At the start of November Emma and I finally got ourselves to Vietnam. I’d had a long burning desire to go there predominantly for the street food, which I attacked with everything I had. After a ball breaking journey, including sleeping on the floor of Heathrow terminal five, a five hour layover in Paris and the remaining eleven sat next to a vietnamese gentleman who coughed, hocked and fidgeted the whole bloody way. We were both positively exhausted.

Pho bo is a dish I am sure you have all heard of, a staple in Vietnam that is made in its simpler, most basic way here in Hanoi. I think I had this beef noodle soup for breakfast almost everyday whilst we were here hitting up several different vendors. As people will no doubt tell you, if there’s a shit load of locals chowing down at a street food stand, that’s where the good stuff is. Naturally, I found my favourite, but rather than sharing with you exactly which one it is, I suggest you find your own. It really is difficult to have ‘bad’ pho on the kerbside. In my experience at least. One thing I would mention though, is to go easy on the fresh cut chillies you add to your pho. I massively over-did it on my first bowl, which was painful, but in a pleasing way. Kind of like edible S&M. If you’re into that kind of thing. I know I am.

One of my other stand out impromtu dinners I had; I averaged about three dinners per night, was a slab of barbecued pork belly on a banana leaf. Set up like fly-by-night butcher shops, these two women hacked down beautiful steamy hot pork bellies for the madding crowds of unrelenting Vietnamese wives. Within about ten minutes they were completely out of stock; about five whole pork bellies.

Bun cha, is a dish from Hanoi of barbecued pork patties and slices of marinated pork in a broth rich with fish sauce and a plate of rice noodles on the side. Nem; Vietnamese spring rolls, usually accompany the dish and you transport clumps of rice noodles into your broth and devour alongside the pork and pork patties. I found Bun cha vendors to be quite hit and miss. I would say you definitely need to venture out to the fringes of the Old Quarter and often far beyond to get the best. Bun cha is a lunch time dish and from 11am you can see women crouching down over hot coals. Plumes of smoke fill the street and the smell is just completely unavoidable. After several days and many bowls of Bun cha, I finally found my favourite. Just thinking about it now makes me want to take a bath in the stuff.

Oliver Rockwell not only has one hell of a cool name, but he is one of the best photographers around and I absolutely love his style. His photos are incredible and can trigger off wanderlust in a deep way. Oliver lives in Beijing and has travelled pretty extensively, particularly in Vietnam. The recommendations he had given me a couple years ago for food in Beijing had been phenomenal, and when an email came in from Oliver with some Hanoi street food suggestions, I paid close attention.

Ché, is like a cold rice pudding and the combinations you can have with it are endless. I had been advised to try ché with violet paste which adds its own unique flavour to the sweet, iced rice pudding with a wide fruity, almost blueberry flavour. This was one of my favourite things I had whilst in Hanoi. Thanks for the heads up Oliver.

I could go on for hours about all the different foods we had. Hot banana corn pancakes, Bun bo nam bo, the horse liver I ate; which was actually damn good, barbecued chicken omelette with a split chicken skull, meat cooked on lemongrass skewers and the hundreds of iced coffees I consumed. Like pho, there is another Vietnamese staple that seems to be enjoying world wide recognition of late. The bahn mi. The crusty baguette style rolls that fill street corners in the afternoons are busted open and filled with a whole myriad of fillings. I love them.

My favourite was pate, chilli paste, stir fried beef, a pickled slaw with carrot and daikon, spring onions and cooked egg; kind of like a mini omellette. The result is rustic as hell and without sounding a little obvious, better than any variation I’ve had from London to San Francisco. Bahn Mi became a bit of a beer sponge for me whilst in Hanoi, it’s difficult when beer is so damn cheap and even more so when bai hoi, a fresh light lager style beer which is kegged and sold on the street for as little as 5,000VND – about 20p! I had six meals on our last day and there was still so many dishes I didn’t get to try. All I’ll say is go prepared, go hungry.