Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [217]
Lac Thien 6 Dinh Tien Hoang. See "Hué". Probably Hué’s friendliest and most interesting restaurant, located on the citadel side, Lac Thien is run by a deaf-mute family who communicate by sign language. The food is excellent, taking in the Hué staples, and prices remain reasonable, despite its fame. Enquire about their wooden bottle openers, and you will be given one and asked to send them photos from around the world holding it to the camera.
Mandarin Café 24 Tran Cao Van. A leading light of Hué’s backpacker business, this unassuming café off the main road rustles up cheap but very tasty Vietnamese and Western fare. Owner-photographer Mr Cu and his staff are also excellent sources of information and can assist with boat trips, bike and car rental and tours.
Omar Khayyam’s 34 Nguyen Tri Phuong. Deservedly popular restaurant for its authentic Indian fare, which includes a good vegetarian and thali selection.
Phuong Nam Cafe 38 Tran Cao Van. Simple local eatery that serves local specialities, including some of the best spring rolls in town. Tables outside on the street are often full with Hué’s tiny expat community, but it is popular with locals as well.
Tan Huong Sen 96b Nguyen Trai. See "Hué". Just west of the citadel, and set in a middle of a small lagoon (complete with walking plank), the bamboo-decorated restaurant offers good-value, fresh seafood in unique surroundings. It’s a popular dating spot for locals.
Vuon Y Thao 3 Thach Han 054/352 3018. See "Hué". It’s worth splashing out to eat at this restaurant on the western edge of the citadel, where you feast on beautifully presented Imperial foods (150,000đ for a set meal) in the garden of a colonial villa. Traditional music can be arranged on request.
Why Not Bar? 21 Vo Thi Sau. Comfy, open-air pub that serves the usual Vietnamese fare in addition to good burgers, toasties and hotdogs. It often gets crowded at night when the music cranks up.
Xuan Trang Café 14 Hung Vuong. Above-average backpackers’ place with an extensive and reasonably priced menu; its ice creams and Hué speciality dishes are recommended.
* * *
The central provinces | Hué | Eating |
Hué specialities
One good argument for staying in Hué an extra couple of days is its many speciality foods, best sampled at local stalls and street kitchens. The most famous Hué dish is banh khoai, a small, crispy yellow pancake made of egg and rice flour, fried up with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts and eaten with a special peanut and sesame sauce (nuoc leo), plus a vegetable accompaniment of star fruit, green banana, lettuce and mint. Hué is also well known for its noodles and has its own spicy version of the rice-noodle soups, called bun bo, bun ga or bun bo gio heo depending on the meat used – beef, chicken or beef and pork – and flavoured with citronella, shrimp and basil.
There are even special snacks, usually eaten around four or five o’clock in the afternoon. Order banh beo and you get a whole trayful of individual dishes containing a small amount of steamed rice-flour dough topped with spices, shrimp flakes and a morsel of pork crackling; add a little sweetened nuoc mam sauce to each dish and tuck in with a teaspoon. Banh nam, or banh lam, is a similar idea but spread thinly in an oblong, steamed in a banana leaf and eaten with rich nuoc mam sauce. Manioc flour is used instead of rice for banh loc, making a translucent parcel of whole shrimps, sliced pork and spices steamed in a banana leaf, but this time the nuoc mam is pepped up with a dash of chilli. Finally, ram it consists of two small dollops of sticky rice-flour dough, one fried and one steamed, to dip in a spicy sauce.
One Hué dish that most people steer clear of, for fear of health repercussions, is com hen whose main ingredient is a small shellfish of the mussel family (hen) dredged up from around the Perfume River’s