Food Trends

Hanoi's gift to the world: rice noodles in a clear beef broth simmered for hours with charred ginger, onion and star anise, topped with thin slices of beef and a tangle of herbs. In its northern home it is served clean and restrained, the broth doing all the talking.

Smoky grilled pork patties and belly served in a bowl of sweet-tangy fish-sauce broth with a basket of rice vermicelli and fresh herbs to dip. A charcoal-scented Hanoi lunch and the city's proudest specialty.

A crackly baguette — a French legacy made wholly Vietnamese — stuffed with pâté, cold cuts or grilled pork, pickled carrot and daikon, cucumber, coriander and chilli. A whole meal in one crisp, balanced bite.

Chunks of fish marinated in turmeric and galangal, sizzled tableside in a pan with mountains of dill and spring onion, then eaten over vermicelli with peanuts and shrimp paste. A Hanoi institution with a street named after it.

Silky steamed rice-batter sheets rolled around minced pork and wood-ear mushroom, topped with crisp shallots and served with a dipping bowl of fish sauce. Delicate and slippery, it is a classic Hanoi breakfast.

Robust Vietnamese coffee crowned with a whipped, custardy cloud of egg yolk and condensed milk, invented in Hanoi when fresh milk was scarce. Drunk slow and warm, it tastes like tiramisu in a cup.

A bright, tangy noodle soup built on freshwater-crab paste and tomato, with floating clouds of crab-and-egg, tofu and fresh herbs. Sour, savoury and deeply comforting.

Crisp golden spring rolls packed with pork, mushroom, glass noodles and egg, fried until shattering and wrapped in lettuce and herbs to dip in fish sauce. Hanoi's festive, crunchy table favourite.

Sticky glutinous rice steamed and topped — in the beloved xôi xéo style — with mashed mung bean, crisp fried shallots and a brush of fat. A portable, filling Hanoi breakfast handed over in a banana-leaf parcel.

Fresh, uncut pho sheets rolled around stir-fried beef and herbs, eaten cold with a dipping sauce — a Hanoi invention from the Ngu Xa neighbourhood. Light, fresh and a clever twist on the city's most famous noodle.