Mien luon, glass noodles and fried eel

Mien luon is the Hanoi breakfast that sounds least appealing in English and turns out to be crisp and light. Glass noodles, fried eel, and a broth made from what is left of the eel.

What is in the bowl?

Three things do the work. Glass noodles, made from canna starch and clear when cooked, hold their bite in hot liquid in a way rice noodles do not. Eel, shredded off the bone and deep-fried, goes on top in a crisp tangle. The broth is simmered from the bones with a little ginger.

On top go fried shallots, spring onion, rau ram and pepper. The bowl is lighter than the rest of the northern breakfast menu and nothing like the heavy ones of the centre, and the noodle soups guide places it among the family.

Wet or dry?

Two versions sit on the same board at the same price. Mien luon nuoc is the soup: noodles and eel in the broth, eaten with a spoon. Mien luon tron is dry, the noodles tossed with the eel and shallots and the broth served alongside in a cup.

Order the dry one first. The eel stays crisp in it, which is the point of the dish, and the broth is still there to drink. In the soup the fried eel softens within a minute or two, and some counters use stewed eel instead for exactly that reason.

Where does the eel come from?

Rice fields, mostly, and that is why the dish belongs to the delta provinces rather than to the coast. Swamp eel lives in the mud of flooded paddies and irrigation ditches, and it was caught by hand or in bamboo traps long before anyone farmed it.

Farms now supply most of what a Hanoi counter uses, at roughly 150,000 to 250,000 dong a kilo wholesale, which is why a bowl with a proper pile of eel on it costs what it does. A kilo yields far less than a kilo once the bones are out, and the bones go into the broth rather than the bin.

Where does the dish belong?

Hanoi cooks the version most visitors meet, from counters in the Old Quarter that have been in the same family since the 1950s. It is a breakfast dish there rather than a lunch one. Nghe An province, and Vinh in particular, claims to have sent it north in the first place.

The Nghe An bowl is soupier and more peppery, and the eel in it is more often stewed than fried. Both are correct, which is the usual answer when two regions share a dish — bun bo Hue and banh canh travel the same way.

Why glass noodles rather than rice?

Because they survive the broth. Canna-starch noodles stay slippery and separate for as long as a bowl takes to eat, where rice noodles go soft and clump. That matters more in a dish whose other element is crisp.

The same noodles turn up in mien ga, made with chicken instead of eel, and inside fried spring rolls. If you have eaten a nem in Hanoi you have already eaten them.

When do you eat it?

Early. Counters open around 6 and the good ones are finished by 10, which is the pattern for almost everything in the breakfast guide. A stall still ladling at two in the afternoon has been holding that eel a long time.

A bowl runs about 40,000 to 60,000 dong, or 1.50 to 2.50 US dollars at 26,000 dong to the dollar. Paying for the extra eel is the one upgrade worth taking. The noodles and broth are the cheap part of what is in front of you.

Is it safe to order?

As safe as anything cooked to order at a busy counter, and the street food guide covers how to pick one. The eel is fried hard and the broth is held at a boil.

The herb plate is the part to think about rather than the eel, as it is with every bowl in Vietnam. On a counter with steady turnover it is not a problem. On an empty one at the wrong hour, skip it and eat the noodles as they are.