Hoi An

One of the greatest thrills in Vietnam is discovering the local food enclaves across the country. Vietnam is a veritable themepark for food and every region seems to have its own specialties that you would be hard pressed to locate out of the city limits.

Hoi An is one of the standouts for local food. I mean, any town that has a Fried Wantan Mafia must have some crazy foodies living here!! Any town that uses the water from one single well to make all of their noodles must be.....as crazy as a New York City snob who has to have his precious NY bagel made exclusively from NYC water....

Hoi An is a coastal city right along the South China Sea. At one point, it was the largest point in southeast Asia, making it a dominating influence in the world's spice trade. With power and influence came wealth. With wealth, came luxuries. One of these luxuries is a rich an exciting food culture.

Due to its well preserved and maintained French colonical architecture, Hoi An is a UNESCO world heritage city ....Yet another nice side effect of French imperialism...you will see this theme over and over (baguettes, par example.....that's another blog. wait for it, wait for it.....).

Alicia and I delved into the scene with a wan tan. The wan tan is a triangle of deep fried dough. It is blistered and crispy on the outside, and just barely chewy still on the inside... A top the wantan is meat or seafood, cooked in a sweet tomato-based sauce that is accented with pineapple or mango, onions, garlic, and chile peppers. The sauce is so delicious. It is tangy, sweet, and firey hot. The diced fruits and veges are still crunchy and they are all individually accounted for on the palate.

These wan tans are obviously direct descendants of the Chinese Wanton. In this incarnation, Hoi An is the only place in Vietnam where you can find them. The crazy thing here is that one family controls the preparation and the distribution of the Wantans. I asked several restaurant and food stall owners why there was only one wantan maker and I got several variations on the same theme: 

"No. We buy from same family. We have to buy. Secret recipe in the family."

I ask the next logical question that a capitalist pig like myself might ask (dropping all the modifiers and prepositions to make my English understandable): "Why you no make your own wantan? You pay less money and you make more money." The answer was just a look. Always a slightly uneasy look.....a look little like this one:

So, we make the most obvious conclusion possible: Wan tan Mafia. We leave it at that and move on to the next dish, Cau Lau. Cau Lau is a noodle dish. But this aren't ordinary noodles. These noodles come from rice that is soaked in well water from Hoi An. There is one famous well called Well Ba Le which is the gold standard for Cau Lau, but there are other old square wells, dug several hundred years ago that suffice. The rice is pulverized into a coarse paste and made into dough. This dough is dried a bit and then ultimately cut into noodles. But these noodles are not typical slimy vermicelli noodles or pho noodles. These are coarser and a bit more chewy. Typically, marinated and roasted pork slices are placed over the noodles. The meat is marinated in a powder of peppercorns, cinnamon, star anise, ginger, and cloves--otherwise known as five spice powder (in vietnamese kitchens, this is as ubiquitous as salt and pepper in the US).

I know, right? Sounds amazing. But wait, there's more. A meat stock is poured very sparingly into a bowl of noodles--just a few tablespoons worth-- and the grilled meat is added. The dish is topped with fresh herbs and aromatics, such as chives, cilantro, mint, or bean sprouts. To the right is my cau lau made with marinated beef. The beef was grilled perfectly, and the steam coming out of the bowl smelled sweet and rich. What I loved the most about it was that it clearly wasn't a soup--it was clearly meant to be eaten with chop sticks--but you got this added bonus of a meat stock that clearly helped all the flavours mix well.

Next, we tried White Rose dumplings, banh bao vac, which are typical chinese dumplings with shrimp and/or chicken inside. They resemble what you would typically get at a Dim Sum restaurant. They are usualy topped with deep fried shallot slices. You can dip them into ngoc muom, the "ketchup" of Vietnam--fish sauce with sugar and chile slices. To the right is what white rose dumplings look like. I didn't think they were anything special--they tasted like fresh, mild flavored chinese dumplings.

All of the action in Hoi An goes down in the food stalls or street markets. Of course, you can get upmarket versions of these dishes in restaurants, but I highly doubt they are any tastier. Here is a photo of the market in which we ate: It is actually the "Economy Plus" section of the street scene. You pay a bit more for the ambience and for someone to serve you the food, but it is only a few cents more expensive than eating on the street.

Here is a video of me trying my first beef in banana leaf at the same set of food stalls. We met a fun Australian guy here who came on holiday 6 weeks ago, met a Vietnamese woman, and married her within two weeks. Mostly, I put this video in here so that you could see how fun it is to eat crazy new foods. I will probably discuss this dish in another entry, but since it isn't a typical Hoi An food, I wont talk about it here. Enjoy!