the real ha noi!!!

after four full days of life in ha noi's hazy, deep suburbs, dinner with judith was my first chance to make a break for downtown ha noi! ha noi viewed solely from the suburbs, is a ha noi of wide dusty streets and eastern european (or singaporean, take your pick) style housing blocks, and noticably few restaurants ...

judith, however, acted as the perfect guide, taking me to some of her old haunts, including Quan Com Pho, which was a great place where we started our meal of side dishes with red cabbage salad:



this was guuuuuud, and i was totally oblivious to judith's efforts to "de-naturalized" the salad by claiming that it was, in fact, "not vietnamese!" (Note the glorious cauliflower on top!)




:we also had some of these puffy "globs," which turned out to have tofu inside them (wow!),

they are dunked in a chili soy sauce mixture that is pretty much ubiquitous here, and are very good ...


finally, on her road to blog stardom, judith is seen here:



"scrutinizing" a very very subtle eggplant dish, with a soy sauce based sauce that was perfect with rice. it was a great night of eating in the real ha noi (which i still have not seen in the daylight!)