The small stall of a 73-year-old grandmother on Hoe Nhai Street has attracted diners for 30 years with Hanoi’s traditional crab noodle soup.
Located on the sidewalk of 7 Hoe Nhai Street, Tran Bich Ngoc’s shop (73 years old) for 30 years has only sold one type of traditional Hanoi vermicelli. Not the famous bun thang, bun cha, bun rieu, but vermicelli soup, a “familiar and strange” dish.
“Bun vermicelli soup is a dish I often brought to eat by my grandmother when I was a child. Now Hanoi children don’t know much about this dish, and restaurants don’t have as many as other types of vermicelli,” Ms. Ngoc explained for ordering vermicelli soup. It is a “familiar and strange” dish.
Selling the shop since the age of 30, staying at home for 10 years to take care of her husband who had a stroke, until now, Ms. Ngoc has been with vermicelli soup for more than 30 years.
At 11:30 a.m. every day, Ms. Ngoc sets up a small stall in front of a narrow alley between house numbers 7 and 9 on Hoe Nhai Street. Over the years, Ms. Ngoc’s stall has remained simple with a pot of crab-brick broth cooked on the stove, a pot for brewing vermicelli, a basket of boiled vegetables, crab bricks, dried onions, chili, garlic vinegar and chili on the table. small.
Guest seats are plastic tables and chairs placed on the sidewalk with an area of only about 5 m2, no fan, little parking space. It’s crowded and hot, but many people are willing to wait in line to enjoy a bowl of crab noodle soup at the shop because Ms. Ngoc only sells about 100 bowls a day. “Every day is crowded, after an hour, the goods will be sold out. Later, it will be closed until 5 pm, but usually only on heavy rainy days, people are afraid to go out,” she said.
Crab noodle soup is traditionally made by Mrs. Ngoc with simple ingredients. Diners can choose seasonal vegetables such as morning glory, spinach, collard greens, and celery. Boiled vegetables, cut into bite-sized pieces. Then Mrs. Ngoc picked up vermicelli as big as the tip of a chopstick that had been blanched in boiling water, which was brewing in a pot, and put it in a bowl. Add a spoonful of red-brown crab bricks, a little bit of deep-fried fat and golden fried onions, and finally a ladle of broth.
Ms. Ngoc revealed that the broth is the main factor that makes up the flavor of the crab noodle soup. “Crab juice is pounded, finely filtered, cooked with tomatoes to add areca, seasoning using only pure fish sauce and seasoning,” she said. Instead of the usual lemon and chili sauce, the seasoning served with the crab noodle soup is chili garlic vinegar and homemade chili.
Using chopsticks to turn once, the green color of the vegetables is revealed between the white noodles. The vermicelli is thick, so even if it is brewed in water, it still retains its texture, smooth, soft, and does not break when picked. Tuoi Tre is selected from pork belly, with a layer of lean meat in the middle, which is a favorite dish of many people because “it’s crunchy when eaten or not, when absorbed, it’s flexible, fleshy, and not friable”. The broth has a greasy, sweet crab taste mixed with the mild sour taste of vinegar and the spicy taste of chili. The orange-yellow color of crab bricks, the dark red of chili oil and the golden color of crispy and fragrant fried onions make the bowl of crab noodle soup attractive.
“In the past, the soup only consisted of vermicelli, vegetables and crab sauce. After the economy got better, there was more fat and fried onions,” Ms. Ngoc said. A bowl of crab noodle soup costs 25,000 VND. She also sells extra spring rolls for 10,000 VND each.
Some diners came to the shop because they mistakenly thought that the crab noodle soup was crab noodle soup because the vermicelli had crab bricks on it. “The noodle soup is bigger, the broth is full of water, almost like a mixed dish, not flooded like vermicelli,” Ms. Ngoc distinguishes two types.
The regular customers of the shop are mostly middle and old customers because this is a familiar gift in the past. “Most of the old-timers around here have eaten Mrs. Ngoc’s noodle soup,” said Mrs. Lien, the owner of the roast meat shop next door. Young customers are often new customers in the past few years because they see information about the restaurant being shared on social networks.
Dam Ngoc Hanh (24 years old, Quang Ninh) has known about the restaurant for the past three years because “hearing the strange name, it looks like vermicelli”. According to Hanh, the broth of vermicelli soup is less, so the taste of crab is stronger and thicker than the broth of vermicelli. A bowl of vermicelli soup can fit a woman’s stomach, but it’s a bit less than a man’s. “The price is cheap, next to the famous roast meat shop. Those who feel that the noodle soup is not full can buy more to eat,” Hanh said.
From 5 to 6 a.m., Ms. Ngoc prepared ingredients and did preliminary processing such as pounding, filtering crabs, slicing tomatoes to cook broth, washing and boiling vegetables and onions. She uses two stoves, one for boiling vegetables, for boiling vermicelli, for cooking broth, one for onion and chili.
Ngoc sometimes has difficulties because of old age diseases such as blood pressure, diabetes, herniated disc. “Whenever the day is off, the next day, the customer asks immediately, saying she’s afraid she won’t sell anymore,” said Ms. Ngoc. Guests, because they love her warmth, come back year after year. And because she does not want customers to be disappointed when she loses a familiar shop, she still sells goods even though she is over 70 years old.