From simple vegetarian snack to gymnastic meat-stuffed meal, banh cuon has come a long way.
During
the 1940s, Vu Bang began his days by watching the silhouettes of women in long
brown blouses flow out into the breaking dawn.
“Their
merchandise consisted of next to nothing: a basket perched on their heads,
covered by a bamboo screen […] a bottle of fish sauce, a jug of vinegar, a cup
of chili, a few plates and around ten chopsticks,” Bang wrote in his book, Hanoi Delicacies.
Each
basket contained translucent sheets of uncut rice noodles packed between
emerald banana leaves—the stuff of the town’s daily banh cuon.
For
generations, the dish has provided a restorative breakfast to working stiffs
and intellectuals, while offering a reliable midnight belly-warmer to drunks,
junkies and gamblers—Bang had one or all of these things at various points in
his life.
Even
when Hanoi was home to less than a half million souls, one had to stand in line
for the very best banh cuon.
“Fancy
diners, beware.” Vu Bang warned in a description of his favorite spot, a table
and four stools. “You must be patient. It’s not possible to be served right
away.”
While
Bang offered a long list of variations on the dish, he favored a cold
vegetarian preparation that consisted simply of “thin sheets dabbed with oily
shallots.” Banh Cuon Thanh Tri took
its name from the place where Bang exclusively ate them.
Like
so many things, the village contours have disappeared in modern Hanoi’s urban
sprawl.
During
Operation Léa—the brutal French bombardment of urban revolutionary strongholds
in 1947—Bang sat just a dozen kilometers outside Hanoi, staring longingly in
the direction of Thanh Tri Village.
He
spent his mornings hiking to surrounding markets to sample random variations on
the dish, hoping they might satisfy his cravings.
They
didn't.
Outside
Thanh Tri, Vu Bang found banh cuon
either too thick, too greasy or (puzzlingly) “too fragrant.”
Nearly
sixty years later, we found a Thanh Tri native selling the delicacy in an alley
off Nguyen Che Nghia, just south of the Old Quarter.
One
can imagine Bang stepping skeptically in line behind the customers patiently
waiting for their favorite cook to arrive.
Keeping Bang’s
favorite alive
At
3 p.m., a few hungry punters loitered around a closed steel door slung with a bun-pho signboard.
Fifteen
minutes later, Tuyet puttered up on her motorbike in flower-print pajamas and
yanked the steel doors open in a single swipe.
As
she began unpacking heaps her basket, each member of the queue drew a stool
from a pile and formed a semi-circle around her.
Tuyet and her basket of tender, shiny rolls.
Idle
cruller vendors stared on, green with subtle envy, as Tuyet unpacked the tender
noodles that once melted Vu Bang’s heart.
"The
moment one sees the cook's hands split her pile and absently roll each sheet
onto a humble dish, he falls instantly in love with those soft, shiny rolls.
One wants to drop his chopsticks, pick up a piece and touch it to his
lips—gently, as though taking his first kiss."
Today’s
crowd grew just as excited, if somewhat less sentimental.
“Five
big piles for my kids.”
“One
more plate please.”
“Three
kilos here.”
The
final order cleared half of Tuyet's inventory.
“Serve
the hungry ones first,” said Nhung who regularly dined on the banh cuon Tuyet’s
served going back to before 1968. “My husband can wait, but save me a kilo.”
Customers
fidgeted on their stools. Some opted to kill time by volunteering for the
cause: cutting limes, bagging fish sauce and wrapping takeaway orders for those
ahead of them.
All
they wanted were the noodles Bang warned “slip down the throat before they
touch the lips.”
Banh cuon Thanh Tri,
sometimes spiced with waterbugs. A steamy competition
Just
before Bang was sent down to Saigon (a mission that would consume the rest of
his life) he began to notice the introduction of grilled pork belly into banh
cuon—an addition he found strange.
Suddenly,
his delicate rice sheets were being stuffed with chopped pork, wood-ear
mushroom and, later, chicken, prawn and crumbled sausage.
Bang
dismissed these stuffed rolls as “reformed banh cuon” a greasy if somewhat
appealing perversion. Eventually, the warm stretched sheets won his grudging
approval.
Sitting
at a makeshift stall with his warm belly, Bang amusedly wondered, “Have those
government officials ever had the chance to relish this dish?”
Today,
banh cuon cooks compete to prepare
the thinnest possible noodles capable of holding the most amount of meat.
Critical customers stand at their elbow, watching them work over a cloth
stretched above a pot of boiling water.
“I’ve
seen others break the rice wrap,” one customer crowed to Van, owner of a
43-year-old stall on 14 Hang Ga Street. “That's why I always end up visiting
yours.”
With
that, Van tossed an egg onto a sheet steaming before her and folded it up
without breaking the yolk.
The
67-year-old cook says she sacrificed a healthy spine and most of her good years
mastering the technique. Her most trusted apprentice spent five years watching
her in action before she was actually allowed to cook for customers.
The test of time
Decades
after Bang’s father brought him his first banh
cuon, the writer questioned whether the food had lost its flavor or he had.
Most
of his favorite cooks had died and his appetite for the dish had waned—he could
no longer eat the steamed flat noodles by the basket-load.
Some
banh cuon appear to have survived the
ravages of time.
After
two decades, regulars at 72 Hang Bo street still happily stand in the Old
Quarter’s mad rush hour traffic, patiently awaiting a tiny table.
Dressed
in a butcher's apron and backward baseball cap, An, the powerful force behind Banh Cuon Quang An fills her tender
rolls with chicken or pork-filled from 5-9 p.m. every day.
The
secret here is a cup of rich broth.
Celebrity
Chef Bobby Chinn claimed he spent eight years eating between An’s narrow orange
walls lobbying for her recipe.
“You
mix bone broth with fish sauce and that’s it,” she told VnExpress International
with a shrug.
Between
cooking and making change, An advised first-timers to add fresh lime and chili
to their broth before dumping it over a plate of four slender rolls.
“Some
of the five-star hotels have asked her to make it for them so they can sell
them on their buffet counters,” Chinn said. “But she simply prefers die-hard
fans that wait until she is free to cook for them.”
By
Quynh Trang/VnExpress