Follow Hanoi’s Breakfast Trail for a Feast Before Sunrise

I leave my air-conditioned hotel room and step into Hanoi’s soupy humidity. It’s 4am and Duyen Phan is waiting outside, wide awake and ready for breakfast. Her short, straight hair falls just past her ears, and she’s dressed in light activewear — sensible for the heat.

A local chef and culinary teacher, Duyen set up her dawn food tour in 2017, drawing on years of early morning market runs. She joined A Chef’s Tour — which offers food experiences across Asia and Latin America — when it launched in Hanoi two years later.

We start at Dong Xuan Alley, which at this hour is empty. The restaurants are yet to open, though some of the vendors are flicking their gas stoves on to heat big steel vats of broth. “In a few hours, there’ll be a line outside here,” Duyen tells me. “If you want to come back during the day, this one is best for bun cha [grilled pork with rice noodles].” 

At the far end of the alley, the smell of warm blood and offal catches in my throat. A motorbike shoots past with a cow’s head strapped to the seat with pink twine. A massive rib cage, spine and all, lies on the concrete nearby, barely a scrap of meat left on it. Nearby, vendors sort piles of glistening liver on red tarps.  

Duyen points out the buyers moving between tarps and trucks. They run restaurants across Hanoi, she tells me, coming here early to purchase meat before taking it back to their kitchens. “Quick, come look at this,” she says, hurrying me over to a group of women from several generations of the same family who are rolling white balls of glutinous rice dough. They’re making a dessert called banh troi for the Tet Han Thuc (Cold Food Festival), celebrated on the third day of the third lunar month. I try one of the balls and the dough is warm and chewy, with a burst of brown sugar in the middle. It’s sweet against the metallic smell of the street. “This is very rare,” she tells me. “I’m glad you got to see it.”

At the edge of the Old Quarter, Duyen marches us across a major highway, one palm raised as she steps into the traffic and forces scooters to curve around us, close enough that I feel the breeze as they whizz past. I’m glued to her right shoulder. We climb a set of concrete stairs, and below us Hanoi’s breakfast is arriving by the basketful at Long Bien wholesale market. Produce is piled into car boots and onto scooters, sacks filled with pineapples stacked wherever there’s room. The air smells of mint, crushed lemongrass and exhaust fumes.

“Look at these two,” Duyen says, holding up a leaf. “This is kinh gioi (Vietnamese balm). Light, citrusy and a little peppery — good with a rich beef broth.” She points to another. “And rau ngo (rice paddy herb). Slightly bitter, used in fish soups.” The market’s wet section smells cold and salty, like the sea. Baskets slosh with crabs and live fish as Duyen orders our first tasting of the morning, cha muc (fried squid cake). I bite through the hot, crisp outside and find a springy centre with thick, chewy pieces of sweet squid. 

For now, Long Bien is buzzing, but Duyen tells me that the market’s future is under threat. Restrictions on roadside trading are tightening, not just here, but along the streets of the Old Quarter, where vendors set up each morning. There are also plans to move some of the market’s stalls to suburban hubs, with fire and traffic concerns among the cited reasons.

One stallholder, Chi Cua (Sister Crab), tells us her family has traded here for three generations, more than 60 years. “If they force us out, costs go up for everyone. Restaurants have to travel further, prices rise and the people who depend on this daily supply lose their livelihoods.” Move the market, she says, and you change the supply chain that feeds Hanoi. 

First light is creeping into the back alleys when Duyen suddenly pulls up outside a small garage with two lime-green tables and a handful of plastic stools. Inside, an ‘auntie’ peels thin rice sheets from a flat metal surface, filling them with pork and wood-ear mushrooms to make banh cuon. “Here, we can eat here,” says Duyen as though she’s only just decided on this stop. “This is a local spot. Tourists wouldn’t know to stop here.”

I dunk the rolls into the warm, salty-sweet nuoc cham (a dipping sauce made with lime juice, fish sauce and water). They’re so soft and slippery I struggle to pick them up with chopsticks. There’s a nice chew to the rice sheet, with the earthy mushrooms coming through. Duyen adds a squeeze of lime, which provides a little lift.

We’re barely around the corner when Duyen stops at another quan — the Vietnamese word for these small, family-run stalls — where pork patties are sizzling over red-hot briquettes. It’s packed with locals, but we squeeze in and are soon handed a big bowl of bun cha with cold vermicelli and mint served on the side. “Don’t dump everything in,” Duyen instructs. So, I dip a little vermicelli into the sauce, then pick it up with a piece of pork and herbs. Hot pork fat, crunchy pickled papaya and mint is a moreish combination. I polish off the lot.

By 7am, we’re back in the Old Quarter, sitting on plastic stools beside locals and their kids. I’m dunking quay (deep-fried dough stick) into my pho bo, the rich beef broth loaded with spoonfuls of garlic and chilli. “How many more stops?” I squeak, my belt holding on for dear life. There are, I’m told, still four to go. Belt straining, I work my way through xoi thap cam (fried sticky rice), bun moc (soup with vermicelli, meatballs and bamboo shoots) and finally a cold egg coffee.

By 8.30am, the tarps are folded and the crates cleared away. As Hanoi emerges into the daylight and tourists start to line up at restaurants for breakfast, there’s little sign that the street stalls have been here at all.