Cha Ca La Vong
“Cha ca” is a favourite dish of Hanoian. Located in Cha Ca street, Cha Ca La Vong (”cha ca” means grilled fish) is the famous restaurant to many Hanoian as well as visitors from all over the world.
The Origin
The food is supposed to have been created by the Doan family. According to Mrs. Ngo Thi Tinh (a descendant of the 4th generation of the family), the family started the business of selling “cha ca” to earn money to support the family members and to have a meeting place for the Vietnamese people who wanted to fight against French colonialism.
The family food became a speciality of Hanoian people. There’s a statue of La Vong (an ancient Chinese poet and revolutionist) fishing by a stream on display in the restaurant. This is the symbol of a talented and patient man who knows to wait for the right moment to come. The patrons called the restaurant “Cha Ca La Vong”.
Features
Connoiseurs usually wait until it become cool to go to enjoy the taste of Cha ca. The grilled fish must be made from a kind of fresh water fish called hemibagrus because it has very few bones and the flesh is very tasty. If hemibagrus is not available, we could make do with mudfish or snake-head fish. Some connoiseurs may request for a special kind of fish called Anh Vu, which is available only in Viet Tri city at the turning point of the Bach Hac river.
Thin slices of Anh Vu fish are rolled with a kind of herb called “soi” then grilled to give an excellent flavour. To make grilled fish, thin slices of fish have to be mixed with ginger, saffron, fermented cold rice, pepper and fish sauce; then placed on bamboo skewers and grilled on a burning charcoal stove right on the dinning tables.
There's only one fish on offer in Hanoi. In the decadent south you can choose from two varieties, Ca Loc (Snake head fish) or the fattier Ca Tre. I tried the Ca Tre once, but the original and only fish on offer in Hanoi, the Ca Loc, works better. The dish is already a greasefest, so you don't really need a fatty fish clogging up the pipes any further. The fish is fried in a saffron tempered frying pan on a charcoal burner sat upon your table. There's bun (cold vermicelli noodles), unsalted peanuts, chopped yellow chili, chopped spring onion, herb plate (mainly a kind of mint and coriander), mam tom (shrimp paste) and nuoc mam (fish sauce). The waiter brings a bowl of hedgerow consisting of green sections of spring onion and dill he chucks it into the frying pan for a minute of rapid reduction before eating.
Pick and choose what you like from the sidedishes and stick it in your bowl. Lastly, you'll be needing a wee bit of sauce. Fish sauce good, Mam tom better. A spoonful of the purple monster brings Cha Ca to life. OK - I know - it stinks, but try it just once, it really works. It's also worth stirring some sugar and half a lemon into the mam tom to tart it up before letting it loose in your bowl. This is the greasiest dish in the east, but one of the best. Dinner for two with one extra order of Cha Ca (it's that good...) plus a couple of drinks costs 208,000VD. It's slightly cheaper in Hanoi. Cha Ca at 31 Duong Thanh street, Hanoi is an excellent (and better) alternative to the original joint.
