Everybody Cha Ca Tonight: Fried Fish in Hanoi

A frying pan full-o-magic.

Vietnam has to be the home of my favourite food in Southeast Asia (other than crab and crab-based menu items) - Cha Ca.

Cha Ca is a Hanoi speciality - small pieces of fresh white fish fried (they say grilled, but it is clearly a fry situation) in oil with fresh herbs, chilis and spices and served sizzling hot over cold rice noodles. The heat of the still-cooking fish warms the noodles and makes them slippery and ready to be chopsticked from their small bowl into my waiting mouth.

Spam, spam, spam and spam.

Hanoi residents are serious about Cha Ca. We wanted the real deal, so we headed to Cha Ca La Vong - the famous two hundred year old restaurant in Hanoi's Old Quarter that famously invented the dish. The DIY fish fry joint has spawned many imitators - the entire street (now named Cha Ca Road) is lined with copycat joints. They serve one thing and one thing only: Cha Ca.

Sometimes one choice is all you need....

The price is hefty for a local's resturant but we were determined to sample the real thing. Moments after we sat down the table was laid with bowls of sticky rice noodles (the same that are in Pho,) heaped servings of dill, parsley and scallions, chilis, crushed peanuts and a mix of fish sauce, shrimp paste and lime.

These caused us great discomfort in Laos...

As we sat sipping on our Bia Ha Noi a piping red hot clay barbecue was placed in the middle of the table, topped with a gleaming metal frying pan. In the pan were the succulent chunks of fish, swimming in an inch of yellow oil dyed with tumeric. The ancient Vietnamese waitress took pity on us and became our cheerleader, showing us how to dump the greens and chilis into the pan to cook with the fish.

All mixed up

Once the fish was a perfect golden brown and the greens were wilted we spooned some of each along with the wonderful golden oil out onto our noodles. Topped with the fish sauce and peanuts each bite was savoury, oily and wonderful, the scallions and dill combining into a kind of tartar sauce flavour.

Every last bite

We scraped the hefty pan empty and cleaned the table - even the cackling cheerleader seemed impressed. I was all for another full pan-o-goodness, but pub quiz time approached and we needed to get to Le Pub.

Bia Ha Noi and pub quiz - a match made in heaven.

Out of all of the expat bars and pubs in SE Asia that I have visited, Le Pub is my favourite. Their Tuesday night pub quiz is one of the best I have ever done, and the food, atmosphere and drinks (including free shots!) are all great. They have another location in Saigon, but that is not the best part.

A Canadian feels at home, at last

No, the best thing is the Quebecois style poutine available at both locations. While it is lacking the proper cheese curds it does use some nice grated mozzarella and is pretty perfect. Sometimes you wanna feel completely out of your element, completely culture shocked and worldly - but other times you just wanna eat a poutine. We did not win the quiz, but for a team of two (against teams of 6, 8 and 10) third place is pretty good.

So, if you are in Hanoi I definitely recommend the splurge - go to Cha Ca La Vong. And if it is Tuesday? See if you can take second place, and for the love of god eat the poutine.

A Cooking Lesson in Hoi An

Strong Coffee in the morning. "Like a shot of whiskey" my grandpa used to say....

For my birthday this year (in May) we were in Hoi An, Vietnam - a pretty little jewel of a city in Central Vietnam and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due its historical downtown shopping district. One of my BFF's (Willie) and his girlfriend (Alexis) were backpacking with us for 3 weeks.

Good Morning Vietna.....oh sheesh.

The morning of my birthday we started off with 2 big bowls of the most delicious noodle dish I have ever eaten - Cao Lau. Hoi An is known throughout Vietnam as a culinary destination due to the efforts of one family. It is they who make the famous Cao Lau noodles and wonton wrappers with water from one special well, noodles so unique and yummy that over the generations the operation has been forced to move from a small home to a factory that supplies the whole city. The noodles are slightly gummy, but in a good way - served with a sweet broth and a selection of vegetables that vary depending on the restaurant. In this case it was black ear mushrooms, pineapple, carrots, tomato and basil with big chunks of tofu and special croutons.

It was so delicious that over breakfast Willie and I decided to take a cooking class for lunch while S and Alexis went shopping and poking around.

Trickster.

We started our class with a tour of the market, purchasing fresh ingredients to make our five course lunch. This woman asked him to sit down take a photo with her, and then her friendly face turned serious as she looked at him and said "1 dollar." I was like "but you're not even in a costume or anything! You're just a lady in a flowered shirt!" He paid. I sure the heck wouldn't've.

All in a day's work.

The market was packed to the rafters with fresh fish, produce and spices - a living (and sometimes still breathing) display of how valued whole food is in this country. Not the shrink-wrapped, preservative-laden pseudo Franken food that you would find in a Safeway, no siree. This is as nutritious and fresh as it gets.

Red Gold and Green, Red Gold and Gree-eee-eee-eeen.....

I am completely sold on any cuisine that features this many colourful spices. My mum and I lived with my grandparents when I was a kid, and my Ukrainian g-ma used exactly three colours of seasoning: white (salt and a ton of fresh garlic) black (pepper) and red (Lowry's seasoning salt.) My Irish grandpa did her one better and added old dried out rosemary (from one unending box in the cupboard) to his sporadic cooking. (I could never figure out what the shit was always in his Italian food, the things I called twigs and picked out of my mouth.) Even my mum, who is an amazing chef, veers toward Mediterranean foods. But as an adult I have discovered all of the Asian spices: tumeric, chilies, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, asafoetida, cloves and many more. Thank god. White, black and red (and sometimes faded old green) were getting boring.

Let's just get this whole bowla water on a flame.

Holy crap! Holy ever loving crap! I know it is hard to tell, but this metal bowl is HUGE and those shramp are the size of small lobsters. These would be good contenders for my shrimp vase of hospitality....

My first time cooking an entire fish, head'n all.

Getting down to business now. We arrived back at the kitchen and began to prepare our meal: A whole fish cooked in banana leaves, squid stir-fried with lemongrass and garlic, deep fried veggie spring rolls, special Hoi An wontons (with pork - S and I ate around the meat bulb in the middle) and rice.

Better than a punching bag.

Getting to work with a mortar and pestle - there is something so luxuriously stress relieving and sociopathically Nigella-like about pounding the hell out of your food. This is a mixture of lemongrass (which I secretly do not like and forgot to tell them before we started) garlic, ginger and shallot. Replace the lemongrass with basil and I would be one happy camper.

We all keep a barbecue in the house, am I right?

We sliced the fish and stuffed it with lemongrass, scallions, garlic, ginger and melted butter, wrapped it all up in the banana leaves and then onto the barbecue for about 30 minutes while we moved onto preparing the other dishes.

Willie, it's almost as if you have experience rolling things...

I had no idea deep fried spring rolls were so easy! S (the most amazing vegan chef EVER) always makes these big fresh salad roll things and even though they are delicious they always fall apart and get kind of soggy, and that's without them going near a fryer. I now know that's because we cram too much stuff into them (I like to live in excess, what can I say? More is more!) The secret is to only put a pinch of veggies in the middle, seal them with egg and pop them into a wok filled with potentially disfiguring boiling oil.

To Jerk: Happy Birthday.
Love: the Squid.

Here is a secret: I had never ever cooked squid before this day (except when playing Cooking Mama.) I'll confess - I often find squid incredibly creepy unless it is in tiny approachable calimari rings with no tiny legs As a child I loved calimari, which my mum told me was "Greek chicken." Turns out that she and my stepdad were just quickly eating all of the leggy ones when I was not looking... Imagine my surprise and horror when I encountered what I thought was a deep fried spider on my plate at the age of nine. Not pleased.

"Willie. Stop fumbling with my camer...aww, you're getting squid juice on it. Hurry - my smile is starting to look fake and strained...."

It turns out that slicing through these big rubbery squid tubes is actually really fun. And while I did not enjoy the altogether too tender, rubber bandy texture of these I would definitely jump at the chance to cook them again.

The full meal deal.

The final result was pretty amazing - even though I didn't love the lemongrass all over all kindsa everything. The fish was tender and perfectly cooked, the spring rolls were crispy and the wontons (sans porc) that we covered in sauce and veggies were as good as the Cau Lao. I want to be adopted by this noodle makin' family in Hoi An just so I can eat this every day.

That may just be a mango mojito. Happy Birthday to me!

For supper that night we headed to Mango Rooms, one of my favourite restaurants in Asia. It was my second visit - the first was last year on a work trip to Vietnam and I was dying to order the seared Ahi tuna with mango salsa. I was not disappointed! And because it was a Tuesday (I mean, my birthday) we finished the night with more dranks around town. The resulting hangover is probably what led to Willie polishing off our cold cooking class leftovers the next morning, straight from the fridge with his hands........

If you are in Hoi An I absolutely recommend taking a cooking class - you will have so much to impress your friends with when you get home, and you'll get to cut squid, bash lemongrass around and stuff a whole fish. What could be better?

The real reason to visit Ha Long Bay....

Tiny wittle limes mixed with freshly cracked black pepper and sea salt.
I believe that angels smear their wings with this mixture.

Ha Long Bay is the leading candidate for Seven New Wonders of the World - an amazing, jaw dropping "have to see it to believe it" kind of place. And I had. Seen it. One year earlier, to be exact, while on a business trip and it was amazing and my jaw did drop. I wanted S to experience the same thing and I was counting my blessings that I was going to see it again.

Normally we are on a tight, tight backpacker budget that forces us into fan cooled rooms with questionable stains on the walls, the sounds of the noisy street (or beach) keeping us awake. But for this, our one night (well, my second one night) on Ha Long Bay sleeping in a junk boat, for this we decided to splash out a bit. And what a difference that 20 extra dollars can make! The food on my trip last year had been good - a solid good. But this year.....just look.

Happiness is a cold shrimp.

The first course of lunch. We knew that things were looking good when this plate of humongous shrimp (I like to call'em shramp) were set down in front of us. We peeled these guys and dipped them (who am I trying to kid? I bathed mine...) in the limey, salty peppery mixture you see at the top of this page.

Lookit me, all purple and tentacle-y.....

I will let you in on a secret. I like eating squid, octopus and cuttlefish the most when they are purple. I have no idea why. When you place a plate of pale white calamari in front of me my stomach is like "nope" but when I see a piece of tako that is the colour of concord grape juice something in my brain breaks and I become submissive to its charms.

I cut the water spinach out of the photo, because no one cares about it, do they?
Not with all this fish around!

Yes - we are still on lunch! You may recall that I am normally a vegetarian (an ass kickin' food lovin' one) but on this trip I decided to eat fish because frankly, I think they are dicks. The wonderful staff on this boat made us an entirely pescetarian 5-course meal. This was a lovely fish steak smothered in a sort of Vietnamese warm salsa - tomatoes, onions both spring and white, chili and of course, garlic.

Look at my junk.

Our boat was much nicer than our course backpacker senses were accustomed to. Every thing was dark wood polished to a high sheen - very posh.

It's the little details that count, people. Cold towels are heavenly in this muggy heat.

We eyed the requisite karaoke machine with suspicion, knowing full well that all of the Da Lat wine and Ha Noi beer was going to loosen us up enough to give it a go. But first, a perfect simple photo of a cold towel in a little laquered basket.

I like all of these things in the photo.
Especially the wine.

I am really at my very happiest when a meal begins with a vase of jumbo shramp and some carved vegetable flowers. I want every meal to start with these things. Do not be surprised if you come to my house and I present you with a tall refreshing glass of shrimp and a carrot rosette before you're even all the way in the door.

Oh little buggers, why must you be so potentially ensickening?

These were in served in a really light broth - mostly clam nectar and garlic and were very delicate and pretty, but....I have had a bad relationship with bivalves since a terrible, horrible, life changing-ly bad bout of food poisoning from mussels a few years ago. Only recently have I been able to even entertain the notion of placing a clam anywhere near my mouth - but these boys made the cut! Cautiously, mind you - I only ate about 5 and even then was terrified to go to sleep, as if they were little clam axe-murderers just waiting for me to relax and close my eyes.

Holy *&%$! Holy *&%ing crap! I actually died and S had to revive me.
It wasn't hard - he just had to wave one of these near my face....

For the grand finale: crab shells stuffed with crab cakes. Just when I was feeling a little riced out, a little accosted with lemongrass (I hate the stuff and am pummeled with it daily) they brought these little gems out. Now, I don't harbour any notions that these are in any way Vietnamese other than the fact that the crab lived here, but let me tell you: I was one pinch of Old Bay Seasoning and a little pot of aioli away from sheer bliss.

Oh yeah.... I present to you just a fraction of the wonder and beauty of Ha Long Bay

I will always remember my first time to Ha Long Bay. I will remember the beauty, the eerie calm, the almost spooky way that the karst rock formations jut out from the murky sea. It was magic in the truest sense of the word.

But my second trip? I will think about those tiny limes, the plump shrimp, the delicate blush of an octopus tentacle, the meatiness of the rich crab meat.

And I'll look you straight in the eye and tell you that the first time was more meaningful.

You'll believe me, right?

(If you want to have this same experience book this trip with the nice guys at wide eyed tours (these are the same class act guys that GAP Adventures contracts to - you know they gotta be good!) You can book in advance or just pop in when you get to Hanoi. Yes - it is a bit more expensive than the cheapie ones you can get in Old Hanoi. Shut up. Just book it.)

15 photos of Northern Vietnam.

My favourite photo from all of Vietnam. His silver necklace signifies that he is a member of the Black H'Mong hilltribe, the largest in the North. I love his little tongue sticking out between his teeth.

In Canada, this little guy would be a child actor. Look at that expression....

Bia Hoi - a bonus on the trip to Vietnam. Fresh beer served icy cold on the street for 20 cents a glass. Everyone wins!

Water puppetry is an ancient artform still practiced in Hanoi and the North of Vietnam. It is a little corny, a little silly and really cute. These are examples of some of the puppets used.

Mist rolling off of the terraced rice paddies in the early morning.

Sapa is in the very North of Vietnam at the Chinese border. This woman is a member of the Black H'Mong tribe, and was very persistent in her sales tactics. It was all in good fun - we sat and had a bia hoi with her later in the day.

Dzao ladies - another hilltribe in Sapa. They consider body hair abhorrent and shave their hair high on their foreheads. The different headwraps symbolize marital status.

A boy plowing the fields during our trek in the hills near Sapa. It is a hard life, but one that has some definite benefits over our own. Family and tradition are keystones of life here.

In some ways Northern Vietnam looks the way that I expect China to look. There is a magic and mystique in the air that enchanted me - it is a feeling more than an actual thing I can express.

I love the ruffled caps that the Black H'Mong put on their babies. This little pearl will probably grow up speaking 8 different languages and being able to sell embroidery in all of them.

These ladies knew damned well what a pinky swear was - but we educated them on 'sealing it with the thumb.' They made sure that he kept his promise the next day and made him buy stuff we did not want or need!


Watching a waterwheel in the small village of Cat Cat after an exhausting trek in the heat. This was a really calming, peaceful place.


I really think that traveling Vietnam with a baby is the way to go - you have dozens of willing nannies at every stop. In Sapa, the women could not keep their hands off of this fellow. We saw the family around town numerous times, and this little blondie was always in different H'Mong hands. They LOVED him. And it is obvious he loved them too.

In some places in Thailand and Laos, people dress in hilltribe costumes just for the tourists. Not so in Vietnam - people and children even far from the tourist circuit were in their traditional garb for day to day life. We saw these little boys on the way to Ta Van, where we spent the night in a home stay.

Seriously, kids are just kids. It does not matter what country they are from - they all act the same.

A lesson for all of us, I suppose.

Vietnam from the Back of a Motorbike - Careening Through Old Hanoi

I thought after all of the countries I have visited in the last 7 months I would discover that the intense love I felt for Vietnam during my brief visit last year would be revealed as more a love for travel and Asia in general. I was wrong. Still, like an addiction, Vietnam feels like home.

I was wondering if Vietnam would feel the same this time, if it would affect me and change and move me the way it did last year. The amazing experience I had then, on a work trip, could be chalked up to a few things: it was practically free, the amazing people I met and traveled with, the fact it was considered 'work" and I got paid to be there and was treated to high end hotels and food. It was such a life changing experience that it was the lynchpin in my decision to quit my job, cash in my RSP's and savings and travel this insane, sweaty, colourful, ethereally strange continent - Asia.

Vietnam, as you probably know, was not my first stop. In fact, I had been traveling for 6.5 months before I made it back here. While I backpacked through India, Maldives, Nepal, Laos and Thailand, people constantly asked me why Vietnam was my favourite of all the countries I have been to, and I could never give an answer that felt right. I would sit there, like a self absorbed douche with a smug dreamy look on my face, and say " I...I don't know. I really can't, I mean it's not just one thing....it's...It's just everything."

And it is.

I still can't describe it entirely, but I am going to try.

Vietnam from the Back of a Motorbike - Careening Through Old Hanoi

Sean and I stayed an extra six nights beyond what we really needed in Hanoi, so that Sean could take advantage of the free wifi and work on his VFX reel, more important in his industry than a resume. During that time, I lazed a bit, had some foot massages, ate food, took walks and wrote. On our second last day, I decided that I needed to see one more "sight" - The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. After debating taking a local bus to the museum located 30 minutes from the centre of Hanoi, I hopped on a motorbike instead.



People talk about the terrible traffic in Hanoi, but the reality is that the seething mass of pedestrians, motorbikes, cyclos (pedaled rickshaws), bicycles and cars (each carrying at least 3 times the recommended amount of passengers - I have seen 5 people on one Honda motorbike) never comes to a complete stop. The vehicles perform a complicated ballet of gentle swerves and honking horns that at first baffled and frightened me. As a Westerner trained never to step into oncoming traffic, I had to undo years of Pavlovian response to set my foot off of the curb and stare directly into the eyes of a motorbike driver 1 metre a way, let them swerve around me and begin crossing the street. Rather than shock or anger drivers,slowly crossing with deliberate movements is the norm here, and stopping or running is a guaranteed ticket to the morgue. Or, at the very least, a surefire way to an up close meeting with the pavement and the scorn of passersby.

As my driver and I careened through the streets, my knees brushed against many other people, cars and lampposts. Motorcycyling in big cities always freaks me out a bit, so I decided to concentrate on what was on either side of me rather than focusing straight ahead into the traffic, as I think that the driver had had enough of me shouting "Oi Choi Oi!" (Oh My God!) in his ear.



The sidewalks and narrow lanes that make up the Old Quarter are Hanoi's beating, bloody heart. The area surrounds Hoan Kiem Lake and is pulsating and manic, yet in ways seems like a glimpse into ancient history. Every street is named for what is sold there, there is Shoe Street, Metal Goods street, Gravestone Street, Toy Street, even Counterfeit Street (less fun than its sounds - dozens of shops selling fake money and paper goods used in Buddhist ceremonies.) This is a traditional Vietnamese way of organizing a city and it is not meant just to impress tourists – but it does. Sparks flew asI zoomed down the Welding Street. Sawdust filled my mouth and eyes on Woodworking Street, and my ears filled with the cacophonous tweeting of thousands of small sparrows on Birdcage Street.



These traditional stores are not the only places to do your shopping. In fact, it seems tome that most commerce in Vietnam happens on the street. Sidewalk hawkers set up stalls selling anything you can imagine. On my right side we passed a man in a conical hat holding 6 dead geese in each hand, gesturing to the traffic to entice people with the notion of a goose bbq that evening. On my left side minutes later we were swarmed by women running into the road at a rare stop light, trying to sell us plastic raincoats, umbrellas and sunglasses. Blankets were laid out and covered in toiletries, traditional balms, trinkets, books and firewood, and officious looking people sat at small tables,selling lottery tickets, offering scales to weigh yourself and services as letter writers for the illiterate.


And food was everywhere. So much food! Not the sanitized, pre packaged neat-n-tidy things we associate with take-out in North America, but vibrant, spicy morsels and soups guaranteed to make you happy. Mobile restaurants on wheels zipped in and out of traffic with us, and beside the parked ones small child sized chairs were lined up on the sidewalks for people to stop and grab a bowl of noodles and a bia hoi (fresh draft beer - 10 cents for a mug.) Some streets smelled divine - like ginger and garlic just dropped into a sizzling wok, and other streets reeked of the pungent, dirty genital smell of fermented fish sauce. Globes of shiny fruit were carried by women with yolks on their shoulder, the heaviness altering their walk into a jaunty bounce, and we passed entire streets that only specialize in one dish - cha ca (grilled fish), Nem (springrolls) and thit cho (grilled dog - I try to never glance inside those ones, they are filled with small dogs in cages. No kidding.)The words Com and Pho (Rice and Rice Noodle Soup) were emblazoned on every available surface, and usually a small old women will be perched beside, working on her own signature broth.


My moto driver and I zipped and weaved past parks full of children playing badminton, imposing communist buildings covered in red and yellow hammers and sickles, chattering old men playing mah jong, all surrounded by piles of garbage in the gutters. The evening broadcast of “Voice of Vietnam” blared eerily into the streets from mounted speakers – a'la Big Brother, while huge propaganda posters of Ho Chi Minh and the happy proletariat beamed down at me and everything was kind of coloured by this haze that is common in Vietnam, this smoky, misty cloudiness that makes everything seem muggy and exotic.


And though this is cliche - after touring the museum for 2 hours and marveling at the replica hill tribe houses, the handicrafts and the tribal art on display - I can't help but feel that the most truly interesting anthropology of Hanoi is not in its museums, but on its crazy, beautiful, hectic streets. I learned far more about Vietnam there.