Seven Enticing Ways To Improve Your Best Food In Hanoi Skills

The name Dac Kim was originated from its first owner in 1965. With the area of quite small, at peak time, eaters have to move to the second floor of the restaurant or sit right on chairs on the street pavement. Located right on the beginning of Hang Manh street, bun cha Dac Kim has been a familiar destination for many foreign tourists visiting Hanoi.

Com Chay Ha Thanh Restaurant is a sort of vegetarian place that has a lot of faux meat dishes on the menu, however the vegetarian pho is popular. You know by now I have a sweet tooth but seriously, it was so delicious! It's a bit like a sweet dessert soup,served hot, that I tried in Hanoi, which came in different flavours and I went for sweet potato.

Banh Cuon were one of my absolute favourites and grilled pork and vermicelli but reading this makes me realise how much more adventurous I should have been about trying more street food! I absolutely loved the food in Vietnam too and it came as a real surprise as I hadn't tried much Vietnamese food before visiting there, despite having a real taste for South East Asian cuisines. What fabulous foodie photos Anna - good thing I read it just after having lunch here in London!

At 20,000 VND, or less than US $1, this was one of my favorite meals on the quick. In Hanoi, this sandwich will be finished off with hot sauce and mayo drizzled on top. A fluffy baguette is stuffed with pate, cold cuts, cucumber, and pickled carrots & daikon.

I think the Vietnamese sandwich is one of the most ingenious France-meets-Asia creations ever! A bowl costs just under US $2 in a restaurant, but out on the street? The soup has a light, tangy tomato flavor with a hint of the sea.

There are no real crab meat pieces in there, but rather small clusters of crab egg. Bun rieu is a northern crab and tomato noodle soup made with thin round rice noodles (instead of wide & flat like pho). We ate there at least a couple of times a week.

There was a pho restaurant very close to D's place, and it became our default go-to place. A few more tries later, after I learned to dress it up with lime, fresh herbs, and sauces, I was hooked! The first time I had pho, I thought it was truly unspectacular.

I'm not sure when I fell in love with Vietnam cuisine. One houses black-and-white photos of old hanoi tourist attraction (www.hanoitourist.org); the other, rotating exhibits; a recent show displayed architectural drawings sketching the city's evolution, and future. Don't bypass the two yellow French colonial villas set cater-corner to each other behind the main gate.

Nearby, an underground bunker used during the Vietnam War includes a tunnel, a War Operations Room and related artifacts. Climb the stairs to the top of its imposing main gate for a view over gardens to a listing red brick flag tower.