My worthless superpower is the ability to step into any city in the world and find a joint that serves barbecued pork ribs. Sapa in Northern Vietnam is not a street food mecca but ribs were there to be unearthed, alongside the usual assortment of chicken parts and other innards prepped for the grill on… Continue reading The Ribs of Sapa
Tag: Vietnam
The Narrowest Karaoke Cafe in Hanoi
There is not much room for dancing but the acoustics kick ass. Hanoi, Vietnam.
Lao Cai Lager
The bugbear of all brewers is consistency. While most of Southeast Asia’s lagers are dull, watery and forgettable, they can’t be faulted on their brewing process. Every beer comes from the factory with a taste that is of invariable quality. For all the poor base ingredients and surplus of rice malt, Asia’s biggest breweries manage… Continue reading Lao Cai Lager
Let’s consume ethnicity!
Each Sunday in Bac Ha in mountainous Sapa, Vietnam, subsistence farmers from the surrounding hills descend on the normally sleepy market to watch tourists perform feats of amateur ethnography and find new ways to trivialise their culture. Local hilltribes get into their Sunday best to hit the market mostly for mod-cons and consumer durables: new… Continue reading Let’s consume ethnicity!
On the beaten path, Halong Bay
At Hang Dau Go (Wooden Stakes Cave) in Halong Bay
Drank in public
There’s two ways to enjoy beer. Firstly, the late and sorely-missed Michael Jackson in his apophthegmatically-titled Beer suggests that for proper close examination, beer is best enjoyed in the privacy of one’s own home, lest the neighbouring drinkers think that he or she is the sort of person that would be pompous enough to sniff… Continue reading Drank in public
Cha Cha Cha
Putting the char into bun cha bun cha is a blunt instrument. For all the subtlety engendered by Vietnamese cuisine, bun cha acts as a counterpoint: blackened rissoles of pork teamed with charred slices of pork belly in a thin fish sauce, vinegar and sugar stock with sides of bun noodles and assorted greens. Depending… Continue reading Cha Cha Cha
Handy establishing shot
Guess where I am. I’ll be running a pool in the comments.