Thailand is known for their food and I was happy eating my way through the streets and food courts. Laos also had dishes made with rice or noodles either in soup form or fried. I started noticing in Laos when I had the big bowls of soup, I had reactions. Turns out MSG is used and it wasn't until a few more reactions and seeing a bag of seasonings with MSG written on it that I put 2 and 2 together and realized I can not trust the soup or other dishes.
Hanoi has been the same. Unless the menu says no MSG, I won't order soup and no street vendors have menus so I have been sticking to restaurants now. Yesterday Jenay and I went to a popular restaurant in Hanoi known for taking the concept of serving street food in a clean and pleasant environment. We had glutinous buns with boiled peanuts served with a foul dip, fried tofu and noodles in a sweet chili dip (that dish was good) and fried shrimp "pancakes" but to me the pancake part was missing - it was fried dough with a shrimp head. The dessert of cocnut milk w bananas or black beans was good.
I left not very satisfied. However, we have discovered a goldmine here in terms of a hot bun baked with a brown sugar topping and we LOVE those. The place is called Pappa Roti and we walked over there to get a fix and then took it to a cafe we like with a small balcony to drink black coffee with sweeten condensed milk and to savor the sweet roll. That made up for the meal.
There are some good restaurants and we will stick to them until we leave the country.
