Chả Cá Lã Vọng

Chả cá Lã Vọng is Hanoi's most famous fish dish, and one of the rare Vietnamese recipes with a firmly documented birthplace. The Doãn family began serving it around 1871 from their house on Hàng Sơn Street in the Old Quarter, where in the early days the room doubled as a quiet meeting point for nationalists resisting French rule. A small statue of Lã Vọng, the patient fishing sage of legend, stood by the door, and regulars named the dish after it. The street was later renamed Chả Cá, one of the very few in Vietnam named for a single food, and the original house still serves this one dish alone.

Firm river catfish (cá lăng) is marinated in pounded fresh turmeric, galangal, fermented rice and shrimp paste until it glows gold, grilled once over charcoal, then brought to the table and fried a second time in a hot pan, where a great handful of dill and spring onion is dropped in to wilt in the fragrant oil. Each diner builds a bowl of rice vermicelli with the fish, herbs, crushed roasted peanuts and a spoonful of pungent mắm tôm.