Asia 2018: Day #3 Cooking with Rose

One of the best ways to get to know a country is through its food. And if you're going to experience the food then why not learn how to cook some of it. We've taken cooking classes in Indonesia (Bali), Vietnam (Hue) and Japan (Tokyo) previously and enjoyed all of them.

We haven't cooked much of what we've learned so far but our son William was with us in Japan and he's often cooked the Chicken Katsu Don we learned how to make there. Totally blitzed the kitchen in the process but that's another story.

Doesn't matter, the main thing is to do something slightly different, maybe learn the correct way to eat a particular dish, or the correct thickness to slice the vegetables, or what sort of knife to use when. It's all good stuff, and so we decided that this Asian trip would give us the opportunity to have as many cooking classes as we could.

So to Rose Kitchen Hanoi. Number 1 on Tripadvisor with lots of good reviews and the opportunity to visit a local food market with the cooking instructor. Sounded great, so we booked.

Hanoi people seem to be chronically early which explains why our 8:45am pickup was there at the hotel 15 minutes ahead of time when we came down from the room. We had another stop to collect a few others on the way, with the prospect of meeting another couple at the market. First couple collected (two women – one from Sweden and one from Sydney – who were teaching English in Cambodia) we soon discovered the other participants were lost or late or something. Which meant we were down to a more manageable four.

We were dropped at a local market in a small backstreet so hidden you would not have known it was there if you walked within 100 metres of it. Our instructor guided us through the various stalls, answering our questions about the different vegetables on display, how the different types of noodle were made and queries about shopping habits and produce freshness. 

Local market butcher

I had thought we'd then be getting back into the van for a further drive through Hanoi streets to the villa where the cooking class was going to be held. No, just another 100 metres down another lane-way and we were there. The market was about as local as you could get.

The cooking table

Over the next two and a half hours we chopped and sliced and mixed our way through a variety of dishes. And in the last half hour tried, in vain, to eat it all.

Robyn gets stuck in

And now the eating table

An excellent experience that we are hoping to emulate another two times on this trip.

After a longish rest in the afternoon we went for a walk through the Old Quarter in search of the birthplace of the egg coffee (found) and a slow wander down to the Metropole Hotel for a quiet late afternoon drink. Then back to the hotel via the lake.

No dinner, full. Early to bed, exhausted.