A day in the life of a food tourist in Hanoi

I stared the day with fruit

tofu and tomato with beans

and chicken pho

 Lovely, tasty and light.

The mid morning  break was a fruit soda for me at this cafe - love the illustration.  Bob thinks the coffee in Melbourne has more depth and richness and flavour than the coffee in Vietnam.

 Tempting though these fruit were, I kept walking.

I am still trying to talk Bob into squatting at an outside eating area.

 
Instead, we tried climbing the rickety stairs at Quan Bia Minh, and had a rather bland meal of tofu with chilli and lemongrass

and vegetarian fried spring rolls.

In the afternoon we passed more hawkers of fresh fruit.  The fruit are often small, misshapened, imperfect or blotchy on the outside, but compared to the supermarket ones back home they are fresh, sweet and tasty.

 Dinner was at Madame Hien where we sat outside with the geckos and watched the chefs at work.  We tried the mocktails - yum-

 then a beer for Bob and margarita for me.  Also yum, but I proved my inability to drink by only being able to manage half of it.

 

With the help of our lovely waitress, we  chose a sample of the starters - different types of spring rolls, pomelo salad, prawns with mango salsa.

bun cha with pork, noodles, vegetables and sauce

and duck done in three ways with rice:

Too much! We couldn't fit in dessert, so we did a quick tour of the wonderful house instead, which Bob decided was much cooler and comfortable than outside.  Another visit is needed!