Food in Hoi An

Food in Hoi An was fantastic.  A lot of local specialties, all based around Chinese style dishes.  Fried Wontons filled with pork or shrimp, topped with a sweet tomato chutney thing.  Steamed rice flour dumplings filled with a shrimp mixture (Called White Rose), and a flat chewy noodle dish with fried wontons and pork slices... Cao Lau.

I was sitting down to Pho for breakfast at a place by the hotel, when a Vietnamese Lady sat down across from me and started making conversation (Many people in Hoi An speak English well, as you need to for the sake of selling lots of clothes/trinkets to the multitude of tourists that arrive).  She was an owner of one of the tailor shops, and when I told her I was a chef, and showed her the list of Hoi An specialties that the Hotel clerk told me to try, she said that the best Cao Lau was at a place 5 minutes away by motorbike, and if I went to her store later, she would take me.

So I did.

Around lunchtime, I rolled up to her store, and when she saw me, she was a bit surprised.  "You want to go get Cao Lau?"  So she drove me on her motorbike to a restaurant, and I got some to go.  She wouldn't take any food, payment, and she wasn't even pushy about looking in her store.  She had been a tailor for 12 years, and had owned her own store for about 5 of them.  And, her parents-in-law are from Hue, so she wrote me a list of things I needed to try when I came up to Hue (where I am now..).

For all the people that ask for money/sell trinkets/try and wheedle money out of you in any way possible, there are a few generous souls that just want to help and be friendly, and the trick of traveling is finding those people...