Monday, January 28, 2008

Coffee beans, Flower markets, and Indian food

The day began with clouds and drizzle, but that's not too surprising since we haven't seen the sun once in our time here. I'm told that the best time to visit is October/November, so we'll aim for that next time. We had two goals for the day: to purchase coffee beans, and to eat good Indian food.

Coffee, we figured we would buy from the market across the street, but Mr. T (very helpful member of house staff -- not the actor from "The A Team") soon set us on a better path. He made a phone call or two, and located for us a tiny specialty coffee roaster in the old quarter whose coffee he said would be superior. He even went so far as to negotiate the price of the coffee (bargaining down 25%) and to give the owners my description so that they would recognize us when we arrived. More Mr. T intelligence: as the Tet holiday is coming up, there was to be a flower market right in that area at the intersection of Hang Ma and Hang Be. This sounded much more interesting than the FiviMart across the street, so off we went.

Hang Giay Street is small enough that it is often left off tourist maps, but with Mr T's directions we found it easily. Hue Cafe (Motto: "Good Strong Coffee") is a hole in the wall, located at 26 Hang Giay Street, a small street between Luong Ngoc Quyen and Hang Buom, a five minute walk north of Hoan Kiem Lake. The proprietors recognized me immediately (1.85m tall white guy in black leather jacket and chinos), and invited us to sit down and try the coffee. So we folded up our enormous legs and sat down on plastic stools about 20cm off the ground. They brought us espresso-sized porcelain cups of extremely strong coffee and a can of condensed milk. The "Special Highland" variety was as tasty as its reputation, and I may need another suitcase to transport our purchases.



Around the corner we visited the flower market. What I didn't expect was that the market was not just for live flowers, but silk ones as well. Mixed in with the tangerine trees (very popular at Tet), and budding rose bushes were a silk lilies, marigolds, roses, carnations, and many other colorful representations of real flowers and others were the artist clearly felt he could improve a bit upon nature. Vendors around the flower market sold paper cuttings in red and gold, good luck colors traditional for special events all over Asia.

Food moments this day: bun cha and beer at Le Pub, Mango yoghurt smoothy (the menu's spelling) at La Place looking out over the St. Joseph Cathedral plaza, pate banh mi from a street vendor, and finally a lovely Indian dinner at Khazaana, at 1C Tong Dan, not far at all from where we are staying. I recommend the last particularly highly. We try to have South Asian food in our travels wherever it has good reputation. Indian food in the US and UK, for example, are very different, whether it is the Indian population and cuisine represented or the local interpretation of dishes, there is always something new to experience. At Khazaana we had spicy mutton with mushrooms, a spinach and peas dish flavored with fenugreek, and a black lentil curry. For dessert: almond caramel ice cream (imagine halvah as an ice cream), and gulab jamun, a golfball-sized pastry that tasted cornbread with butter in honey. Yum!