Hoi An Food

When you go out to eat in Hoi An you are most likley to end up in one of the many western cafès or restaurants, and the food is splendid. You can either choose the safe way, and eat western food like pizza or pasta, or you can try some vietnamese food. In most restaurants in Hoi An you also have a own section of the menu dedicated to local dishes.

On of the local dishes that i find very interesting is the Cao Lao. First of al it tastes fantastic. It is a kind of noodle dish with som slices of pork, bean sprouts and gravy. But what is more interesting is the history of Cao Lao. Hoi An is a mixed city, a melting pot of chinese, vietnamese and japanese culture, and the big question is; where did the dish Cao Lao come from. There are many different theorys about the origins concerning the symbolism of the gravy, the meat and how it is made. I wil not try to give an answer to this because it wil be impossible for me to know. One of our lecturer dedicated a big portion of his study in vietnamese food to answer this question, and he never found a clear one.

Further on what makes Cao Lao so interesting is that almost none local people eat it. Every resturant or cafè have menues with local dishes or local specialities. So how is it that the number one local dish which is a symbol of Hoi An food, is not eaten by the locals? Instead locals eat Mi Quang. This is also a noodle dish, but with cheaper noodles, more gravy and som shrimp and eggs added to the pork. So if you want to eat the real local dish, you should try the Mi Quang, but i prefer the Cao Lao.

Another local speciality is the White Rose. This is of course not the real name of the dish, but some tourists thought it looked lika a white rose, and so it was named. The white rose looks very much like a smal gellyfish, but it isn't. It is a shrimp or sqid wrapped in something that only can be described as rice-pasta. It is very tasty, especially if you dip it in soya sauce.

The most dramatic food related experience I have had so far is eating snake. Our field manager decided to take the few boys here out to dinner and beer, no gals allowed. Snake is considered a extreamly expensive an luxurius food here, so don't expect it to bee on every menu. The resturant was situated on the riverside with green mambu and all kinds of ants everywhere. After some time the resturant owner came out with a live snake. It was wiggeld around and had his gap wide open, I guess I would behave like this if I knew tha I was the main dish. The owner strapped it to a tree and brutaly sliced it open with a siccor ( Why noty a knife you might be asking) and tapped the blood into a glass.

The blood and the gaul from the snake are mixed seperately with local spirits to make a rather strange drink. Unfortanly he was not able to retrive the gaul-bladder from the snake before it bursted, so we got the turtle gaul. The first dish was the snake skin, deep fried. Hadn't it been for the shells or the snake pattern, it could just as wel have been bacon or chicken-skin. It was considered to bee a kind of beer snack, so the second dish came quickly.

The second dish was spring rolls filled with snake. It was delicius. It didn't taste like chicken, or pork...but somewhere in between. Then came the third snake dish.

It was snake wraped in lilly leafs with a hint of mint, also delicius. And then, when i thought the dinner was finish, the owner fished up a turtle from his little pool and slaughtered it. Poor turtle you might say, buth it made a fine vodka-blood/gaul shot. The dish altough was rather bad. It was boiled turtle legs and deep fried turtle legs, where did all the turtle meat go?!

We finished up the legs, beer and blood and took aim for one of the nightclubs in Hoi An, Tam Tam. There I drank some beer.