This post is a continuation from Hoi An: The Sights!
Not only is Hoi An a delight to spend time in because it is attractive, charming and a sanctuary of peacefulness but it is also a great food destination. We were taken on a street food tour, visited markets, spent three hours bike riding in the country to visit vegetable growers, had an extended session at a cooking school and ate at lovely restaurants.
Street food tour
Our Peregrine Travel trip notes read:
In the evening you will be taken on a tour of Hoi An’s impressive culinary scene. Over the course of this staggered dinner you will taste some of the city’s signature dishes in cafes, food stalls, markets and restaurants that are well off the tourist trail.
The tour was led by a local guide and lasted for almost three hours, walking through the streets. She took us to six different locations where we were introduced to the house specialties: to understand them and to experience them. The photos that follow were all taken in situ, as we moved between locations. They give an excellent summary of the extraordinary variety of eating options and some of the street scenes. One of the places we visited that evening was a specialist in banh mi: we treat that as a special topic in our next blog post.
Hoi An Banh Mi Outlet – See next blog post.
Bike tour
The next morning we straddled bikes to ride through the old town and into the countryside. Our guide spoke excellent English and engaged us all. We visited a market on the way, and with us in awe of the range of produce our guide quipped that “Vietnamese people eat anything with four legs, except a table”. We soon found ourselves among the paddy fields and headed towards some traditional villages with their expansive herb gardens. On our return we would visit a grower of bean shoots and learn how the tiny beans are buried in sand in buckets and pulled up a few days later with the freshest of bean shoots to be revealed, then to be washed ready for eating.
Cooking School
The bike ride over, we returned to town. Our trip notes read:
Back in Hoi An, you will then have a hands-on lesson in some classic central Vietnamese dishes at Vietnam’s celebrated Morning Glory Cooking School. For lunch you will feast on your own delicious creations.
The Morning Glory Cooking School is on the first level of a restaurant complex owned by Ms Vy, a Vietnamese celebrity (see last photo below). We spent time touring the food stations on the ground level, including seeing a demonstration of the making of the distinctive local noodles, from rolling the dough and cutting the noodles to smoking them over a fire.
The cooking classes can be given by various instructors. But unbeknown to us, our tour operator had informed the school that a former chef and a food blogger would be in the group: when we were taken upstairs we discovered that our instructor was none other than Ms Vy herself! Instead of two hours, we were there for three. We not only cooked beautiful food but learnt about how she transformed from teenage dropout into an entrepreneur-owner of restaurants and hotels. Highlight dishes of the class were tiny crispy pancakes and the best known Hoi An speciality, cao lau noodles.
Click here for the continuation of our gourmet tour of Vietnam: Banh Mi.