street eating

My rear-end tingled with pinned and needled numbness as I crouched on the teeny tiny red plastic stool. Later that week I would be introduced to the man allegedly responsible for the introduction of this ubiquitous seating to Hanoi, but for now, my attention was being monopolised by the steaming bowl of soup before me. I followed my father's lead, plunging the tooth-chewed communal chopsticks into the mystery broth and holding them beneath the surface.

“The soup's just off the boil so I figure this will kill off any germs,” Dad explained.
The steam delivered the fermented sweet and sour smell of the country's notorious fish sauce to my nostrils where it intermingled with the head-tickling exoticness of anise and coriander. The soup's fragrant contents layered upon the already established street odours, creating a kind of evocative olfactory decoupage.

It was time to eat.

After a brief moment contemplating the identity of the meat, I commenced with a hearty slurp of broth and sucked down a few slippery white noodles for good measure. Oh yes. It was good.

I was 17. It was my first time eating street food in a foreign country. And I was hooked.

Since losing my street-eating virginity way back then, upon arriving in any given destination I will immediately head to the streets, gesture convincingly at whatever mysterious concoction excites my curiosity, plonk myself down next to some unsuspecting local and plug into the community in a way not possible on a guided tour.

While eating the cheapest, and arguably, the best food available, you are also served a tantalising slice of local reality; pretension-free exchanges and simple but important rituals. It helps that my adventurous approach to food is accompanied by guts of steel and a (touch-wood) never-get-sick confidence. I guess one day my reckless hubris will render me powerless and clutching at a porcelain bowl. But until then, and, in all likelihood, afterwards as well, the call of the street resounds.