After meeting the rest of our tour (in a quick “…and this is everyone, everyone…”) We headed out to dinner. We walked up to the third floor where a large table was set out and reserved for us. The other people on our tour warned me not to expect food to come fast or at the same time. I was told “eat as soon as it arrives.” Apparently when you’re in a big group like the tour was, it meant meals were remarkably slow and sometimes in the madness certain things might just never arrive. Our CEO walked around giving suggestions on food. I ordered based off these suggestions.
First came my drink. I ordered a fresh Vietnamese tea with mút gùng (candied ginger). It was a bit strong but decent. Plus I like candied ginger.
For dinner I ordered Bún chả Hà Nội, a specialty of Hanoi. It’s grilled pork and rice noodles.
One of the ladies working came over when our meal had come out to show us out to eat it. We were to put some of the rice noodles in a bowl with some herbs and veggies and to use our chopsticks to push the meat off the wooden tongs and into our bowl with some sauce. It was good. It wasn’t piping hot when it arrived and cooled off rather quickly but it was filling and a fun way to eat. In Korea the chopsticks are flat and the ones we were given at the 96 Restaurant were big, round, fat, and wooden and kept rolling away from me.
After dinner we walked around the night market for a bit and then down a side street where we sat at a street food vendor and ordered egg hot chocolate.
Egg coffee is a pretty popular drink in Vietnam, but I’m not a fan of coffee. So when I heard that there was also a hot chocolate version I was pretty excited. It’s made out of egg yolk, sugar, condensed milk and coffee or chocolate. It was a bit like a pudding, thick with a dark chocolate at the bottom that complitmented the other flavors well. It was fun to just sit and enjoy it on the sidewalk, there are restaurants that serve it as well and you can easily find egg coffee.