Com Ga, Cao Lau & Banh Mi Phuong

The three must-eat-keteers in Hoi An. There are other food to eat of course, just like anywhere in Vietnam we have plenty of food to eat, but I feel like I can live on Com Ga and Cao Lau and especially Com Ga. Yes, I can live on Com Ga everyday. Com Ga and Cao Lau is everywhere in Hoi An, but my most favorite place ever ever, and I think the taste is quite international, is Com Ga Nga, 8 Phan Chau Trinh.

Alright what is Com Ga? Com is Rice and Ga is Chicken. Chicken rice Hoi An style is rice cooked with chicken broth, served with chicken, home made pickles from papaya onion and carrot, home made Hoi An chilli sauce, local laksa leaves, and a special sauce cooked from chicken organs. Oh, I hear some ewwwwww? I bet you won't even know that is chicken organs :))

Spot the chicken organs? I bet you can't. THIS IS SO YUMMY HELP.

Com Ga is served with some chicken broth. The big white dish is chicken sallad - gỏi gà xé. You can order one portion, or one chicken leg, or one chicken breast, or half a chicken, or a whole chicken. It's kind of the same ingredients as Com Ga, but with no rice. It's just amazingly good. I think I'm going to Hoi An only to eat chicken rice.

Cao Lau is the name of the special noodles that is only made in Hoi An, Quang Nam. We have a lot of different shapes and names for noodles, somewhat like Italian pasta. Phở is the white, large, flat noodles, bún is white, round, thin and a little sour, mì is ramen-like, bánh canh is short, jelly and transparent, bánh đa can be large, flat, brown (Hai Phong style) or white, flat, thin (Ha Noi style). So Cao Lau is the name of that noodle they make in Hoi An. Traditionally it is made by water from the Ba Le well in Hoi An. It's also a tourist destination you can visit. And right next to Ba Le well, is the bánh xèo (pan cakes) restaurant Gieng Ba Le, that's an excellent place too. Special point about the restaurant is that you don't even need to order. They see how many people you are and they bring the right amount of food to you. Very passionate waiters, reasonable price, and you get to sit inside the garden of an old antar house. Address: 45/11 Tran Hung Dao, but you can enter it from Phan Chu Trinh too.

OK OK let's come back to Cao Lau. It is served with pork cooked in soy sauce, a lot of vegetables, and some crunchy fried dough. You simply can't find this food anywhere else in the world, so make sure you try it. Com Ga Nga, 8 Phan Chu Trinh serves Cao Lau too.

One more place to try local food: Hoi An market. It's actually very close to Com Ga Nga. You can see in this picture: spring rolls, bánh bột lọc (a jellish cake with shrimp inside), white rose (bông hồng trắng), fresh spring rolls, shrimps. The market is ideal if you want to try everything, because portion is small and cheap. You can try cao lầu, mì Quảng (noodle Quang Nam style), bún bò (noodle with beef), etc.

Banh Mi Phuong is considered a must in Hoi An. They locate very close to Com Ga Nga, at 2B Phan Chu Trinh. You will be impressed by their Banh Mi display. But sometimes the queue just get too long and it seems like you can't reach the Banh Mi, or you don't like crowd. Go to her sister in the Hoi An market then! Not many people know about the sister, but from Phan Chu Trinh, walk down to the Hoi An market and see the well and the central gate of the market, turn left to the left wing of the market, and after fruits ladies, you will find a small banh mi stall that is named Banh Mi Phuong too. They have like a simplified version of the menu. But you have your own table and you don't have to queue! I heard that the mini Banh Mi Phuong in Hoi An market is for local people.

Look at those Banh Mi

If you missed dinner and want to grab something at night, you can go to Cao Lau Hai Toan, 27 Phan Chu Trinh. He serves night noodles, as romantic as a Wong Kar Wai movie. But he can finish early too, last time we went to him at 2 am and he was already cleaning up.

If you want to eat duck fetus egg (trứng vịt lộn), they do sell it in the afternoon - evening in Hoi An market. It looks disgusting to people who have never seen it, but to me it's more than normal.

See all the feather of the duck fetus? ha-ha-ha

Some other food you can try:

- Cari Lien, 95 Tran Cao Van. A kind of beef curry cooked with carrots, served with noodles or banh mi bread. It is a breakfast place, make sure you are there sooner than 8 am.

- Omelette breakfast Đông: 110 Tran Cao Van. Omelette eggs, a thin stripe of beef, a piece of pork paste, meat balls, very lovely breakfast. You can order beef curry too.

- Bun ba Nghia, alley 62 Phan Chu Trinh: 6.00-9.00 and 15.00-18.00

Here they have noodle soups with beef or pork of your choice. Meat are slow cooked in a beautiful spicy broth with a lot of lemongrass and chilli. It's very spicy it burnt my lips. But it was very big portion of meat for cheap price 30,000-50,000VND.

If you don't speak the language and you hesitate to go to these places, well at leat go to Com Ga Nga and Gieng Ba Le restaurant because they are recommended by many tourists!