Tropical Storm Nok-Ten Update

Since there's no weather channel here in Vietnam, I've been forced to rely on my own devices to find out what's up with approaching Tropical Storm Nok-Ten.  At various times it's been stronger, weaker, faster, slower, headed more northerly and headed more southerly than it is now.  Insomuch as this is my first real Tropical Storm, I have no idea what to expect.

Hanoi sits inland from the little dent immediately north of the green storm
representing Nok-Ten. 

Rumor has it there may be a hurricane party tonight, so that sounds like the most prudent course of action so far!

In the meantime, it's a quiet afternoon here in Hanoi.  With it raining off and on and the threat of the storm looming, most everyone is hunkering down for the night.  Fortunately, my friend Tuan and his girlfriend were out and invited me to a very cool restaurant in downtown Hanoi called "1946".

It was tucked away in a back alley just off Cua Bac Street in the Ba Dinh neighborhood of Hanoi.  Inside it was cool, rustic French-ish decor with old, black and white pictures of Hanoi and and traditional chipped pottery dishes.

At this point, I've share with you the basics of Vietnamese cooking, so now it's basically variations on the same theme.  Today was no different, but just interesting enough that I thought I'd share.  And did I say "yum!"?

We started with the usual dish of peanuts.  Shortly after, real potato-looking sweet potato fries arrived, as well as the usual dish of garlic fried greens.  The greens we had today were actually chrysanthemum buds.  They were delicious!

While we were waiting for our next dish, we ordered some coconut wine which is basically rice wine cured inside a coconut for a few days. 

Coconut wine served right out of its own coconut

Next up, a serving of friend pork belly with a tabasco-style dipping sauce.  (The menu actually said "pork stomach"; I guess that sounds more sophisticated).  It wasn't bad; chewy and crunchy all at once!

We were then served "chuka" fish which we ate with fish sauce until they brought us springroll fixin's which included rice noodles, pineapple, star fruit, green banana and, best of all, dill.  Man, I don't know what it is about fried fish and dill, but it's amazingly good.  

Of course at this point, I'm stuffed and thinking what a great meal we've had only to learn, yet again, that what we've eaten so far is just the appetizer.  You'd think after five months here I'd learn to dial the appetite back just a little bit on the likely chance that there will be enough food served to feed a Vietnamese Army.

Our main course was hot pot which I've had several times before.  Today's featured pork ribs and Indian taro, which is a root vegetable of some kind.  I'm not sure what else was in the hot pot, but it was fantastic!  Taro has a tangy flavor and looked a lot like hearts of palm with the same graininess.  I also understand that the plant is both toxic before being cooked and can cause your tongue to itch after eating.  At this point, I can safely say I've felt neither it's toxic effects nor has my tongue itched, but I'll let you know if either changes.  Or at least the later. 

We finished off with a nice glass of iced green tea.  And, yes, I was very full.