially asked for take away but the lady was very kind and she took the bag and she's just setting them up in a dish so we can enjoy them with some chili sauce. There we go. Okay. That's it. Everything on the stools. We are ready to kind of feast on this thing and you can see I've got some salad. Dipping sauce which has got I don't know it's a ginger, carrots, some chili powder and the beautiful shrimp cakes. This is just perfection. Look how they are crispified and as I said with the shell on. This is just fantastic. I'm gonna grab one of these. Maybe give a little bit of a dip. I can smell its vinegar with some fresh salad. Oh this is good. Doesn't even feel that you are eating shell because the shell has been deep fried and it's just like a part of a it's like a cracker. So yeah it may not be butter actually so it's probably tapioca and it's beautifully fresh and crispy and this atmosphere right here it's just I'm almost in tears. Read the head Desmond. There we go. That's how you do it man. The shrimp also have got the head so there's basically nothing wasted here. Some of the ginger and the carrots. I was very skeptical about shells on shrimps but now it makes total sense. I think the way people are doing it is they basically they dip the whole shrimp into the sauce they just submerge it and let it kind of soak into this kind of flavorful dipping sauce and that's how we are gonna do it next. I think that's the correct way and chase it with some herbs. Some lettuce, hot shrimp fritters and a dipping sauce. I'm so grateful that it doesn't take me much to be happy. What happens when you take a cappuccino recipe and you give it a vietnamese twist? Well you get brilliant vietnamese egg coffee. The story goes that during the french colonial rule a vietnamese barista working in a famous luxury hotel faced a milk shortage and sought to replace the famous egg coffee with a vietnamese fresh milk he started whisking egg yolks sugar and condensed milk into a creamy indulgent drink. The place we choose today is called loading tea cafe a really beautiful and popular cafe especially among tourists old colonial kind of building and really it's got like a really stylish kind of vintage look with some french music in the background you know. This is pretty much like a dessert I would say. It almost looks like a hot gelato. This is gelato you see creaminess level like over 9 000. Obviously it's made with egg but you don't get that kind of almost this eggy kind of smell. You can taste it for sure but you know it's not unpleasant in terms of smell as well. And the owner has kindly offered us some cup of tea which is you know very appreciated I'm not sure what it is but Lotus tea I don't know kind of floral aftertaste I need to ask her sorry I asked her and it's actually pandan leaf tea. I knew I recognized that the aroma but I couldn't really describe it. Very interesting dish you can have mostly in the whole quarter is banh cuon. The concept is similar to the chi chung fan that you find in Cantonese cuisine. Wide sheet of rice noodles wrap it around minced pork and mushrooms and then top it with some crispy shallots but sometimes if you are really fortunate you can have banh cuon that has got other kind of fillings not necessarily pork but also shrimp. And we've got two portions with shrimps. Mine is with pork. Then the way you eat this is by essentially using a different kind of broth. You can adjust it by squeezing some lime and putting some chili and that's what I'm gonna do. And then finally you use some beautiful Vietnamese herbs just to add a touch of freshness. I'm not very sure how this broth tastes like. I think it feels like a little bit like chicken stock or something. Basically you want to dip these rice noodles into the sauce. Grab some of the herbs and some of the chili if you can. Did you put chili? Here in Vietnam chili is not a joke. If you put chili know that you might regret it. The noodles are paper thin and they just dissolve in your mouth. They are completely filled with this kind of mix of minced pork and mushrooms. I think it's the same for the shrimp one there. They also got mushroom. And apart from crispy shallots we also got pork floss on the top. Make sure you scoop all the crispy shallots and pork. You don't want to leave anything. This go away really fast. Walking around Hanoi you'll often see people being busy washing snails of various sizes and shapes. These people are Bunoc sellers. Another super attractive kind of street food that you need to have in Hanoi is Bun Hoc which is kind of a snail soup in a tomato broth. This is a very famous place. Two or three items in their menu. In terms of snails you can have soup with small nails or big snails or both. You can see there are the small nails and then the big snails here. Top it with some veggies if you wish. I think I'm just gonna leave it alone for now and let's try the soup first. Oh very very light and aromatic. There is cilantro. There is spring onions and then this kind of nice kind of sweet tomato-y hint to it. I'm gonna add some of this kind of dry chili flakes. I'm gonna put a little bit here. Mix it all together. I'm just gonna grab some noodles and maybe one of this beautiful snail. Almost look like seafood like shellfish. Pretty nice. Obviously the snail are chewy. Some bits are quite crunchy as well. I love this kind of tomato soup. Lots of umami flavor as well. These are rice noodles. Go for the meatball next. I wonder if there are snails inside as well. Yeah I think there are snails inside. Really nice. Go for a scoop of the small snails. To be honest it's not very different from chewing like calamari. Maybe a little bit more harder and chewy than calamari. For any kind of Vietnamese dish you're very likely to not go wrong if you just put some veggies in it. That's what I've learned in Hanoi. Yeah the big snails are just for the adventurous. You can almost taste the ground where these snails have been walking into. Kind of extreme to be honest. So if you fancy something for the evening for dessert you can have chè. A general term for a Vietnamese dessert which can be based on different type of beans, tapioca, jelly, fruits, coconut cream. It can be a pudding, it can be a soup. Can be a lot of different things if I understand it correctly. And when you walk around the streets of Hanoi you will find lines of people sitting on the sidewalk on a stool kind of enjoying this kind of soup and dessert. The one I've ordered is based on mung beans and grass jelly. But then we've got a different one which is based on panna cotta and almonds. Cubes of panna cotta and almonds. And the other one is based on yogurt and black rice. Keenan has kindly let me kind of try the yogurt with black rice. Black sticky rice. Black sticky rice yeah. It looks good. I should have took this one. It's like yogurt. They're actually like yogurt. Let's try the panna cotta one. Like cubes of panna cotta. Nice combination of almond slice and these panna cotta cubes which they've got like a little bit of a vanilla taste and they've got a texture of a jelly. Mine has got let's say this kind of mung bean kind of puree. This is more like star chip. And this kind of mung bean puree. It's not really sweet. It's kind of a neutral taste. I prefer yours though. I prefer the yogurt as well. One of the things that I've learned about crossing the streets in Hanoi or I suppose in Vietnam in general is you don't... just head straight, look in front of you and don't even look... I know this is dangerous to say but it's much easier for people on a motorbike to kind of calculate the direction and avoid you if you just go straight and not try to look at them and figure out where they want to go. So just look straight, go straight and they will avoid you. It's easy for them. At least this is what I've realized. This is not advice and don't do this when you come in Hanoi. Just figure it out yourself I suppose but anyway.