Located at the corner of the same street as Cafe Giang is Xoi Yen, one of Hanoians’ favourite sticky rice restaurants. Xôi is basically a sweet or savoury glutinous rice dish that comes with various toppings of your choice. It is eaten as a main dish and is a popular breakfast item in Hanoi.
Xoi Yen
35B Nguyen Huu Huan
Hoan Kiem, Hanoi
Vietnam
Tel: +84 4 3926 3427
Opening hours: 5.00am to 1.00am daily
As Xoi Yen opens earlier and closes later than most other restaurants in the Old Quarter, you’d always have this option available for an early breakfast or late night supper.
Ground level is the open kitchen where the ladies are busy preparing ingredients and assembling customers’ orders of xoi so head upstairs and grab a seat.
This is the Vietnamese menu placed on every table. An English menu is also available – just need to request for it from any of the staff.
Hubby ordered Sticky Rice with Fried Shallots & Pork Lard and added on a piece of Roasted Cinnamon Pork and Egg (28,000 VND). Beneath that layer of mashed yellow mung beans was glutinous rice that was flavoured with pork fat – really delicious! Loved the fried shallots that added extra aroma and crunch.
The cinnamon pork was like a thick chunk of ham scented with cinnamon flavour. And not forgetting that fried hard-boiled egg too – what could go wrong with it?
The whole combination of ingredients was a match made in heaven. This was just like a deconstructed bak chang (glutinous rice dumpling). If not for the pork lard, this would be something I wouldn’t mind having for breakfast regularly. The portion wasn’t huge as the dish was quite small but it was very filling.
As for me, I had Sticky Rice with Corn topped with Chicken & Egg (46,000 VND). The glutinous rice had white corn kernels in it that gave a nice, juicy crunch but as it didn’t have the same pork fat flavour like the one above, overall it was much milder in taste. The chicken was stir fried with mushrooms and black fungus and was really tender and flavoursome.
Next time I would go for Sticky Rice with Fried Shallots & Pork Lard topped with Chicken & Egg. 😉
This meal only cost us 74,000 VND (SGD4.60). Cheap, good and very satisfying! ?