What to Eat in Hanoi: Bun Cha, Pho and Egg Coffee

Hanoi is the cradle of Vietnam's most famous dishes. Unlike the sweeter, herb-heavier cooking of Ho Chi Minh City in the south, northern Hanoian cuisine focuses on pure, slow-simmered broths, charcoal smoke, fragrant dill and perilla, and a splash of garlicky chilli vinegar or green kumquat. Most street kitchens specialise in a single dish perfected over decades: pull up a low plastic stool around the Old Quarter and follow the local rhythm of morning noodle soup, midday grilled pork and afternoon cafe breaks.

Four essential Hanoian dishes to try

• Pho Bo and Pho Ga (northern noodle soup): Hanoi's benchmark breakfast. Unlike southern pho served with bean sprouts and sweet hoisin sauce, northern pho bo lets the clear, star-anise-scented beef bone broth shine with flat rice noodles, spring onions and tender brisket (chin) or rare beef (tai), accompanied by crispy fried dough sticks (quay) and chilli-garlic vinegar on Bat Dan, Hang Trong or Ly Quoc Su streets. Try pho ga (free-range chicken pho) or dry-tossed pho tron for a lighter bowl.
• Bun Cha (charcoal-grilled pork with vermicelli): a midday ritual heralded down every lane by the blue smoke of pork belly slices and seasoned minced pork patties grilling over charcoal. You receive a warm bowl of sweet-sour fish sauce broth bobbing with pickled green papaya, a basket of lettuce and perilla, and cool rice vermicelli (bun) to dip in alongside crisp crab spring rolls (nem cua be) on Hang Manh or Hang Quat streets.
• Cha Ca La Vong (turmeric and dill fish): firm river fish marinated in golden turmeric and galangal, brought sizzling in a pan to your table and tossed with fresh dill and spring onions, then eaten over rice noodles with roasted peanuts.
• Bun Rieu, Banh Cuon and Pho Cuon: seek out tangy freshwater-crab noodle soup (bun rieu), steamed rice rolls with wood-ear mushrooms (banh cuon), and unfried rice sheets wrapped around stir-fried beef (pho cuon) by the lakeside in Truc Bach.

Egg coffee (ca phe trung) and Hanoi cafe culture

Invented in 1946 by bartender Nguyen Van Giang when fresh milk was scarce, ca phe trung (egg coffee) whips egg yolks with sweetened condensed milk into a velvety tiramisu-like meringue poured over dark Vietnamese robusta coffee. Duck down a passageway on Nguyen Huu Huan Street to historic Cafe Giang or climb to the balcony of Cafe Dinh overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake, or sample coconut coffee (ca phe cot dua) between stops on our three-day Hanoi itinerary.