Over 100 YEARS Of History In HANOI; Chả Cá ¦ Vietnamese FOOD With @chrismixlewis.

what's up chris how you doing man? yo this is my buddy chris living in hanoi for the past few years fellow youtuber and uh speak vietnamese pretty darn well which is great because yeah i don't speak vietnamese that well our main goal for today is we want to try one of hanoi's most prized dishes cha cai. now this dish is deeply rooted into hanoi's culture being over 100 years old and having a whole street dedicated to this one dish. this dish is traditionally done with a snakehead fish but i found a place a little outside the city centers doing it with some catfish. now i don't know about y'all but i do love me some catfish so i was looking forward to this spot and don't worry just because it's not traditional way doesn't mean it's going to be any less delicious and besides we all know variety is the spice of life. okay so gonna start today off with some bún bò huế something you can find any city from north to south and of course central vietnam is loved all over and something i've got to eat at least once a week i've not had a bowl yet this week so i got a craving for it and if i don't get my weekly bowl of bún bò huế i'm not a very nice person so let's go ahead and get in here and check this place out. seven years but they've only been here for they've only been here for four months so before they were in a little restaurant over there yeah they were over there for seven years and they just moved over here. now i don't know if this bún bò huế is gonna be good but the aroma passes the test. it has an intense lemongrass flavor just blowing my way. not even here during a busy time and there is no down period you can waste here as you can see if she's not dishing up bowls of noodles she's gonna be over here getting that beef just shredding it and shredding it and shredding it on that deli slicer. so we both what we got is we actually got the bent style which just comes with a lot of assortment of stuff looks like we got the yá híu we got the huế you got the actually chả lựa and then actual pieces of beef i mean this thing just kind of goes on and on and on with the ingredients they threw in there this is the uh i don't know how to do it in the south but this is the north way to do it they just take it they probably do it in the south too they put it into their spoon so then if the seeds come out well there's no seeds oh there it is it catches the seeds and then you just put it on the side of your bowl you'll catch that seed and you can throw it off throw some of these in here looks good that's so good dude that's gonna be one of the best bowls of bún bò huế i've ever had really i've never had it in hanoi i've had it in huế i've had it in saigon it's got to be one of the best just to clarify chris lives here i've never had bún bò huế here but yeah this is really good now there's one thing you didn't do i love like i always clean my chopsticks they don't do that in the north oh man my bowl is legit overflowing right now i'm trying to like get this banana blossom in here and i'm trying to get my little bit of veg and herbs in here and i can't because it's too full get that broth beautiful i mean this just has the color you want on top that little orange yellow top layer chris ain't lying that's a pretty good bún bò huế that is just salty oily the intense lemongrass just attacking you then you're gonna get the heartiness from the beef the richness the umami i gotta get after this y'all i'm starting out with some of these blankets of beef right here look at that the way they put that deli slicer so it's nice and thin it's like your typical deli meat beef i feel like i want more fat on mine so it's nice i'm ready to get after the wit little blood cake get that y'all y'all and all the other goody ingredients we got in here just falling apart i can't even get in my chopsticks without falling apart they just won me over with that blood cake that is ultra soft smooth not gritty at all clean and then you're getting the broth the reason you come here is the broth if you ain't doing the broth right i don't care what you throw in here i'll tell you what they are doing the broth exceptionally well so much lemongrass oil the meatiness this hasn't said much you just eaten it's so good i'm just listening to you talk i just gotta i gotta keep going but a bowl of noodles is nothing without its well noodles let's get a slurp in here oh man these are like springy they got a little bounce to them they're kind of kind of hard to hold on to here i love the contrast with a nice light bouncy chewy noodle with the lemongrass packed meaty oily broth all that little tin and cartilage piece that's what i get knocked back for so i'm hoping to get a bunch of these goodies in here that's like just slightly slightly got a little texture to it it's like on the verge of just becoming completely melt in your mouth like maybe the outside part of it is a little bit creamy but the inside still got a little bit of that chew i think about just a little bit longer cooked and that would have been absolute perfection no matter what though again it's in that broth you're gonna get the flavor of that broth and that's what makes this meal delicious cannot speak highly enough about the broth here i'm saving the yam yo right here looks like a little bit of a prize piece try it out lemongrass spice oil the beef that is the bombay you want to eat when you've been done for an hour how was it it was it was good i almost got all my broth done too i gotta get it done too it was so good dude i will definitely be coming back here with friends it was really funny she just came over and she said i asked her like because on the sign it says like 5k but then right below it it says get it for free if you just you know self-serve for free so i asked her like what's the deal with that she's like if you remember to self-serve yourself or if you pay attention and you actually notice it then it's free but if you ask for it because you didn't pay attention then they're going to charge it for it so it pays to uh pays to read and pay attention to things okay that was some pretty darn good to start the day clearly popular it's not even a busy time for them and look at just a line of motorbikes here i think they just stay busy all day long like i said very popular noodle all throughout vietnam it's always now since i got chris with me today gotta go for a meal that's just you know for bringing people together and one of hanoi's most popular meals something you gotta eat when you come here now there is a whole street that is famous for checkout but since we're out here we're on the outskirts i got another place that's really popular it's a little further out on the city center just try something mix it up and do something a little bit different oh chris that smells so good dude it looks good i've had a lot of check out in my time in hanoi so are you gonna be the professional yeah you're gonna we'll see we'll see how it uh stands up yeah i think this might be some of the other places the deals smell so good here if number of people was an indicator how delicious something is i got good help to this place dude it is packed dude i've never seen a checkout place that's packed oh my god don't give that away i will eat it do you smell the dill in here dude the deal smells so good i want to give that a try it's actually one of my favorite spices i love just the smell so check out actually has a history of over a hundred years in hanoi is a dish is really in rooted into the hanoian culture as you can see what they do is they actually get that type of fish that they've already marinated in seasons like turmeric shallots garlic galangal fish sauce sugar and they grilled it up on the outside and they brought it in here to further the cooking process nice piece of fish mix it all up so that's good the spices and stuff is really fresh you don't really usually get that with a really fresh really nice so i went every that boom middle but the best part is really what goes on in the plate right here in that oil you get the aroma coming from cooking that deal more of the spring onion such an aromatic dish something that just automatically makes you hungry and a massive bite here the fish is phenomenal it's so flaky so soft you can see it's just flaking off perfectly not overcooked not dry at all and just an aromatic it tantalizes your taste buds the flavor from the dill the turmeric you get that shallot the garlic the galangal and then all the mung tom and every other thing you put in here tempo vietnamese dish that's like 20 ingredients they brought us the new pan they said you need to be eating faster here yes sir sorry i ain't got no problem with that the fish the spices taking all the extra work and effort to go and marinate it for at least an hour i'm sure it's more than that and then the grill it and then to bring it back in then you're putting it over the hot plate with oil with spring onions and dill there's so many steps and so much effort and so much tedious work put into this one dish bro i've seen you eat faster today than i have ever have this food is so good normally i just like stick to my normal kind of places and they're good like i i usually don't put in too much work to find like a really good place so this is a this is a treat for me for sure a dish it was once used to bring soldiers home and i'll tell you when you come to this atmosphere it feels like that too you see everybody talking having a good time drinking you hear the plates the bowls planking everybody enjoying a good meal and good company i'm uh i'm preparing for my debut on master chef vietnam coming soon really the best part is when everything kind of leaks to the bottom that's where you get all the oil that's where all the mom tom's gonna go and that's what the boon noodles are for it's gonna soak it all up well this is like this is a money bite y'all this is money bite 101 don't hate it till you try it that's what you do you just kind of keep making bowl after a bowl after bowl create the bite you want maybe a little more chili a little lime mom tom a little more peanut a little more boon to pull back on the flavor you don't ever want to do that though you just sit here and play with it you can tell they are used to cranking customers out you barely finish and your table is flared already looks like we got a little tofu a little tofu here i'm gonna guess a little palm sugar ginger syrup yep that's exactly what that is he takes my mom tom i'll take his uh super hanoi kind of dessert i love this oh that is a fancy tack-ass spot okay chris i think we did agree it's a little more expensive but yeah that's like normally i go for like the 50k ones this is like almost three times that but i mean it was a lot fresher it tasted good it's worth it i think you really pay for what you what you get you pay for what you get yeah i mean they use better materials obviously they cook it for longer they have more experienced chefs probably it makes a difference for sure for sure worth it glad we hit it we were out here anyways okay so what we got going on is we're over here in a market a little bit later in the day got a very popular place doing well i don't really know but i think they got something sweet and that's what really matters so i have to go on a little bit of a hunt looking for a nice little sweet treat to finish the day off okay so there's three markets for some reason b and c are close together where we were a which is what we needed was about three blocks this way we made it we're gonna get a green light cross get in here keep hunting yeah it's so weird we found it what an adventure finally found it and we have found it it was not over there we had to walk back over to the first place we were at chris called some people he asked like 20 people we finally found it and we're going for chow chai huay had to do some research but apparently kong chai i do believe is a muscle so this is actually a chow it's going to have a muscle in it and it is a specialty of huay they got sent them to iran they got some sweet stuff it's gonna be a great way to finish off this video and i feel like i've really worked for it after walking all the wrong way and then now coming back you all see this scooper for the tofu that's kind of funny yeah so they've been here they moved from huay to here their family like 25 years ago and their restaurant here has been open like 22 23 years something like that she didn't seem to remember but something like that she said 20 something years i want to start with them that looks so good i haven't had this in a long time kind of dip it in some of the uh nice spicy chili sauce so good reminds me of like chicken tenders back home but like vietnamese style follow suit seems like the right thing to do i'm gonna get it in some of the non-spicy chili sauce this one's really springy the only thing my problem with it is that should just be nam ran ain't got no chua to it i want a little more sour in mine it's like a little bit springy needs more sour you know how my uh my girlfriend told me to do it how so she said uh when you eat the porridge i don't know if they do this everywhere but she said eat it from the side it's not so hot because it cools down on the outside ring a little more so if you take it from the side rather than the center it won't burn your tongue that's pretty darn good chow it's got this really rich umami what's really big for me is the texture it's just so cream there's no i mean there's no granule texture to it at all have you had any like porridge in saigon is it like this or different really yeah in the north most of the porridges are really creamy like this almost all of them like even normal places are mostly like this y'all for real the best part about this is the one ratio of banh quay to one ratio of chow you get it's so crunchy you're going you're going with the sir or the doom i'm going to go with the i think the milk one nice and chill and like very refreshing especially when you're eating this hot and spicy food well not so spicy but it's hot porridge so he actually got the one i'm gonna go with one just actual doom the sugar mixture but man it's not even hot in hanoi but that big old thing of chow will make you break a sweat i don't know if that's good or if it just hits the spot perfectly after a big old bowl of hot steaming chow oh definitely the milk for me it's not as sweet but maybe that's just because like yesterday i had like two cookies a bowl of chay i had ice cream i don't know i was i was on a sweet sweet adventure yesterday so a little little less sweet is good for me what about you in the south we love our sweet i'm all for the sugar one what's the irony of like before i was like oh i don't want a tofu dessert and then i came and finished his day off with a tofu dessert what's wrong with me it's hitting the spot now though maybe after jack had him one of them right now chris thank you so much for showing me home city brother appreciate it as yeah man anyways y'all i hope y'all enjoyed it having chris along with us eating well wait we had two whey dishes today did i just do two whey dishes in a hanoi video with a hanoi local oh my gosh sorry brother there's always next time i don't think sometimes no it just like clicked on me anyways i hope y'all enjoyed it the food was delicious no matter what y'all to max peace