Bia Hải Xồm: A Beer Garden with a WILD Menu

I don't know if this place is necessarily an institution in Hanoi, but it should be. Most of the restaurants here have a relatively small footprint, but this place is a huge beer garden with one big roof (and it is retractable), no walls, and hundreds of plastic chairs.

The lunch scene, I don't know if there is a culture thing behind it but in my six trips here I didn't see a single woman eating lunch

When I sat down, I saw their menu was HUGE and it surprised the shit out of me with everything I saw on it. It had at least a few things on it that most travelers would find pretty shocking. I tried six items on the menu, and I have them listed below from what I considered "mildest to wildest". (WARNING: The last item on the list, some people may find truly abhorrent. And it ain't veal).

When you sit down, the first thing you do is order a beer (DUH). They do have some stuff in bottles for Mr. Fancy Pants, but the most common order is Bia Hơi. This is fresh beer that isn't pasteurized and is delivered daily to be consumed within 24 hours or so. Instead of kegs, it is served out of a giant metal tub with a hose. The setup looked a little shocking for a beer aficionado like myself, but it was fine. It is pretty weak and nothing to write home about, but it is cold and hits the spot in the Vietnam heat. At only 15,000 VND a glass ($.60), it was a great drink to have with a meal and weak enough that you could have a few glasses with a meal before heading back to work.

The "bartender"

Má đào lợn nướng Grilled pork cheeks

The first item I had was kind of the "control group" for the rest. I wasn't sure what pork cheeks were. My immature brain immediately thought "Ass", but it is what it sounds like. Meat from around the face of the pig. I never knew this was a thing, but apparently it is a semi-common cut of meat. It was fucking delicious and one of the best-tasting things I had in Hanoi, and it came with a sweet/spicy dipping sauce that I wanted to just drink the rest of it when the meat was gone.

Ếch xào sả ớt Frog legs with lemongrass and chili

Next up was frog legs. Another relatively tame dish. I had never had them before, but I know they are kind of a delicacy in some places. I liked them. The skin was good, it had a texture somewhere between fried chicken skin and pork rinds. I hate to sound cliché, but the meat just tasted like chicken. It was fine, but the seasoning is what gave it flavor. I just didn't like that there was so much bone and work involved in getting a bite. If they weren't so bony, I'd eat them again, but since they are, I doubt I'll ever have frog legs again.

Nem thính Spring Rolls

This next dish is a two-parter. I usually get boiled peanuts as my appetizer, but this time I decided to try their spring rolls. This wasn't what I expected, nor did I like it. The meat came in plastic packaging, so I felt like it was kinda cheap, and they brought me a bundle of leaves. The meat tasted fine, I suppose, almost like you'd expect a gas station snack to taste like, but the leaves... I just didn't understand. It tasted exactly like you'd expect a leaf to taste like. I put a chunk of meat on a leaf and wrapped it like a burrito. It did come with some hot sauce and that made it bearable. I tried 3 rolls to say I gave it a fair shot and then just snacked on the meat while I waited for the main course.

Mực trứng nhảy đặc biệt Jumping Egg Squid

Jumping egg squid. I have seen videos of squid that move on the plate when you pour soy sauce on them because of a reaction from the salt to their muscles, and I thought this may be that, but it wasn't. The term "jumping", I believe, was just lost a little in translation, meaning they were fresh.

I have had squid before, so at first it doesn't seem that exotic, but I haven't had these. Usually, it's either little rings of calamari or those tiny squid at Chinese buffets.

These were much bigger and all had huge clumps of roe in them (hence the "egg" part of the name).

Now, I fucked up royally on my first bite. If you look closely at the pic, you will see a little green thing. I didn't really think much of it, thinking it was sauce poured into another sauce that didn't mix. It was wasabi, and with my first dip of squid, it grabbed the entire piece. I started coughing and snorting like crazy. I tried to tough it out, but couldn't, and had to spit it out and start chugging beer. Probably looked like a tourist whose most exotic dish ever eaten was a cheeseburger with feta.

After the burning subsided and my nasal passages were the clearest they had ever been, I tried the rest.

The roe was flavorless. Not good or bad, just had no taste. The squid also had a "skeleton" of sorts that was almost like a piece of plastic that you had to put aside. I generally like squid as an appetizer, and this tasted just like you'd expect, rubbery and ok when dipped in soy—but it just wasn't good as a whole meal.

Ốc hương nướng Grilled Sea Snails

I wasn't sure what to expect with this. While I was waiting for my food, I could see a little sandwich shop across the street and thought, "After this, I am probably going to end up eating there."

I figured it would only be a plate with six or eight snails, and whether I liked them or not, I'd still be hungry, but there was a shitload on the plate.

At first, I didn't care for these. You know how you have a hard callus on your heel? Well, snails seem to have that on their "foot." There was a hard, crunchy piece that I didn't like on each one, and the process for getting them out was kind of a pain in the ass. I chose the grilled version over the steamed version because I figured they would be less slimy, and at first, I thought I had made a mistake.

But as I got used to it, it got easier to scoop them out. The flat, crunchy piece of their foot came off pretty easily by peeling it off, but I got the hang of just separating it with my tongue and spitting it on the ground. And no... I'm not an asshole for doing that. It was expected here. As you can see in the picture, I kept my peanut shells in a bowl that was on the table, but everyone else threw everything on the ground, shells, napkins, lemongrass stalks, even shrimp heads. There was a lady who came around and swept everything up. Think Texas Roadhouse back in the day before everyone became terrified of peanuts.

After getting the hang of it, I liked them ok. They tasted kinda like squid, a little rubbery, but with more flavor. It is a dish I wouldn't seek out to have again, but maybe in a year or two if I ended up in a place with them on the menu, I'd have them again.

One thing to be aware of is where you get these. There is a risk of getting these not cooked properly, and even though I am pretty adventurous, I wouldn't buy these from a small street vendor. I don't recall ever seeing that, though, so it may be a non-issue, but I did see them for sale in many markets. I'm sure the locals know what they are looking for, but I'd recommend not shopping for them and cooking them at your lodging unless you really know what you are doing.

See? Everyone was doing it.

Dê tiềm thuốc bắc Goat Testicles with Chinese Herbs

Who's ready to get weird? Number five on the list was goat testicles. At first I thought the brown things in the picture were them, but those were some kind of nut that tasted a little bit like pumpkin. Now the soup that those nuts came in was banging, as was the dipping sauce. It was out of this world delicious... but they had to throw in some balls.

I was nervous about trying these. I was picturing a testicle exploding in my mouth like biting into an eyeball, but they mostly just tasted like cartilage. I'd love to find this exact soup with chunks of meat—hell, even goat meat, just not their dangly bits.

Now we are about to go to the last item and I'm just going to go ahead and tell you... It's dog, and there is a pic of them roasting it like a pig.

Giving you a little buffer of things to come

This surprised me. I know there is a common stereotype about this, but I always assumed it was mostly myth with a hint of truth, like it was more of a thing done in poor or rural areas. I never expected it to be on a menu.

Now, I absolutely love dogs, but I'm really not squeamish about this type of stuff. As a one-off thing, I'll try anything. I figure, "Here I am earning my junior anthropologist badge," so I may as well. I don't know how this is sourced or what the local/global ethics are behind it. I just figured I'd dive in and try something that I'll never have the opportunity or desire to do again.

There it was roasting right next to a pig

Chả chó Grilled Dog Meat

When I first got it, I tried it with the dipping sauce and it was disgusting. I was almost relieved, it almost had a sick aftertaste to it. I wasn't sure if it was my subconscious causing that, so I tried it again and it was still gross.

I was sitting there wondering how I was going to finish this, and I nibbled another bite without the sauce, then it tasted ok. I didn't even realize the gross flavor was the sauce. The sauce they served it with was mắm tôm, fermented shrimp paste. It was really a bizarre pairing of food, honestly. Like, maybe an accustomed palate would like it with seafood, but I thought it was disgusting.

I think it was surprising for them to see a white person eating dog because they came up and gestured, "What do you think?" I kind of gestured at the bowl of paste and said no, and they brought me out a couple other dipping sauces that were good.

Now for the meat itself, with or without the new dipping sauce, it was just OK. The meat was pretty stringy and the skin was surprisingly thick. Like, half of every bite was skin. It wasn't gross, but perfectly edible. It was one of those dishes that if you didn't know what it was, you'd eat and move on with your day and never think of again. Not gross enough to tell people or complain, but also not good enough to ever search out to have again.

So that's it. Maybe one day I'll find a restaurant that serves the World's Most Dangerous Game...