From the archives: My laptop sputtered and died during a six-week excursion through Southeast Asia in 2006, and I never did post an account of this Hanoi market stall.
My surviving notes are sketchy, and language was a barrier, too, but the visuals are appealing now as then. "Bánh" is a Vietnamese catch-all for cake, though that English word is not nearly so all-embracing; "cuốn" means roll. "Nóng" is hot, which might mean fresh-made but also might simply distinguish these from the room-temperature summer rolls so common in New York restaurants. "Kính Mới," I believe, is a place-name.
The rice sheets are made from a lightly fermented batter, which is steamed on a cloth stretched over a pot of boiling water. The batter sets quickly, and the resulting gossamer-thin sheet is rolled onto a wooden dowel, unrolled onto a prep surface, filled with the likes of chopped mushrooms and ground pork, and rolled up once more. Mine were served with a tofu-laden soup and a bowlful of herbal garnishes; the bánh cuốn themselves appear to have been topped with fried onions and pork floss.
Previously, Cho 19-12 — the December 19 Market, commemorating a 1946 battle between the Việt Minh and the French — comprised two block-long covered lanes with entrances at either end. Like many of Hanoi's older markets, however, it has succumbed to urban development. Some of the city's big traditional markets reportedly have been upgraded and incorporated into modern facilities in recent years, but the prospects for a new incarnation of this market, and for its vendors, are unclear.
Bánh Cuốn Nóng Kính Mới
Formerly in Cho 19-12 (the December 19 Market), Hanoi
(From a November 2006 visit)
