The lovin spoonful

To many Vietnamese people, the Islamic world is still kept behind a curtain. Is it possible for pho – Vietnam’s national pride – to win over Muslims with their religious beliefs and practices, especially their Halal diet, and come closer to the community of 1.6 billion followers?

After coming to Vietnam for the first time in 2014, falling in love with a Vietnamese woman and moving to Hanoi in 2016, more than anyone, Ibrahim Rakaa – an Egyptian chef – understands that food is the biggest barrier to the Islamic community here.

With strict dietary laws set up by religious beliefs and culture, all foods served to Muslims have to meet the Halal, meaning permissible or lawful, standards.

Although the Islamic community accounts for one-fourth of the world’s population, the term Halal is still unknown to most Vietnamese people.

Rakaa and his wife have poured their hearts and souls into opening a Halal Egyptian restaurant to service Hanoi’s tiny Islamic community and bring Arabic cuisine closer to the locals.

On a menu full of dishes strange to Vietnamese people, there is a familiar friend: pho.

“It’s a special dish exclusively to treat my regular guests and close friends,” said Rakaa on an early winter day.

“Pho is suitable for Muslims as none of its ingredients are prohibited.

“It only needs cooking by a Muslim chef using Halal beef.”

Sourcing permissible ingredients, however, is not as easy as it seems.

To cook an authentic pot of pho for Muslims, Rakaa and his co-workers spend days in different northern localities in search of high-quality oxen and do the butchering by themselves.

“Supermarkets have started importing frozen beef with Hala certification but we cannot cook pho with that meat,” said Rakaa.

The quintessence of Vietnamese pho lies in the ultimately clear but rich broth which can only be achieved by stewing freshly-cut bones in meat for at least eight hours.

Despite having a strong appetite, Muslims are easily persuaded by pho as the dish has flavors similar to their food’s.

“After being taught to cook pho by my wife, I realized spices used in this dish, onion, black cardamom, cinnamon or star anise, are also what made biryani – spiced rice loved by every Musim,” he explained.

Pho bears special characteristics of Vietnamese cuisine while adhering with the Islamic diet.

“That is the key to bringing Vietnamese food closer to the community,” he said.

Barrier

“A wonderful dish,” exclaimed Palestinian Ambassador to Vietnam Saadi Salama as he recalled his early days in Hanoi back in the 1980s.

Going to Vietnam for study, the Palestian student, at the time only, dared to eat banh mi with boiled eggs and pepper salt as he was afraid of violating the dietary laws.

“A Palestian friend later took me to eat a bowl of chicken pho,” he recollected.

“Every spoon of hot broth warmed me up from the inside.

“Since the first sip, I have become a dedicated fan of pho.”

The ambassador has never let any week pass by without having a bowl of pho.

Besides his favorite chicken pho restaurant on Ngu Xa Street in Hanoi’s Tay Ho District, he enjoys discovering new pho shops around the capital city.

Decades of living in Vietnam has enabled Salama to learn by heart the list of renowned pho shops, usually those specializing in a single variety.

“Medium-rare beef pho, stir-fried beef pho with a lot of onion or chicken pho with clear broth – there are so many choices for pho fans,” he said.

Unlike beef pho which requires a sophisticated and complicated preparation, simpler chicken pho is a dish that Ambassador Salama’s family usually has at home.

Learning tips from famous chicken pho shops, he said to make a delicious pot of pho, chickens have to be boiled at the right time to get crunchy skin.

Chickens should be cooled down before being deboned and torn into pieces.

“People from the Middle East hate poultry smell from chicken so I always open the lid and add cardamom – a familiar Arabic spice – to the broth to wash away bad smell while still preserving the original taste of the dish,” he shared his tip.

“It will be sold well,” said Ambassador Salama when talking about pho’s potential of winning over eaters in the Middle East where 30 percent of the world’s Islamic population live.

“Pho soup is easy to eat and comforting while stir-fried pho is boldly tasty.

“Pho can be eaten any time.”

Unfortunately, pho is still unpopular in the Middle East.

The market is still open, not only because of the cultural matter but also a barrier of Halal certification.

Cuisine passport

Yully Yudhantari Saputri – third secretary at the Indonesian Embassy in Hanoi – lost count of the times she answered inquiries on Halal pho restaurants in Hanoi from tourists.

“Besides the excitement to enjoy famous pho in its homeland, Indonesian travelers have to deal with worries about Halal standards,” Saputri told Tuoi Tre News .

There are just some Halal restaurants in Hanoi, those which serve pho are fewer.

Calling herself a liberal person and always wanting to try pho if she knows there are no prohibited ingredients, lard for example, Yully said it was crucial for restaurants to meet Halal standards to attract and receive Islamic tourists to Vietnam.

“Transparency is pho’s biggest advantage to win over Muslims,” she said, explaining that despite complicated cooking techniques, it was easy for diners to point out ingredients used to make a bowl of pho.

However, to seriously make further moves to Halal food markets, including Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim country – being certified as Halal by appointed agencies is essential.

“Especially when Vietnam has an advantage of producing special instant pho which is loved by many customers,” said Saputri.

The Indonesian Embassy’s third secretary said there was just “another small step” to have Vietnamese pho receive the welcoming it deserved.

“Pho is a dish capable of introducing Vietnam as a nation,” she said.

“It is a ‘passport’ bringing the Vietnamese cuisine to the world.

“This is actually what we are trying to do with our fried rice nasi goreng yet the reality is still behind expectations.

“Vietnam is able to do so.”

Nguyen Trung Kien, head of the Middle East-Africa Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Vietnamese cuisine could still meet standards set by religious beliefs.

“The Vietnamese tolerance and openness are well reflected through pho,” he said.

Pho featured in royal menu

Sitting on a small chair by a sidewalk in the Vietnamese capital, Swedish Ambassador to Vietnam Ann Måwe ordered a boiling hot bowl of vegetarian pho with poached eggs.

It was an early winter day in Hanoi and a chilling breeze blew from West Lake.

Skillfully using chopsticks to twirl a small bunch of pho to a spoon, Ambassador Måwe said Scandinavian people had simple breakfast with cool food such as cereal with milk, unlike Vietnamese people who prefer hot and filling dishes.

“How fortunate it is that we can have pho anytime during the day,” she said.

That lunch, she also ordered some crispy deep-fried breadsticks to dip into the savory broth.

Recalling the historic visit to Vietnam of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia in 2004, she told Tuoi Tre News a popular story.

“Extremely impressed by the pho served at the banquet, His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen decided that they had to incorporate it in their tradition,” she said.

“So what I heard is that in the Royal Palace they have pho during the Christmas week, nowadays.”

Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Desiree told Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc this story during her official visit to Vietnam in May 2019.

“Pho is loved by Swedish people as a delicious, fulfilling, and heart-warming dish,” said the ambassador.

“We’ve had a lot of Vietnamese restaurants in Stockholm in the last five to 10 years or so,” she added.

“This special dish is opening the door for Vietnamese cuisine to Nordic countries.”

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Most of my foreigner friends who have stayed in Vietnam say that bun cha (soft rice noodles with barbecued pork served with fresh herb) is their favourite food

When you are ravenously hungry, what dish do you yearn for most? The French salivate about a bowl of onion soup, the Chinese about chicken soup and the Japanese would probably go for a bowl of traditional kinbu dashi soup.

So what about the Vietnamese? Most long for a bowl of clear but delicious soup with green vegetable and herbs, both to improve the taste and promote good health.

Hanoitimes recommends you do as Vietnamese does: start your new day with a hot bowl of Pho when you are in Hanoi, a bowl of Cao Lau in Hoi An and a Hu tieu in Saigon.

No matter how different the tastes of these people from three regions, Vietnamese have one thing in common: everyone love the dish that use the broth obtained from boiling animal’s bones.

In the country, that taste is known as ‘sweet’- not the sweetness of sugar, but the goodness extracted from bones, which seems both sweet and salty at the same times.

Lay on this broth basic, different kind of herbs and flavour will be added to make these different specialties of each region.

Cha ca: flavours from the lost river

As the story goes, this specialty originated in the 18th century when there was a large river, To Lich instead of the present hurly-burly of Hang Can and Cha Ca streets. The river give birth to small restaurants dedicated to a dish made from its fish, frilled and chopped called cha ca. It serves one dish: You guessed it, Cha Ca.

Then it’s do-it-yourself (with some friendly guidance) as you stir in the ingredients on a

frying pan over a charcoal hibachi right at the table. It’s a rich dish and great with some hot sauce (go easy on it at first), and it makes for a fun and interesting evening.

The best Cha Ca in town is served at Cha ca La Vong restaurant, No 14 Cha Ca street or No 107 Nguyen Truong To street at around VND150,000/net/person.

Bun Cha (Barbecued pork with noodle)

Most of my foreigner friends who have stayed in Vietnam say that bun cha (soft rice noodles with barbecued pork served with fresh herb) is their favourite food and it’s the dish they miss most when they leave the country. “I really miss that rich smell of meat sizzling over charcoal,” said Ellen Weber from Canada.

For year, it’s been common to see Hanoi Bun Cha vendors squatting on the pavement beside a small charcoal grill, fanning the coals with a palm-leaf fan and constantly turning skewers of pork. Today, metal grilled have replaced bamboo skewers, and most vendors rely on small electric fans. The smell, though, is unchanged, as is the sweet anticipation.

Unchanged as well is the satisfaction of being handed a steaming bowl of succulent rice noodles and juicy pork, bathed in vinegar and nuoc mam (fish sauce) and flavoured with vinegar, pickled green papaya and sprigs of mint and a cornucopia of other fresh herbs. These days, most bun cha stalls also offer crab nem to accompany the grilled pork.

Bun Cha stalls are found all over the city, but arguably the best are in Hang Manh and Nguyen Khuyen Streets. Price is from VND35,000.

Banh Cuon- Simple pleasures

Banh cuon (rice roll) is a favourite among Hanoi residents. It is often sold in the morning at snack counters and by itinerant vendors.

To make banh cuon, firstly mix rice flour and water then steam it and form it into thin, gummy sheets. With a spoon, the vendor spreads the mixture on the fabric and puts the lid of the pot on it.

After a few seconds the mixture turns into a thin wafer. With the help of a thin bamboo stick, the vendor deftly takes the wafer from the steaming fabric and lays it on a plate. Then he (or more likely she) spreads a combination of chopped pork, mushroom and fried shallots onto the wafer.

The ends of the wafer are then folded over and neatly wrapped making a banh cuon. After making several banh cuon, the vendor will serve them sprinkled with fried onions. A good banh cuon must be fresh, immaculately white, elastic and not pasty.

The dish can be found anywhere within the city, but the more exotic and expensive one is the Banh cuon Gia An restaurant, priced at around VND50,000 per portion.

Hanoitimes

The smorgasbord of sauces in Vietnamese cuisine

Making sauces to accompany food is a challenge for any chef and the world of sauces can be a jungle that novice cooks falter in.

GOLDEN SKIN: Roasted pigeon in coconut juice. Photo courtesy of the restaurant

Bếp Quán (A Kitchen) Restaurant initially piqued my curiosity when friends told me about its craft beer, bia tam giác mạch , or beer brewed from buckwheat, with the grain harvested in the northern province of Hà Giang.

Then, after coming to check out its beers and other drinks, I found how delicious the food was and it has remained on my list of favourite restaurants. The diverse menu features dishes in the northern, central, and southern culinary styles, and there really is a dish for everyone, no matter their taste.

The restaurant has three locations along crowded streets in Hà Nội. It’s best to make reservations in advance, with its large number of guests confirming the quality of its food.

I often go to the one on Hàm Long Street, which is close to my office and the downtown area and is ideal for hanging out with friends.

Its interiors are decorated with attractive murals depicting Hà Nội in the 20th century. Some of the photos were taken more recently but being black & white gives them a classic, nostalgic feel.

The patio, with a green canopy, features colourful lanterns from Hội An and it’s a nice spot to take photos while waiting for the food.

LIGHT & BRIGHT: Its colourful lanterns are from Hội An ancient town. Photo courtesy of the restaurant

You can’t possibly leave without trying the buckwheat beer. At US$4 per bottle, it’s more expensive than local favourites like Bia Hà Nội or Bia Sài Gòn but definitely worth a try.

At first glance, it’s not the amber colour you may expect and is closer to a darker honey colour. As buckwheat is gluten-free, those who can’t drink beer for this reason are free to enjoy a bottle or two. The herbal fragrance is also quite pleasant, and I enjoyed its slightly nutty flavour. Overall, its taste is mild and a little bit sweet, and is not only low in alcohol but also low in calories.

SOFT YET FIRM: Fried tofu with shredded pork. VNS Photo Ngô Minh

The restaurant offers a wide range of dining options to go with the craft beer, from salads (boneless chicken feet, grilled beef, and prawn salads) to fried dishes like pork jowl, mushrooms, tofu, and duck tongue. I enjoyed the fried tofu the most. It had a crispy exterior and was soft inside. Each piece was topped with shredded pork. It tasted even better after being dipped into a sauce of one part ketchup and two parts mayonnaise.

The main was another personal favourite — pigeon roasted in coconut juice. The dish is appealing to the eye, with golden pigeon skin roasted in boiling oil until it’s crispy. The pigeon is marinated with spices for many hours then stir-fried in coconut juice, so the meat is savoury, juicy and soft.

If you’re in a large group, don’t miss the chance to try one of Bếp Quán’s hotpots, such as spicy eel, prawn, freshwater snail (in autumn only), southern-style beef, or chicken.

HOUSE BREW: Guests should make a point of trying its craft beer, made from buckwheat. Photo courtesy of the restaurant

Another recommendation is lẩu cháo chim (porridge hotpot with pigeon). Vegetables, mushrooms, and pigeon are added to a base of broth with rice and mung beans. Such ingredients make the broth nutritious and rich, and when the broth becomes thicker and the rice well-cooked, you can then enjoy the porridge.

It’s quite similar to regular hotpots in terms of cooking style, with the only difference being the rice and mung beans in the broth. I found three stainless steel spoons at the bottom of the hotpot, which the waiter explained was a trick to make sure the porridge didn’t stick to the pot.

For me, Bếp Quán is not just a place to eat; it’s somewhere to experience local cuisine from Viêt Nam’s three regions and try a rather unusual and unique type of beer. VNS

Bếp Quán Restaurant

Hotline: 1900 636 932

Address: 10 Thợ Nhuộm St., Hoàn Kiếm District; 132 Trung Hoà St., Cầu Giấy District; 38 Hàm Long St., Hoàn Kiếm District.

Website: https://bepquan.vn

Comments: A diverse menu with dozens of delicacies from Việt Nam’s three different regions, and a must-try craft beer made from buckwheat in Hà Giang Province. It boasts a well-decorated space, with trees, lanterns, and murals, and delivery is available.