Handpicked experience · Hanoi
Hanoi, Vietnam
Northern Vietnamese cooking is the least sweet in the country, the dipping sauce is the real lesson, and your first rice paper roll will fall apart.
One of the best ways to learn about a new country and its culture is to explore local recipes, and there’s no better way to become well-versed with a new cuisine than to make it yourself.
Start the experience with a visit to a local market to pick up only the freshest of ingredients, learn how to bargain like natives.
Then, local chef will introduce some famous ingredients that familiar with Vietnamese family and guide you to cook some of Vietnam's most iconic delicacies.
Besides Hanoi traditional food, you will be learnt Southern Vietnam food with Southern Beef noodles.
Please refer the Hanoi traditional menu: Hanoi traditional beef noodle soup, Hanoi traditional barbecued pork noodle, Hanoi traditional fried spring roll, Papaya salad, Hanoi famous egg coffee,...
Of course after the hard-working class, you will taste your culinary masterpieces and get a complimentary cookbook and certificate after class.
A chef correcting your hands rather than demonstrating at you
A regional style most visitors never identify as distinct
One sauce that transfers to everything you cook later
A technique that visibly improves within the session
A meal at the end that you are responsible for
Three hours in a central Hanoi kitchen with a local chef: knife work, rolling, stovetop technique, three or four Vietnamese dishes prepared and then eaten, with recipes to take away.
Vietnamese food is not one cuisine, and Hanoi sits at the austere end of it. Northern cooking uses very little sugar, keeps chilli restrained and builds flavour from salt, sourness and fermented depth instead — which is why a dish you have eaten in Saigon or abroad may taste noticeably plainer here, and why that is the point rather than a failing.
The south grows coconut and palm sugar and cooks accordingly; the centre leans hot and intensely seasoned. The north had colder winters, shorter growing seasons and a long habit of frugality, and its food still reflects that. Learning to cook here means learning restraint before you learn abundance.
If you take one thing home it should be nước chấm. Fish sauce, water, sugar, lime and garlic, adjusted by taste rather than by measurement, is the seasoning that sits beside a huge proportion of Vietnamese food, and every household has its own ratio.
Fish sauce itself is worth understanding while you are here. It is anchovies and salt layered in wooden barrels and left to ferment for a year or more, and the liquid drawn off first is the most prized and the most expensive. That is why two bottles that look identical taste nothing alike, and why a chef will be particular about which one goes into the bowl.
Rice paper is dried on bamboo mats in the sun, which is where the crosshatch pattern on each sheet comes from — it is the imprint of the mat.
The mistake almost everyone makes is over-soaking. The sheet keeps softening for several seconds after it leaves the water, so the paper that felt right in the bowl will be slack and tearing by the time you have filled it. Dip briefly, lay it down while it still feels firm, and let it finish softening on the board. Your third roll will be markedly better than your first, and that is the whole point of doing it with someone watching.
Come hungry rather than having eaten, since the class ends with a full meal you have cooked. Tell the studio in advance about allergies and anything you do not eat, as the menu is fixed and substitutions need arranging.
Transport to the studio is not part of the booking. Tie back long hair, wear something you do not mind splashing, and expect to be on your feet for most of the three hours.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
No. Hanoi sits at the austere end — very little sugar, restrained chilli, flavour built from salt, sourness and fermented depth rather than sweetness.
Colder winters, shorter growing seasons and a long habit of frugality. The south grows coconut and palm sugar and cooks accordingly; the centre leans hot and intensely seasoned.
Balance by tasting. The ratio shifts with the limes you have and the sauce you opened, so a cook who measures it will get it wrong the moment either changes.
They are anchovies and salt fermented in wooden barrels for a year or more, and the liquid drawn off first is the most prized. Two identical-looking bottles can taste nothing alike.
Impatience, mostly. The sheet feels stiff in the water and people leave it there until it feels ready, which is already several seconds too long.
Dip briefly, lay it down while it still feels firm, and let it finish softening on the board. The third roll is usually markedly better than the first.
The imprint of the bamboo mat it was dried on in the sun.
No — the class ends with a full meal you have cooked. Tell the studio about allergies in advance, since the menu is fixed and substitutions need arranging.