Style: February 07, 2020

30 STYLE | food
Hang ‘Bernie’
Luu has
returned from
her home
city of Hanoi
with a tasty
pho recipe in
her pocket,
designed
just for
Canterbury
tastebuds.
When Hang ‘Bernie’ Luu thinks of her first memory
of the food of Hanoi, Vietnam, she thinks of her
grandmother and their walk to school.
“I always woke up late, so every day on the way to school
she would get me a banh mi [a long bread roll stuffed with
meat and salad] and I would eat it,” says the 28-year-old.
Lunch rush at Hanoi Alley, Bernie’s stall at Riverside
Market, has just finished. By rights she should be exhausted,
but instead she has the energy of someone who truly loves
what they are doing. She is perched on a stool upstairs, the
only quiet spot we could find in the busy market, and rests
her chin on her hand as her mind travels through time.
Of course, she explains, eating street food for breakfast in
Hanoi is part of the norm. From early morning the streets
begin a beautiful dance of chaos as people and scooters
swarm. Street vendors cook on the footpath – with blue
and red plastic stools waiting for their customers – or from
tiny shops. While Bernie grew up in the city, she is not fond
of its chaos. But she is fond of its food.
She has just returned from Hanoi, where she was on a
quest to find the perfect pho (a popular noodle soup with
meat) for her winter menu.
Armed with the names of 10 shops, as provided by her
friends in Vietnam, Bernie wove her way around the tiny
alleys and thoroughfares of her home city, trying each one.
“I was desperate to find the right pho for Kiwi people,
and I tried so many,” she says.
Finally, she tried one and was taken by its “light, elegant”
flavour. With trepidation, she asked the woman who made
it for the recipe.
“I was so excited when she said, ‘Yeah, of course. Just
don’t open a shop next to me.’”
In Vietnam, she explains, there are few rules around the
stalls. So, when a stall called Pho 24 became hugely popular,
suddenly there were Pho 24s on every street, right next
to each other. But only one is the true stall, and hunting it
down is much like a curious game.
FROM THE STREETS
OF HANOI
A quest to bring Cantabrians a perfect-tasting Vietnamese pho
took Bernie Luu back to Hanoi, where she grew up.
Words Shelley Robinson Photos Charlie Rose Creative