The ‘Chayfood’ is a vegan restaurant located on the eastern fringe of Hanoi’s Old Quarter, it’s just steps away from the famous Café Giang’s egg coffee on Nguyen Huu Huan Street, and about 5 minutes walking from the red bridge at Ngoc Son Temple. The restaurant is on a big street, so it’s quite easy to find.
Last October, to celebrate the first day of the lunar month – when many Vietnamese eat vegetarian food for religious purposes, we went to Chayfood for a vegan meal. That was our third time eating at Chayfood, other times we had eaten there with our clients.
We showed up at the restaurant without a reservation and met a beautiful waitress behind the door, who told us there was a table to accommodate the 5 of us, then we were arranged to sit on the first floor. Though locating on a busy street, our experience was comfortable and there weren’t any disturbing sounds from the traffic outside.
Chayfood is a boutique 2-floor restaurant (the family that owns the house is living from the third floor up) with simple but cozy interior; the first floor has three table for 4 persons, the second has some 6 tables with a couple of seats on the balcony. So, the eatery may accommodate some 30 guests at a time.
Like the size of the place, it has a small menu, but it features a great variety of food and nut-based drinks. The total dishes on its menu would easily exceed the total seats in the restaurant – ranging from green vegetable salad to mushroom, mock meats, and to house made cashew milks…
We had pumpkin soups, kale salad, some ‘bún riêu chay’ (vegan field crab with rice vermicelli soup), rice with curry, spring rolls, brown rice noodles, pan-fried mushroom pho, and cashew milks. All the dishes were incredibly tasty and bursting with flavors, only the curry was a bit too spicy.
Overall, we enjoyed our meal with vegan food of the most exquisite flavors. The service as excellent, staffs were helful and attentive. The bill was slightly high comparing to other places in the Old Quarter, but we thought it was worthy. We’d love to visit again. We’d recommend it as a nice place to go for Vietnamese vegan dishes with friends, family, or a partner. Do try their famous bun rieu.
For those who don’t know the bun rieu; it’s a traditional northern Vietnamese dish, it consists of rice vermicelli, field crab fat, meat, and fried tofu. The soup features a light sour and salty taste, cooked from crab fat and pounded crab meat along with lot of tomatoes, then topped with scallions and shrimp paste.
Rice vinegar and fried chilly are to be added when eating to enhance the taste and to create a spicy flavor. Bun rieu is often served with raw vegetables, such as lettuce and thinly sliced banana stem. When eating, the taste is a brilliant combination of sour, spicy, salty, and sweet. Hence, it’s extremally popular on streets of Hanoi.
