Wrong About the Chairs
Following Taste | Finding More
Hanoi, Vietnam
As much as I like to control my own agenda and the flow of my days on the road, I know there are certain places in this world, Vietnam being one of them, where I need a local’s perspective to fully appreciate them and get them right.
Until I traveled around the world to get there, I had experienced Vietnam’s cuisine only a handful of times. Pho, once. Banh Mi, once. And the occasional Spring Roll here and there. I’m not a picky eater, but each time I tried Vietnamese cuisine, I walked away one-part uninspired and one-part underwhelmed.
Where you first come to try something, however, is everything. And I knew in my heart of hearts that my tastebuds were about to go on the journey of a lifetime.
On my second day in the country, Jade picked me up at my hotel for a private food tour I had booked in Hanoi’s French Quarter. The day before, I had walked around the neighborhood solo, too timid to pop in and try much beyond what had made it on my tourist-friendly list after weeks of research.
On my own, I had managed to grab the perfect cup of egg coffee at the bohemian Loading Tea Café. At dinner that evening, I had also tried Bun Cha. Bun Cha quickly became, in the course of one meal, one of my favorite dishes. Ever.
After a day of sightseeing, it was apparent to me that Hanoi was the kind of place where my go-to trusted customs just weren’t going to cut it. I’ve always said I could judge a restaurant by its chairs, the shameful equivalent of judging a book by its cover. That parlor trick had done me right all but once across my world travels. A shabby-chic restaurant in Porto, Portugal, still holds the distinction of being, some eight years later, the worst meal of my life.
The chairs here in Hanoi, more often than not, were low-to-the-ground plastic stools. None fancier than the others, strewn about, pulled up here and there, in every color of the rainbow. It wasn’t until I got to Vietnam that I winced at my trite theory’s limitations and shortsightedness.
Maybe the really good chairs had successfully filtered out bad meals over the years, but how many times had bad chairs errantly filtered out really good meals?
Jade was a game-changer. Jade knew where to go, what to order, and honestly, how to eat.
Our first stop was for papaya beef salad. Going in, I held snobby, misinformed reservations about eating any meat from any of these bustling, little storefronts. For the price they were asking, which wasn’t more than a couple American dollars, I ignorantly assumed that quality and edibility would suffer in kind. But I was flat-out wrong. In the two weeks I traveled the country, I never bit into gristle.
After the salad, we walked to a Banh Mi shop. I assumed I knew what these tasted like, too, having tried one somewhere along the way off a menu that dabbled in multi-Asian cuisine. Wow. Wrong, again. My mouth exploded after that first bite. I closed my eyes in disbelief, processing with every chew, all that sat stacked in savory deliciousness between those two slices of fresh, perfectly baked French bread.
Next, we tried Pho. The Pho I’d had back home was bland and forgettable. What isn’t clear to me in looking back was why I continued to reference anything I had ever tried at home before. This Pho had been so good, I struggled to pace myself. Jade had to gently remind me we were only halfway through the tour. I was happy to be wrong yet again. Wrong about Pho. Wrong about the chairs. Wrong about so much.
Next, we ducked in for Bun Cha. Having fallen in love with it the night before, there was no way I was leaving a single slurp behind here. And I didn’t.
We finished off the tour with a salt coffee. Something, despite being proven wrong time and time again, I approached with skepticism. It was salty, yes, but strangely satisfying. It begged whoever sipped on it to take it slowly in mindful, measured gulps. This was an effective kind of portion control, I mused. One rooted in moderation as much as in presence.
As full as I was enlightened, I slid into the backseat of the car smirking. Being wrong so many times had never ever tasted so damn good.
