Amidst the buzz of Asia’s 50 Best bar and restaurant announcements, cool new concepts have popped up in Hanoi. Some of them might even feature in the 2022 lists. There’s also a Korean gastropub that feels like you’re eating in a banging club. There’s a chic burger bistro. There’s a Bloomsbury gentleman’s club with a dinosaur skeleton suspended above the bar. And more…
Đọc bài viết bằng tiếng Việt
Ambitious. There’s no other way to describe the boom in bars and restaurants in Vietnam’s capital even through the cloud of COVID that’s consuming the city again. We’re trying to take it all in from a table at LABRI, another remarkable new opening. This ‘Oriental Neo Bistro’ by Chef Chi Joon Huyk is an insouciant upstairs restaurant that’s shrugging off the fine-dining label to deliver beautifully presented plates of Asian-accented food made with French techniques that the chef explored in Tokyo. A little over a kilometer away, Habakuk, a side project of T.U.N.G Dining co-founder Quang Dung, is packed reflecting a real bistro boom.
Then there’s Etēsia with its all-counter-seating concept. They opened a brilliant new bar upstairs, just after Tet, called Bo / En. Strangely, it shares a Natural History Museum theme with the nearby Haflington, although they’re inspired by two different wings of the British institution. Bo / En is a lepidopterist’s dream while The Haflington is an ode to the museum’s dinosaur section. Mildang is a banging Korean bar-club with some addictive bites. And then there’s Ngoặm, one of the chicest burger joints we’ve ever been in. And fortunately, to balance out the excess, the team behind Ưu Đàm and Sadhu continue to expand their calming vegetarian empire with Cồ Đàm.
The Haflington
New is intruding on old everywhere you look in Hanoi. But we really feel it when we duck under a washing line full of faded underwear to take the stairs up to The Haflington. This is a cocktail bar that feels like a night at the Natural History Museum. There are rows of glass vitrines, a whiskey tasting counter with adjoining Gentleman’s club-style smoking lounge and upstairs again is an attic with exposed wooden beams and a bar with display cases full of fossils and hardback books. Oh, and there’s a conspicuous 3-meter-long dinosaur skeleton suspended above the bar too.
“This is just the soft opening menu,” Cong Nguyen says apologetically pushing the ‘cocktails & booze’ menu across the bar. He doesn’t need to apologize. Their Ping Pong is as seductive and syrupy as the Aaron Taylor on the stereo. Their Martini is as crisp as the dusk light dancing on the attic beams and across the dinosaur bones.
In short: A night at the (cocktail) museum.
Location: 94 Hàng Mã, Hàng Bồ, Hoàn Kiếm
Mildang
Mildang’s concierge’s mouth is moving…or it seems to be behind the mask (compulsory due to this new COVID scare here in Hanoi). But we can’t hear what she’s saying. It’s not the mask’s fault. It’s the DJ bumping Cardi B at deafening decibel levels. Part cocktail bar, part beer club, part Korean restaurant — or Gastrobar as they call it – Mildang is a buzz…for the ears and the tastebuds. The waitress in hip blue Mildang baseball shirt waves at us and leads us to a table. We order and the food arrives quickly despite it being packed and Friday night. Created in conjunction with our favorite Saigon seafood spot, Ngoc Suong, the stir-fried octopus is nose-snifflingly hot. The volcano kimchi rice — a circular mound of rice circled by a ring of more-ish cheese — the perfectly soothing pairing.
It’s only nine-thirty but already the drinks are kicking in. On the next table, a saucer of makgeolli is accidentally shoved onto the floor. Its owner wipes her leg and moves on to a shot of shochu with barely a blink. Outside another diner who just exited holds herself up unsteadily against the wall. Her friends ignore her. They’re too busy taking more selfies outside the window. Finally, we work out what Mildang’s concierge had been saying: “We’re full!” Thankfully we landed a table after only a short wait at the best place in Hanoi right now to eat, drink…and get wasted.
In short: Eat, drink…and get wasted at this hip Korean gastropub.
Location: 163 Mai Hắc Đế, Lê Đại Hành, Hai Bà Trưng
Ngoặm
Ngoặm is the chic-est burger joint we’ve been to in Vietnam. Inside Ngoặm is white painted brickwork and the kind of darkness and spotlighting you’d find in a fine-dining restaurant. The wall behind the counter is a gently-lit alter to owner Tu’s childhood. Except this is not fine-dining – on the tables are plastic baskets of fries and some juicy-looking burgers. We sit outside Ngoặm to enjoy the soft buzz of Chan Cam after finishing a lazy late morning coffee at Blackbird at the other end of the street.
Tu spent six years in Norway. Now he’s back with this Hanoi Old Town burger joint bistro. “There really wasn’t anywhere to get a good burger,” Tu shakes his head as he drops off our Piggy Blinders Pork, three stuffed skewers of perfectly charred meat with a citrusy kumquat sauce and a sprinkling of green bean power. Tu’s journey sounds like Hoang Tung’s, another successful Hanoi restaurateur who spent his formative chef years in Finland and Europe before opening T.U.N.G Dining. “I think so,” Tu nods, “although we’ve taken different directions since we returned – his was reimagining fine dining, mine was to start with a burger joint.” And what a start.
In short: Burger joints get a chic makeover.
Location: 19 Chân Cầm, Hàng Trống, Hoàn Kiếm
Cồ Đàm
All this eating and drinking is turning us vegetarian. Time to hit Cồ Đàm. Named after the Buddha, Tất-đạt-đa Cồ-đàm, it’s the healing answer to our days of Hanoi excess by the owners of two other famed vegetarian places, Ưu Đàm and Sadhu. Cồ Đàm have created the same beatific surroundings as before, and have doubled down on their commitment to fresh organic ingredients.
As with their previous places, the owners have made the Cồ Đàm venue feel as nourishing as the food: lots of plants, darkness and lights, hanging linens and antiques and ornaments. Cleansing.
In short: Beatific surroundings and organic ingredients.
Location: 68 Trần Hưng Đạo, Hoàn Kiếm
Bo / En • Cocktail Atelier
Etēsia’s closed so we head straight upstairs to botanical Bo / En • Cocktail Atelier. Opened a few months later than Etēsia, it has the same tropical vibes as the all-counter-seating restaurant downstairs as well as sharing its wildly eclectic wine menu. There are glass jars of preserved fruit and fauna. And the people behind Polite & Co have indulged their butterfly and moth obsession with lots of the fantastically fluttering insects filling Bo / En • Cocktail Atelier’s T-shaped counter’s display case besides books dedicated to the study of wild plants and animals. The colorful winged creatures are a nice distraction when conversation lags; balanced primly upon pins, brilliant indigo blue ones, tiny speckled ones, inconspicuous mottled ones. We stop staring and scan Bo / En • Cocktail Atelier’s signatures menu, lots of fruity and aromatic cocktails in keeping with the bar’s theme.
Bo / En • Cocktail Atelier’s head bartender Hoang Nguyen, from Bangkok bars like Backstage, serves us his Subterranean. It’s topped with a sliver of truffle…and it’s as earthy as a face plant into a vegetable patch. Next, we order the Island of Crete. A burnt Kalamata olive bobs in a Martini glass filled with a swirling volcanic mix of bourbon, herbal Roots Diktamo liqueur, peanut butter, cherry wine shrub and rhubarb bitters. We close our eyes for a moment and we’re wandering the monasteries and ruins of the Greek island that inspired this cocktail…or maybe we’re just drunk again after that brief break at Cồ Đàm.
In short: Botanical and boozy…with lots of butterflies.
Location: 1st Floor, 14B Lò Sũ, Hoàn Kiếm
Images courtesy of the venues
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