‘Goi cuon’ (Salad rolls) (Photo: Thanh Nien)

Richard Johnson, an award-winning British food critic, said that a little known secret is that the world’s best sandwich or ‘Banh Mi’ – a familiar fast street food in the life of every Vietnamese — is not found in Rome, Copenhagen or New York City, but on the streets of Vietnam.

The US monthly culinary magazine Food & Wine lists Ho Chi Minh City among the cities for best street foods. According to the travel-oriented community website VirtualTourist.com, Vietnamese cuisine has received some major credits. In addition to the popular ‘Pho’ and‘Banh Mi’, some other favorite street dishes include ‘Com Tam’ (Steamed broken rice with grilled pork ribs and fried egg), ‘Bo La Lot’ (Seasoned beef wrapped in leaf), and ‘Goi Cuon’(Salad rolls).

Customers are waiting to buy ‘Banh Trang Tron’ from Thanh’s stall. (Photo: amthucgiaitri.com)

Even the very hard-to-please American chef and food critic Anthony Bourdain admits he fell in love with Vietnam because of the variety of street foods. “The best breakfast of my life was and will always be a bowl of Pho, eaten sitting on a low plastic stool on a sidewalk in Saigon. Breakfast does not get any better than that,” he said.

The Food and Drink section of CNN TV channel also praised Vietnamese street food in various news articles.

Street foods often raise concerns of food safety and hygiene, but many people cannot help the rumble in their stomachs when they see pieces of ‘Pha Lau’ (beef/pork intestine stew) floating in a yellow-brown thick soup with delicious coconut-milk aroma or the smell of butter-fried quails in some street corner.

Vietnamese street food is varied with a multitude of tastes with each dish a treat for the palate. This world of street vendor too has a diversity of ‘class’ with many street stalls proclaiming to be ‘world class’ or the highest in popularity.

Let’s try a bag of ‘Banh Trang Tron’ (mixed rice paper) from a street vendor called Thanh who is parked on a sidewalk near Ngo Gia Tu Apartment Building in District 10 in Ho Chi Minh City. A bag of mixed rice paper with a combined sour, salty, hot and sweet taste always attracts school kids, but now even the rich have become addicted. ‘Banh Trang Tron’ is made of several ingredients like rice paper, chili paste, dried shrimps, seasoned fried shallot, dried beef, kumquat juice, mango, Vietnamese mint, hard boiled quail eggs, and dried cuttlefish.

A bowl of ‘Pha Lau’ served with ‘Banh Mi’. (Photo: inlook.vn)

Thanh said that he chooses the ingredients very carefully. For instance, he only uses first-grade rice paper and makes fried shallots himself. In order to maintain the number of customers, he always tries to upgrade the recipe. As a result, it is easy for him to price VND20,000 for a bag of ‘Banh Trang Tron’, a price that doubles or even triples, and collects around VND4 million within four hours of opening his stall every night.

The flat winnowing basket of ‘Oc Dua’ (red lip snails) by a cloddish woman near Ben Thanh market is a favorite of connoisseurs of street foods. A milk-can of those tiny snails sells for VND60,000, however, people were still willing to pay for that price just because of a subtle alluring salty taste, the rich taste of butter, and hot taste of chili rousing the tip of their tongues.

The woman said that she sells around 70 milk-cans of ‘Oc Dua’ everyday though there was nothing special in the way she seasoned her snails.

Thuy, a middle-aged woman, who just pulled over her car to buy five milk-cans of ‘Oc Dua’said that she drove from District 8 to District 1 just to buy ‘Oc Dua’. She has been a frequent visitor of this street food stall for three years but she has never found a dead snail or found this dish less delicious.

Vietnamese street foods have also entered luxury hotels in Ho Chi Minh City. Many people were surprised when they saw‘Bo Bia’ (Popiah rolls),‘Banh Trang Tron’, ‘Com Chay Cha Bong’ (fried rice crust with shredded pork), and ‘Banh Duc’(plain rice flan) at five-star InterContinental Asiana Saigon. They love to visit the hotel on Sunday afternoons when most street foods are served at a cost of only VND1.4 million for a buffet.

A visitor said that there were hundreds of dishes from various countries served at the hotel’s buffet but street foods were still the best.

After enjoying ‘Pha Lau’, an American man said that he could not believe that street food could be so delicious and wondered why people in his country were afraid to eat internal organs of an animal.

Nguyen Thi Bich Vy, sous-chef at the InterContinental Asiana Saigon Hotel, revealed that every time she sees a street food dish that is attracting many people she tries it then adds it to the menu at the Market 39 restaurant in the hotel. Until now, there have been many street food dishes on her menu, which she alternates regularly like ‘Goi Cuon’ (salad roll), ‘Goi Du Du Kho Bo’ (green papaya salad with beef), ‘Bot Chien’ (fried dough), ‘Banh Khot’(mini rice pancake), ‘Banh Xeo’ (rice pancake), ‘Che Chuoi’ (sweet banana soup), ‘Chan Ga Nuong Muoi Ot’ (grilled chicken feet with chili salt), ‘Bach Tuoc Nuong’ (grilled octopus),‘Com Dep’ (green rice flakes), ‘Xoi Gac’ (steamed glutinous rice), and ‘Banh Da Lon’(steamed tapioca layered cake).

Vy shared that at first the restaurant only served a few street food dishes but she was surprised when many foreign visitors asked her for recipes, ingredients, and origin of these street foods. Since then, the restaurant has added many more street food dishes to the menu.

http://www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn/Culture_Art/2013/2/104136/

According to a DTiNews survey on January 21, most vendors in Danang City said that they knew nothing about Circular 30, with many of them denying any need to attend training courses on food safety.

A new circular on street food safety regulations which took effect on January 20 has been widely ignored by vendors.

A vendor on Ngo Gia Tu Street said she had never attended a training course on food safety although she had earned living by through the business for 10 years.

Another seller in front of Phan Chu Trinh High School in Danang City said she didn’t want to use gloves for selling food because it would slow down her after-school food service for pupils.

Mrs. Nhung, a rice ball seller in front of universities along Xuan Thuy Street in Hanoi said she only cared about how to select a favourable location to avoid the police, and wasn’t worried about having a food certificate because she thought her customers wouldn’t care about it.

According to food stall owners along Hao Nam Street in Hanoi regulations relating to wearing gloves for one-time use only or that food should be stored 60cm above the ground were unnecessary.

Speaking with a DTiNews reporter, Nguyen Minh Chien, Head of the Danang Food Safety Department, said, “After receiving the circular from the Ministry of Health, in December last year, we held seminars to promote food safety regulations, including street food.”

He also admitted difficulties in food safety management of vendors in line with Circular 30, as vendors often moved location or opening times.

Vendors selling street food without wearing gloves To improve the situation, the department would propose setting up inspection teams to tighten control over vendors in front of schools and industrial parks.

Local authorities would also request vendors to register their business activities and participate in food safety courses as well as give them regular medical check-ups.

According to Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, agencies will set up eight inspection teams to check food safety in 24 cities and provinces from now until the Tet Holiday.

“The type of situation in which food outlets and drinking establishments are located next to drains and a bucket of water is used to wash hundreds of bowls and chopsticks must be ended. It is essential to ensure minimum food safetyrequirements,” the minister emphasised.

Street Cooking – Bun Cha

As I walk around Hanoi there is always somebody cooking or eating; breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper and more often than not in between. Within every 10 or 15 metres there is some degree of socialising around food; whether co-workers, friends, family or strangers, food induces a camaraderie I have not seen in Australia or England.

Xoi Yen Room

Even on a satisfyingly full belly I walk through a balloon of smoke that has wafted in to my path and the appetite-inducing aroma that I now know as bún chả – char-grilled pork patties – draws me closer. It’s just one of the incredible street food experiences in Hanoi.

Finding specific street food stalls can be quite tricky though as, in particular the Old Quarter, Hanoi is a rabbit warren of roads, little alleyways and hidden away eateries that sometimes look so basic that you can walk straight past them without knowing. Having 4 weeks here gives us plenty of time to discover. However, having walked up and down the same stretch of road trying to find a particular stall I have gone back to our old friend the Lonely Planet, in which there is listed the top 10 street food experiences, each one a different take on the Hanoi food experience. What I will do is list the places as we try them out, and try to convey how brilliant and tasty they were through the vehicle of this blog – which to be honest is going to be a near impossible task. Of course, our time here is also about discovery, so interspersed in the 10 will probably be 10s more places that have, like sirens, drawn us to their charm.

Xoi Yen – Sausage

The first of the listed ten we tried was in the Old Quarter called Xoi Yen. The four of us weaved and wended our way up some tight spiral steps to the second floor, in which we were plonked down in a busy open room looking out over the street, on chairs that were barely big enough for our five year old daughter. We spent 5 minutes trying to decipher the menu in Vietnamese, and when a chirpy waitress came to serve, we attempted with our best charades to try and convey what we wanted, using our neighbours’ meals as reference and the very little Vietnamese we knew. It was after 5 minutes the waitress politely smiled, and then gave us a menu in English. The speciality here is sticky rice (glutinous rice as it is also known as) which is topped with maize that has a mashed potato like consistency.

Stt. Joseph Cathedral – Hanoi

On top of this we had finely sliced sweet Chinese sausage and a real Hanoi classic, thinly sliced chả lụa – a pork terrine that is incredibly smooth and I think slightly salted with fish sauce. We left with enormous smiles on our faces – it really felt like we had participated and consumed a real part of Northern Vietnam.

The second one we tried was today, a stone throw away from an incredibly Gothic looking and almost intimidating cathedral, St Jospeh’s.

Bahn Goi Street Food Outisde

Around the corner, nestled under a banyan tree was Banh Goi, an eatery very typical of Hanoi. The speciality here was deep-fried food and we had two varieties; a fried sweet cake, bánh rán ngọt, and sea crab spring rolls, nem cua bể.

Bahn Goi Street Food

The sweet cakes were a real treat, probably Hanoi’s equivalent to doughnuts, but containing a sweet paste and rolled in sesame seeds. After some research, which is quite amusing when the researcher is using one language and the source of the research is using another, I found that the paste is made from chickpea, possibly mung bean, coconut and sugar. I could be wrong though.

The sea crab spring rolls were the best spring rolls we have had in Hanoi, and we have had a few believe me. The delicate crispiness of the rice paper skin with the unctuous crab, vermicelli and vegetable filling, all deep fried to add calories and flavour, was the food highlight of the day.

http://www.duckandroses.com/1147/vietnam-10-must-eat-street-food-experiences/

In frame is the teenage pushcart vendor selling corn.

From a western perspective, the scene is rather quaint, the food something that we’d brand as streetfood and think twice about before consuming. Looking at the photo with friends upon our return home we might refer to the girl vendor as sweet.

But let’s ponder her life for a moment. She is not the self-starter entrepreneur rising up from poverty that we might like to imagine or admire. Though she may not admit it, her life is in fact pretty miserable. Her existence is hand-to-mouth. The cart does not belong to her. She pushes it for another and receives a small percentage of the meagre turnover. She competes with other ‘franchisees’ selling the same corn up and down the same stretch of street.

She should be in school. But she’s been sent by her family from the provinces to seek work, whatever work, to supplement their below-the-poverty-line household income. If she’s lucky, she might reside with relatives in a house. If not, the likelihood is that she’s sharing one in a long line of concrete shells with a tin or thatched roof, with six or eight kids in similar circumstances. It would not be the ritzy end of town.There’d be no heating or air-conditioning and she’d probably have to leave the room for running water or to use the toilet. She’d be holding onto her pathetic stash of money with more concentration than an armoured vehicle driver, each 1000VND note (5c) like a $100 bill.

And she’s getting home late. And there’s a rat scurrying about her room. And her feet are cold because she doesn’t own a pair of socks.

But when I order my ngô xào (fried corn) from her rickety cart, she can still smile broadly despite it all. And while she doesn’t display any natural flair or explicit pride in the production of her fare (who can blame her?), there is a methodical portioning of the ingredients that one would expect in a ‘franchise’. The corn here is a starchier white corn grown in Vietnam and less sweet then the yellow variety known in Hanoi as ngô Thái Lan (from Thailand).

Two scoops of kernels from the glass cabinet are scattered into the oil in the frypan. From the cart’s ‘mise en place’, a spoonful of white sugar and a generous squirt of fish sauce make up the sweet and sour part of the flavour profile. More fishy is added in the form of tép (tiny prawns or krill) which gives crunch to the corn’s chew. At the end, when the corn has taken on a translucent quality, the finishing touches are dropped into the pan: cheap margarine, green spring onion tips and some hot red sauce.

It’s a good snack, worth trying to cook up at home and worth exchanging a little smile and leaving the change with the pushcart vendor.

She needs it.

One serve ngô xào – 12,000VND (USD 57c, AUD 55c)

Ngô Xào
Hanoi Night Market
Hàng Đường
(Fri, Sat & Sun nights)

http://stickyrice.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/04/the-streetfood-vendor.html

http://www.mobilefoodnews.com/2011/05/vietnam-the-streetfood-vendor/