Rediscovering Vietnamese cuisine in a converted French villa proves to be a stimulating and tasty experience. Nguyễn Mỹ Hà reports.

When you’ve lived in your hometown for a long time and nothing local can impress you any more, a surprise visit from a friend from afar may change your mindset.

It happened to me recently when we took our friend from the UK out for a Vietnamese dining experience.

We chose 81.QT, a Vietnamese restaurant located at the same number on Quán Thánh Street. It’s a French villa that’s been converted into a restaurant. We used to go there many years ago for mini-concerts held in the courtyard, but it has changed hands several times since then and now serves Vietnamese delicacies.

81.QT can sit about 100 diners, but the floor plan is divided into smaller rooms and spaces instead of one big dining hall like many new restaurants in urban centres.

The elegance of a French villa naturally gives diners a sense of privacy, even in the big hall downstairs. Diners can contemplate great photographs hanging on the walls and try the wine, bottles of which are lined up in racks around the house.

We wanted to try ngó xuân, a special vegetable in season at this time of year, but they had run out, so we settled for boiled vegetable dipped in hard-boiled eggs (VNĐ109,000). The greens cut into big chunks served perfectly well as an appetizer.

Next we ordered chả ốc (VNĐ180,000), a new Hà Nội delicacy that had become a fixture in most new dining venues in town. Created by Ms Hằng of Hà Nội’s famed bún ốc shop on Phù Đổng Thiên Vương Street, her baked escargot cakes are first dipped in chili sauce. Our friend had not tried this dish before, and said he liked it very much thanks to the tangy shallots that give the dish its main flavour.

“What did people in London think about the Trump-Kim summit in Hà Nội,” we asked our friend thinking we would like to know more about people’s opinions beyond the newspaper headlines and TV coverage about the summit that took Hà Nội by storm just last week.  

“What about that summit? All we care about now is Brexit!” Prior to our conversation, the UK-EU talks had not produced any results after hours of negotiations. They were scheduled to continue the following day.

We were startled for half a second, realising that while what happened here made headlines around the world, most people care more about practical things that directly affect them.

Next we ordered a special pigeon dish: stir-fried chopped pigeon with Vietnamese seeded white pickled egg-plants (VNĐ250,000). The waitress suggested the dish to us, which we were dubious about trying. She said it was a traditional Vietnamese dish and one of the restaurant’s signature plates.