We wanted some Bánh Mì, and someone on our cruise on Halong Bay recommended us to try Café Kinh Đô.  They said they got some before they boarded the cruise.  So we decided to give it a try.  We were very confused trying to walk there.  We couldn’t really find it, as this small section of Hàng Bông was on the other side of a big road.  We thought that Hàng Bông had ended, but it didn’t.

So we finally found it, and it looked very simple.  Not like a Bánh Mì joint at all.  There were pastries and a simple menu.

But we struggled a little bit because we were unsure what the menu was and the young girl serving us was not able to speak English.  So, the auntie who owns the place came out.  Her english was not much better, but I was able to get through some things with a limited amount of French.

Here is some of the menu.

We wanted Bánh Mì, so we went for it on the menu.  And added a fried egg to it, and we got the Pate version.  Or so we thought that’s what we ordered.

Here’s what came.

We got a Fried Egg and a fried piece of Pâté. We also got a baguette with it.  For me, when I think of Bánh Mì, I think of meat, pate, and some veggies.  Perhaps adding an egg will do too.  So you know what?  We made our own.

After this, it was a pretty good tasting sandwich!  Not what we had in mind, but it will do.

We also decided to try a second dish, so we went with Bánh Mì Sốt Vang.  I had no idea what it was, I thought it was bánh mì, but the lady said it was a soup.  So why not?  Try la.

This is what we got.

Basically a beef soup.  Come to find out later that this is a very traditional dish in Hanoi, but I had no clue.

The best part was the crispiness of the baguette.  My goodness, what a great piece of bread.  Crispy crust, soft dough inside, yummy!

The beef soup was pretty tasty too, it was real good, not a bad choice at all.

So not exactly what we thought it was going to be, but good enough.

This place was made famous because Catherine Deneuve came here and raved about the homemade yogurt.  Wish I had known that before, I would have tried it.  And it wasn’t really advertised so much, so one would never have known.

But, this was certainly not the bánh mì we were expecting.  We came to find out that right next door, there was a great bánh mì place!  But more on that in the next blog entry.