Bánh cuốn: the twenty-second rice sheet

Most Hanoi street food is assembled in front of you. Bánh cuốn is made in front of you, and the making takes about twenty seconds.

A woman sits at a wide pot of boiling water with a piece of muslin stretched drum-tight across the top. She ladles on a thin rice batter, sweeps it into a circle with the back of the ladle, drops a bamboo lid over it. Twenty seconds. She lifts the lid, slides a flat bamboo stick under the set sheet, flips it onto an oiled board, drops a spoonful of minced pork and wood-ear into the middle, folds it in three, and it is on your plate. Then she starts the next one.

If you watch this for five minutes you will understand the dish better than any description can manage.

Two versions, and which to order

There are two things sold under the name bánh cuốn in Hanoi, and they are genuinely different meals.

Bánh cuốn nóng — hot, steamed to order, the version described above. Served warm and slightly slippery, topped with crisp fried shallots, with a bowl of diluted fish sauce on the side.

Bánh cuốn Thanh Trì — the village style, from a district on the southern edge of the city. Sheets are steamed in advance, layered with fried shallot, and sold at room temperature from a flat basket, usually by a vendor on a bicycle. Thinner, plainer, no filling in the classic form. It is a different pleasure — less of a breakfast, more of a snack.

Order nóng if you have the choice. Order Thanh Trì if you happen on a basket vendor, because they are getting rarer and the cold sheets are genuinely good with nothing but shallot and fish sauce.

What comes with it

A full sit-down plate of bánh cuốn nóng is rarely just the rolls. Expect some combination of:

• Chả quế — cinnamon-scented pork sausage, pan-fried until the edges are brown. Usually sliced into thick coins on the side of the plate. This is not optional in the way it looks optional.
• Chả lụa — plain steamed pork sausage, paler and springier.
• Hành phi — fried shallots, scattered over everything. The whole dish tastes of them.
• Rau thơm — herbs, usually including rau mùi and a little shredded lettuce.
• Nước chấm — the dipping sauce. Thin, warm, sweet-salty, sometimes with a float of chilli.

Some shops also serve it with ruốc (pork floss) or, in the autumn, a slice of chả cốm.

The sauce question

Here is the part most visitors get wrong. The nước chấm is not a condiment you drizzle. It is a bowl you dip into, or — more commonly — a bowl the rolls are dropped into, a piece at a time, with chopsticks.

Cut a roll in half with the side of your chopsticks. Pick up a piece. Put it fully into the sauce bowl. Eat. Repeat.

Pouring the sauce over the plate makes the sheets go slack and you lose the contrast between the warm, plain rice and the sharp sauce, which is the entire point of the dish.

If the sauce tastes too mild, there will be a bottle of vinegar-chilli and a saucer of fresh chilli on the table. Add them to the bowl, not to the plate.

A note on the smell

At some shops the sauce comes with a few drops of cà cuống — an essence traditionally taken from a giant water bug, now almost always synthetic. It smells sharp and faintly of cinnamon and pear drops, and it divides people completely.

If your sauce smells like nothing else you have encountered, that is what it is. Try a piece. If you hate it, ask for nước chấm không cà cuống and they will give you a plain bowl without comment.

Where to look

The Old Quarter, around the northern gate area. The oldest bánh cuốn shops in the city sit in this pocket, several run by the same families for three generations. They are small, they open early, and they usually do one thing.

Ba Đình, along the Đội Cấn stretch. Bigger, less touristed, and this is where you find the shops that stay open for an evening service as well as breakfast.

Hai Bà Trưng, near the markets. Basket vendors with the cold Thanh Trì style appear on market mornings. Worth a detour if you want to try the village version.

The practical test is the same everywhere: look for the steam pot at the front of the shop. If there is no cloth-covered pot and no one sitting at it, the rolls were made somewhere else and reheated, and you are eating a different and much sadder dish.

When

Breakfast into late morning — roughly 6:30 to 11am — is the main service. A number of Ba Đình and Hai Bà Trưng shops reopen around 5pm.

Bánh cuốn does not keep. A shop with a full tray of pre-rolled bánh cuốn at 3pm is not the shop you want.

What it costs

35,000–60,000 VND for a plate with sausage, herbs and sauce. Around 25,000 for plain rolls with nothing on the side. A cold Thanh Trì portion from a basket vendor runs 15,000–25,000.

How to order, in three phrases

“Một suất bánh cuốn nóng” — one portion of hot bánh cuốn. “Thêm chả quế” — add cinnamon sausage. “Nhiều hành phi” — plenty of fried shallots. Say this one.

If you only do one thing

Find a shop where the pot is at the front, sit close enough to watch, and order a hot portion with extra fried shallots and a side of chả quế.

Then watch the sheet being made while you eat. It is a twenty-second piece of work that takes years to do well, performed a few hundred times a morning for about a dollar fifty a plate, and it is one of the quietly great sights of Hanoi.

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Next: chả cá — the one Hanoi dish that is a restaurant rather than a stool.