BANH QUAY Visiting a family-run quay operation on Hang Bong is undesirably eye-opening. The inside of the building is so dirty that the owners haven't even bothered to dust the wooden seats where guests sit at the entrance to the house. Don't even ask if anyone has washed their hands. The dough sticks are dropped into a black wok under the stairs where they bubble in old oil until they are taken out and tossed into a wicker basket on the street. Done. Fresh and crispy or stale and tough; you still can't have pho without it.
BEEF Farmers all over Vietnam are using cows as labour, with the suburbs of Hanoi being no exception. Yet once these animals get to be around 10 years of age, it’s out with the old... Hai from Commune 19 Ngoc Thuy in Gia Lam knows that the best way to get rid of a geriatric old cow is to call up one of the slaughterhouses that ring the suburbs of the city. If you come
across a cheap, busy slaughterhouse anywhere near town, then it officially isn’t there. Hai doesn’t ask too many questions of the slaughterhouse personnel, he’s just grateful for the VND10 million they give him for the cow. While it’s undoubtedly practical, this system of using old working cows could also be contributing to excessive toothpick use throughout the capital.
BANH PHO Chances are, if you’re enjoying a hearty bowl of pho in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, then that most vital of white noodles came from 49B Bat Dan. Mrs Diep’s family has been producing Hanoi’s most famous foodstuff for at least three generations and has an enviable reputation for quality. In a spotlessly clean — by Hanoi standards — courtyard, a remarkably well turned-out boy stands before two oversized stoves. Like a DJ he hops between each one keeping the two in perfect sync. He pours a white mixture of ground rice grain, water and cooked rice onto one stove, spreads it over the surface then places a lid on top. Without pausing, he turns to the other deck on which the mixture has already hardened into a circular sheet. Using a length of plastic piping he rolls the sheet off the stove and, with his free
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hand, spreads on another circle of mixture. He turns to hang up the sheet on one of the countless rows of piping before returning to the now ready right hand deck to repeat the process. A stainless steel machine, a bit like a wringer, cuts the sheets of pho into the ribbons that populate steaming bowls of broth all over the city. In this way, the family factory produces tonnes of pho a day, and their reputation for consistently producing the most delicious strips in the city means they can charge a little bit more than their competitors, and still be the number one choice in the Old Quarter. If you’re looking for the perfect pho, either in sheets for making pho cuon or in strips for making pho or pho xao, then drop in and get yourself a kilo for just VND 15,000.
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