Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Hanoi Delights: BBQ Chicken Street and More.

In keeping with the Hanoi tradition of themed streets, when you want BBQ chicken you go to BBQ Chicken Street.

The street is lined with restaurants serving nothing but.

And a couple that are even more specialized.

Our favorite spot features sidewalk dining with plenty of
chicken bones under foot, so you know it's good.

The chicken parts (note that they are big pieces, not the usual
hacked up bits) are impaled on sugarcane skewers and perfectly grilled.
Also good: skewers of roasted potato chunks, sweet-and-sour cucumber slices,
and a sort of lightly fermented sweet-and-sour cole slaw.

Meat popsicles!

After lunch, we stroll toward the lake, pausing to take in the latest in cutting-edge fashion.

And visit our favorite coffee shop.

An eatery we're sorry we missed. (We'll definitely be back.)

And the lovely lakefront dining at this al fresco cantina specializing in frog hot pot.
(Those are the tables, not the seats.)

P.

5 comments:

Steve said...

Reading this, I realize that I have no idea where - in Hanoi - you live. I don't mean geographically, I mean culturally/socially/economically. If San Francisco were Hanoi, where do you live? Or San Jose?, if that is easier.

Ophelia and Peter said...

Probably Noe Valley. A little out from the center of town, close to, but not in the real high-rent district. A mix of well-off and working class Vietnamese families, interspersed with a few westerners who, like us, can't afford the high-rent districts.
P.

Ophelia and Peter said...

I'll add a bit more: One of the ways in which Hanoi is very unlike other cities I've been in is that there really isn't any big difference in the various neighborhoods. Other than the Westlake/Ciputra area where many expats live (and we decided early on that we did not want to live among other Westerners), most of the city is the same. Same architecture, same food stalls and markets, and the same mixture of various socio-economic levels. The city is big, but it mostly looks the same everywhere you go. It's not as if there are pockets of different nationalities, like most US cities; here it is all Vietnamese.

Michele S said...

Are we going to see that lovely outfit on O in the next batch of pics? It seems the perfect apparel for dining on meat popsicles.

Ophelia and Peter said...

Alas Michele, they did not have it in my size. Even though I am probably an 8P in the US, that is considered an XXL here and rarely found.