I would agree with that in principle, especially in a bricks and mortar type of place. But when it comes to street food that is bring freshly prepared in front of you I think it’s reasonable to be able to have some customisation of your order. Most of the banh mi vendors I’ve come across in Hanoi are happy to customise the sandwich to some extent - you just point at the containers of ingredients and sauces they have out front. The avocado request put their noses completely out of joint because avocado in a sandwich is just an alien concept there. It’s a prime ingredient in smoothies and apparently in nothing else!
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You are conjuring up some good memories of Hanoi for me. I am curious if “Cathedral Street” still has the cute tiny hipster (when hipster wasn’t a bad thing) shops that B and I fell in love with on our visit eons ago. We were so charmed by the clean modern sense of style of those young makers. I still own every single thing I bought from those shops and they stand the test of time—high quality. I vaguely remember Hanoi being a center for bespoke tailoring.
We have been discussing a SEA trip in the upcoming years. I’m working on turning Spring Onion into a pho aficionado like your kid.
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We taught two back-to-back 2-day courses at the hospital. The first day of each course was very hectic and the lunch break was very limited and often ended up being a working lunch, so I didn’t have time to take photos. Lunch, with both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options would be delivered around 11am for the midday lunch break. The first day I went for the vegetarian option which was egg banh mi. The second day I again went for the vegetarian option, which was pretty elaborate:
A few fried tidbits in the top left section; I hadn’t a clue what any of these fried bits were but they were all pretty tasty. Steamed leafy greens in the lower left section: morning glory, cabbage and baby bok choi. The steamed greens were so nice despite being so plain. The cabbage was my favourite. Braised tofu in a light tomato broth in the bottom right corner. Steamed rice to go with all the veggie bits. This sort of hospital canteen lunch is something I really enjoy.
The next day I was too busy to take a photo, but the lunch I chose was a bowl of noodles with sliced poached chicken, herbs, crushed peanuts and crispy shallots with a separate bowl of soup on the side. I now realise this was pho tron or ‘dry pho’.
The final day we were whisked off to a different part of the hospital to have a special lunch hosted by the hospital’s director of education. I forgot to take my phone with me and really regretted not being able to take photos of the lavish vegetarian spread that was laid out for our lunch. Steamed veggies, Russian salad, braised tofu in a delicious sauce, braised mixed mushrooms, braised aubergines, mushroom and spinach fritters, fried spring rolls, mushroom rice that was wonderfully savoury. Followed by an enormous plate of cut fruit and coffee. I could barely move after this fabulous lunch. It was catered by a local vegetarian restaurant which is the side hustle of one of the hospital nurses. This is the restaurant, which is meant to be fantastic value for excellent vegetarian/vegan food:
I will definitely go there if I visit Hanoi again
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We spent quite a lot of time exploring the area near the cathedral. There are mostly restaurants, coffee shops and spas around there now.
I was standing at the corner of the courtyard in front of the cathedral when I took this photo of a cute verandah of a bar. I liked the neon sign.
We bought several lacquer bracelets from a small shop just near the cathedral which had lots of other interesting handicraft items made of lacquer and horn for sale. There was also a branch of Tired City, which is very hipstery. I bought several nice prints from Tired City on my last day in Hanoi, when I had run out of clothes to wear and was literally roaming the streets in my pyjamas (cheap Vietnamese ones bought at a night market). I like that you can do that in Hanoi without anyone batting an eyelid. And the hipster youngster staff in Tired City complimented me on my pyjamas as well - lol! Apparently the caption on them says ‘No money - not cool’.
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LOVE those PJs!
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I feel like in Asia, anything goes. Plus, you are one cool mama, so you can pull it off swimmingly!
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Yo ‘Jamas SCREAMING for a pair of hotel slippers!!!
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Lol 
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I also love the random slogans you get on T-shirts in Asia. One candidate on the course was wearing a T-shirt that said “Simplicity - flowcharts are a marvel of simplicity”…
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A section of the Engrish.com website is dedicated to, uh, decorative English language printed on clothing. It’s about as random as I imagine a few Chinese character tattoos might be on westerners 
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I have a mental list of all the great photographs I DID NOT take.
And near the top of the list are several hundred signs I saw in Nepal, all hand painted in broken English, all quite earnest and all quite confusing.
Ok, maybe a hundred, but it seemed like it was more.
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So after the first day of the course we freshened up at the hotel and then went out in search of some dinner. As I expected, most of the UK faculty went to dine together at a fancy restaurant next door to the hotel. By fancy I mean the price of a starter for one there is equivalent to my entire spend for dinner for two where one of the two is a 17 year old boy whose stomach is bottomless pit. After looking at the set-up and menus for a few places we settled on Mỳ Phố, just round the corner from our hotel, at 67A P. Hàng Bông, Hàng Gai, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội 100000. This is a small, cash-only joint with communal tables. We ended up sharing a table with a lovely Spanish couple who had the cutest baby and a very friendly Italian lady. We ordered 3 mains: beef pho with raw beef slices, dry chicken pho with egg noodles instead of rice noodles and sticky rice with roast chicken. It came served with a small bowl of clear soup with a single dumpling and a saucer of dark soy sauce. I forgot to take a photo of the dry pho. There were cut limes, cut chillies , chilli sauce on each table. I paid around 180k for the entire meal including a soft drink.
The Italian lady told us she had come there on the recommendation of an Italian influencer! The Spanish baby was adorable and extremely content despite looking like she was melting in the humidity. At the end of their meal the waitress asked to hold the baby and held her very affectionately for a few moments, pressing her chubby thighs. She then handed baby back to her parents and returned with a large mango which she gifted to the baby.
After dinner we decided to have a liquid dessert and visited one of the many ‘nuoc ep’ (fruit juice) joints that are ubiquitous in Vietnam.
Some unusual choices on the menu, including zucchini juice (No 19) and something called ‘results whip’ (No 21)?!?
We had a fresh pineapple juice and custard apple smoothie. They were nice but we didn’t return to this place because they use plastic straws and cups. It’s hard to find places that don’t - the massive use of plastic disposable stuff in Asia is one of the things we struggle with in terms of trying to be environmentally conscious.
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I was appalled at the amount of garbage along the side of the roads we saw traveling through Thailand back in '98. Can’t imagine it’s gotten any better. At the time, unemployment rate was through the roof. I try to cut folks who might have more pressing issues going on in their countries a little bit of slack, however.
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The second day of the course - we were told the UK faculty and any accompanying family were invited to a special dinner hosted by a sponsor of the charity. Initially, he had hoped to host it at Tam Vi:
But apparently Tam Vi has just been awarded a second Michelin star and is now booked solid for months.
So instead, we were hosted in a private dining room at Cincin Hanoi (80 P. Hàng Trống, Hàng Trống, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội 100000)
Some cool decor in the nook above the dining room:
And tasteful table decor with fresh flowers and candles floating in water.
We were poured some Chardonnay. Then the very young looking chef came in to introduce each course. Apparently he is just back from a stint in Paris. He spoke with a very French accent and all the ladies were very impressed with his boyish good looks. Move over Carmy from The Bear. Chef Linh from Cincin is in town. I didn’t take a photo of the chef - it would have been a bit awkward.
First course: vegetables with tonnato dip. This was light and refreshing.
Second course: grilled oyster with cider caramel and crispy garlic and shallots. This was absolutely amazing. I could have easily eaten 10 of these…
Third course: cappellacci pasta with ragu bianco, pickled garlic and fried ? shiso leaves. Sorry, I took a bite of this before remembering to take a photo.
Fourth course: Angus steak with frites and Vietnamese herb puree. We were poured a red with this (a cab sav I think?)
I donated half my steak to my son. He declared it the second best steak he has ever eaten.
Final course, dessert: kumquat ice cream topped with whipped cream and candied kumquat.
The businessman hosting us was very gracious and spoke to each of us to understand more about the work being done by the charity. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that he was highly amused to hear my son is making his way through oceans of pho and whipped out his phone to give us a few tips. His phone has a ‘Hanoi pho’ map. We need to make one of those.
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Thank you for your report. I also went to Hanoi recently for a very short trip. One really needs to get out of the touristy Old Quarter to eat great Vietnamese food.
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That all looks amazing!!
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So glad to find a kindred spirit in these matters. This is something I struggle with on a daily basis at home but particularly when we travel because we’re at the mercy of the locality. I’m fully expecting the kids will solve the plastic problem by the time I’m long gone.
In Thailand, I remember artists making sad sculptures of the discarded single-use water bottles from one day. It was a near-mountain. We used to boil water, let it cool overnight, and then decant into our water bottles.
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Yes. We carry our own cloth bags so we can pack our own purchases and groceries, and our own water bottles which we fill at the start of the day and try and find water dispensers along the way if possible. The hospital had a water dispenser which dispensed hot and room temp water. The staff mainly use it to make instant coffee and we used it to fill our water bottles. When I attend courses in the UK I even bring my own reusable coffee cup…
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The third day of the course, the doctors I taught in October 2024 invited me and my son out for dinner at Laca 24. It turned into a very raucous beer drinking session very quickly. They kept ordering these beer towers with a built in tap dispenser. Each tower has about 10 glasses worth of draft beer.
Lots of food as well. They had signs up warning people not to bring their own food but one of the doctors brought out a big package full of ‘the specialty of her home town’. Amidst all the background noise I didn’t catch the name of her home town or the name of the specialty but I did catch that it was raw fermented pork mixed with garlic, chillies, rice flour and herbs, rolled up tightly in a banana leaf package. The finger sized packages:
The actual product:
They recommended having it with chilli sauce. I frankly needed the chilli sauce to try and mask the very pungent flavour of this sausage. I asked what the little white threadlike things in the sausage were: finely sliced pork skin. Hmmmm. This is something I am not keen to try again; once was enough. It seems like a very popular drinking food though as the Vietnamese doctors all got through it very easily.
They also orders lots of salad type stuff and hot pot. The hot pot was unusual as the main ingredients were fish, green banana and the shredded inside tender stem of a banana tree (I initially thought these were noodles but was corrected by the doctor who was presiding over the cooking of the hotpot at our end of the table).
The banana stem ‘noodles’:
Lots of toasts with the traditional shouts of “Mot, hai, ba, do!” - Vietnamese really love a toast and you can often witness this in restaurants where groups of people are dining and drinking. Some people were slightly worse for wear by the end of the evening:
This is the sort of experience one can probably only get if invited out with a group of locals.
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I would respectfully counter that you can get great Vietnamese food even in the touristy Old Quarter of Hanoi - you just need to know where to go.
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Maybe she’s just tired?!?! 
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