Today I had the opportunity to visit Bun Cha Cham restaurant located in Phu Lo, a place famous for its bun cha dish that most food lovers who love this dish know more or less. In the heart of Hanoi and the Northern provinces, bun cha is always an extremely popular dish. From sidewalk stalls to luxury restaurants, bun cha always appears in different versions but the essence of the dish remains unchanged, which is vermicelli and grilled meat. And today, I decided to change my taste a bit, trying bun cha cha instead of bun cha nuoc.
This restaurant does not have a special name, it is simply Bun Cha Cham, but what impressed me from the moment I entered the restaurant was the cleanliness and tidiness of the space. While many other bun cha restaurants often have a noisy and not very clean space, this restaurant makes me feel comfortable because of its neatness, airiness and super cleanliness (compared to breakfast restaurants). Although the restaurant does not have any special highlights in design, it makes a good impression thanks to the attention to hygiene quality. With a dish like bun cha, especially when there is grilled meat, keeping the space clean is an extremely important factor and this is a big plus for the restaurant.
Regarding food, bun cha is one of the typical dishes of Hanoi cuisine and is also famous in many other places. However, each place has its own variations in the way it is prepared. Bun cha has two main types: bun cha nuoc and bun cha cha dim. This dish is special in that it is not served with broth like bun cha nuoc, but is eaten with fish sauce mixed with a little kohlrabi or thinly sliced carrots, creating a sweet and easy-to-eat flavor.
What impressed me most about the Bun Cha Dim is fish sauce. This is one of the most important spices in Vietnamese cuisine. The restaurant's fish sauce is mixed with a rich flavor with just the right amount of sweet and sour. In particular, this fish sauce is mixed hot, helping the dish retain heat for a long time and when the noodles are dipped in the fish sauce, each strand of noodles absorbs the spices, making each strand delicious.
Grilled meat is an indispensable part of the Bun Cha dish, and at this restaurant, I found the grilled meat to be well prepared. The grilled meat here can be grilled minced meatballs, meatballs rolled in betel leaves, or thinly sliced meat grilled over hot coals. The meat has a very distinctive smoky smell but is also enough to create an attractive aroma. When eaten, each piece of meat is delicious, soaked in grilled spices, not too dry but not too wet, adding flavor to the bowl of noodles. However, in my personal opinion, the grilled meat here is not as good as other restaurants, maybe because the marinade is not strong, but I can accept it with the price and overall quality of the restaurant.
An indispensable element when enjoying bun cha is raw vegetables. This restaurant serves a plate of fresh raw vegetables, including lettuce, herbs, and bean sprouts. These vegetables are washed clean, fresh and eaten with bun cha, which will balance the flavor, creating a feeling of not being full when eating too much meat. When eating bun cha without vegetables, it lacks the characteristic flavor.
Although the restaurant's bun cha is not as special or has a prominent flavor as other famous bun cha restaurants, but with a price of 35,000 VND for a full serving of bun cha, this is a quite reasonable price compared to the general level of bun cha restaurants today. In particular, the fact that the restaurant only serves bun cha also makes the food here simple, easy to access and brings a cozy, close feeling, without complexity or too many dishes to choose from.
So if you want to find clean bun cha cham, you can join here. ^^
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