hanoi: more food

before we left for Hanoi, Jer & I spent some time researching on places & restaurants to go based on other people's reviews. It was fun to find a particular restaurant, try the food for ourselves and see if it was really as good as the review said it to be.

our first two attempts didn't turned out well. Au Lac Cafe was a real pity, many reviews recommended the place for coffee & snacks. Supposedly, its a cafe with a front terrace where guests can sip coffee & have pastries and watch the world go by as it is strategically situated facing the main road. right opposite to Metropole Hotel. But when we made our way there, all we saw was a boarded up area with nothing like what we see. It has either closed down or moved ):

Bobby Chinn's
then we also tried to find Bobby Chinn's restaurant - named Bobby Chinn's - and we managed to find it about 10-15 mins away from where we live. but it has moved. argh. luckily the neighbouring shop gave us their new address. and you know what, its new location was almost, just almost... out of the map. its like at the top of the page right at the border. I guess you can say at least we got the address :P we made our way down by cab one of the evenings and also explored the region.


Bobby Chinn's now at 77 Xuan Dien St, near 2 major lakes divided by a long bridge. Its located inside a prime residential area. Much like our Bkt Timah Road with its restaurants & eateries. we were early as we didn't think of calling to reserve and wanted to avoid the traffic. but it was nice to just walk along the lake (it looked more like a sea to me), enjoy the sea breeze in take in the beautiful skyline & architecture.


the meal at Bobby Chinn's was good, but too dark for us to take pictures. and we tot we would looked 'sua gu' to take a picture of all the food. it cost us USD70+ for two. Jer say it was abt the same as local standard but for the ambience & quality - worth it! because we were early, it seemed as if we had the entire restaurant to ourselves & the waiters were very attentive.





Fanny's Ice Cream
one of our best find among the restaurants we visit. the ice cream was fantastic. made in-house naturally and every scoop was smooth and melts in your mouth nicely. Our favourite have to be the dark chocolate. I also like strawberry and chocolate coffee. the vanilla flavour with the tiny black flecks shows it was made with real vanilla and not just artifically flavoured. now you know how to tell the good ice cream from the artificial ones!







other local food we tried:

salty crepe with seafood, very yummy!


a fried version of another Vietnamese popular dish: spring rolls


restaurant style pho! its a franchise restaurant called Pho 24. we went twice. actually road side stalls taste abt the same its just that in restaurants the cut of the beef is better, and more selection.


they call our you tiao 'fried bread sticks'. not as flavourful as our local version, but taste great when dipped into pho soup