Eating in Hoi An

Buying fruit local style, including the squat and the bargaining

I have been a foodie my entire life.  Even when I was a little girl, when my mother would ask me how my day was, or how camp was, I would give a rundown of the food I ate--including critiques of dry carrots, I am told. The same is true today. Indeed, I remember the exact moment that I discovered how salt can add flavor to a dish: It was at summer camp when I was about twelve years old; I don't recall exactly what I was eating, but I remember it was extremely bland so I thought, "Let's see what salt does to it." It was a game-changer.

If I've been out to eat with someone and they don't recall the restaurant, I will remind them exactly what I ate, and I sometimes what they had too. 

So yeah... Food is a big part of my life.  Food, traveling and camping. 

I love eating in Vietnam, but Hoi An is by far my favorite place. Food here is based on rice, be it in the form of cooked rice, rice noodles (with each dish having a special width and thickness), rice "pancakes" (what fresh spring rolls are wrapped in), or rice crackers (thick or thin pancakes flavored with sesame seeds and dried; they bear no resemblance to what you buy in the snack isle in the U.S.). 

The rice is used as a complement to the food, never the hero. Dishes will have a protein, and are either made with lots of fresh vegetables, or served with a pile of fresh vegetables for mixing in, and a sauce (either to put on top or to dip in). This will always include cucumber and a huge bunch green-leafed veggies, similar to what you get when you order pho. Often it will be bitter leaf, lettuce, Asian basil, mint (it works!), parsley and the like. Sometimes there will be slices of unripened bananas, which on their own are bitter and will suck all the moisture from your mouth, but they work really well rolled up in a fresh spring roll with other vegis and fried beef or poached fish or pork.

It's these vegetables that make eating in Vietnam sooooo much better than having Vietnamese food in the U.S. I don't know why the restaurants in the States don't have the same compliment of veggies, but I suspect it's because the vegetables simply don't grow well in this climate. And I'm sure that unripened Cavendish bananas just can't compare.

Then there's all the fruit in Vietnam (and Cambodia too). Boy, do I love the fruit! Here, fruit is so sweet that it's the dessert. There's no need to add sugar and cook when you have something fresh off the tree, bursting with flavorful juiciness and full of natural sugar. I am particularly fond of mangosteen, dragon fruit (purple especially), bananas (which are only three inches long), and watermelon, but the pineapple is by far my favorite. Pineapples grow like artichokes, and aren't that much bigger than an artichoke either. When a pineapple is cut from its stalk, they will leave a bit of the stalk so as to have a handle. When you buy a pineapple, they will cut off the skin and the eyes, and give it to you like a lollipop. Yum! I love eating the soft, juicy outside first so that I can savor the chewy, sweet center. Its so good that I can't eat pineapple in the continental US anymore unless it's in pineapple upside-down cake.

Okay, now I'm hungry and I suspect that you might be too. I'll wait while you go grab a snack, because there's more food coming up.

Ready?

As I was saying, I love to eat in Hoi An, but this most recent trip far exceeded my normal expectations food-wise, all thanks to Ms. Vy's restaurants: Cargo, Mermaid, Morning Glory and The Market.

Cargo and Mermaid both make a phenomenal cau lau, which is a Hoi An specialty. It has noodles, fried dough croutons, a crispy rice cracker, thin slices of marinated beef, a bunch of those leafy greens, and a dark, slightly sweet, sauce. Until this trip, cau lau was my favorite dish. Don't get me wrong, I still love (love, love, LOVE!) this dish, but now I have more favorites.  And it's all thanks to The Market.

The Market has only been open for about a year, so it's still flying under the radar. I can't imagine this will last too long, because it is not only fun, but delicious. The Market has an open kitchen design, but there are many kitchens, with each one specializing in a different product. Diners eat in the middle, making it a bit like dinning in the round.

What makes this layout so awesome is that it's easy to see exactly how everything's made. And his place makes everything; they only buy the vegis and the protein. 

Below you see a woman making noodles for mi and bun. It's mesmerizing to watch.

This should be a video. I hope it works!

Here you can see rice pancakes being made. The first step is a lot like making crepes: batter is poured onto what is best described as a really tightly woven muslin, and the ladle is used to spread the batters cross the entire surface.

The pancake is then covered for a few minutes so that it's steam cooked.

The pancake is then lifted off the muslin with a piece of bamboo and placed on a cloth to dry. 

Did you notice the charcoal fire below the iron implement? Even though this is a high-end place (relatively speaking), they still use the every-day methods used in kitchens around the county. As anyone who's debated barbequeing with gas vs. wood vs. briquettes will tell you, the heat source effects the flavor. And as I'm sure you know, fresh noodles, crepes and bread just doesn't compare to packaged.

Not only can you see the noodles and pancakes made right in front of you, you can also see the vegetables prepared. They are soooo fresh!

As you know, freshness is a huge part of the great flavor, and The Market has freshness in spades.

Plus, it's fun to watch the food being cooked. 

Seafood pancakes

Deserts of strawberry, coconut and coffee jellys

The final products are also on display. This is great for someone like me, because I am always checking out what's on other peoples tables--and what's being brought out of the kitchen--from the moment I walk into a restaurant.  So for me, being able to see the food on display is much easier than trying to covertly spy on other tables.  I'm not shy about asking what's in someone else's table.

The pancakes being made above are used for fresh spring rolls and banh cuon, shown below. This is a common street food dish, and is rarely found State-side. We've had it a number of times in Vietnam, although not on this trip. Usually the pancake/crepe is filled with small pieces of cooked pork, then folded up and topped with veggies and fried onions. They're served with a savory and/or sweet and spicy sauce.

The table next to us ordered prawns sautéed in a coconut shell, and this is what they got. Fun!

Now it's time to talk about the food we ate at The Market. I was too excited to eat to take pictures of most of our food, so these few will have to suffice.

The most surprising dish we had was shredded poached chicken salad with green papaya.  I hate papaya. Or at least it thought I did.  Now I know that I hate ripe papaya, and I love (love, love, LOVE) green papaya. It's juicy, sweet and crunchy and ridiculously refreshing on a hot day. 

This salad came with the green papaya as the hero, and it phenominal. I never thought I would use that word when referring to poached chicken or papaya, and this salad had both! It was served with rice crackers, and we were told to put the salad on the cracker to eat it. Now that's my kind of dish! (This is how I eat my burritos too.) This salad was so good that We had it twice in one day. And Tadashi had it the next day with beef.

Do you see the drink in the photo above? That's not a coke. It's a street-food drink that I've always wanted to try, but never trusted the water. The Market was safe, so I finally had my taste. It's black jelly cubes (I forget the flavorings) with basil seeds (similar to chia seeds), fresh ginger and ginger syrup. It was so good that we had one with every meal.

One of our other favorite dishes was sesame pork sate wraps, shown below. We also has a lot of the crispy pork, which was a lot like bun, but with different noodles and sauce. It was fantastic too.

The final product of the tri-jelly dessert.

What I love about the market is that it's so good, we felt confident ordering crazy stuff, because we figured we might as well try it at a place we know is good. And boy did hat pay off!  

We ate almost every meal at The Market, so they got to know us pretty well. The manager, Lu, was always a ray of sunshine. She was so sweet to let us come in for lunch one afternoon, despite having stopped serving ten minutes earlier. 

We will miss you, Lu!