Vietnam TravelTravel Special FeaturesHanoi - The Ancient CapitalLac Viet Restaurant - Traditional Tastes

Lac Viet Restaurant - Traditional Tastes

In a city blessed with a great mix of cuisines Marie Kane discovers a restaurant that blends the modern and the traditional to create a memorable dining experience.

One of the great pleasures of spending time in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, is sampling its tantalizing food. Founded 1,000 years ago, Hanoi boasts a number of unique local specialties that, mixing Chinese, French and Vietnamese flavors, form delicious evidence of the city's colorful history.

While Hanoians are extremely proud of their city's culinary heritage, many local specialties are unavailable in restaurants. Some of the tastiest dishes have long been sold exclusively by the street vendors, who either carry their offerings through the streets on bamboo shoulder poles or set up stalls on the sidewalks.

Lac Viet, an eatery on Hanoi's charming Thi Sach Street, seeks to fill this gap in the market by offering traditional local fare in a classy, well-designed villa. Having spent a decade working in food and beverages at Hanoi’s Sofitel Metropole and Hilton hotels, Lac Viet's young owner Thai Ngoc Son, is well qualified to bring two phrases - "home cooking" and "international standard" together. A graduate of Hanoi's School of Literature, Son called on an of his artistic friends, his family - and his long experience working for five-star hotels - to bring Lac Viet into being.

He collected old recipes from his mother, elderly relatives and people in his ancestral village and started putting them to the test, playing around with the ingredients until he found the right mixtures. The result was a menu that blends classic fare like Tofu Fried With Salty Eggs with unusual dishes like Egg and Cinnamon Spring rolls or Beef Grilled in Green Banana Leaves. "My idea is to find traditional dishes that even Hanoi people have lost," says Son. “I would like to bring people back to the past".

Calling on advice from friends who are architects and designers, Son turned a large French-built villa into a restaurant that offers five intimate and personalized dining rooms and an enclosed sunroom. While each room has a different theme, the various spaces are all decorated in a sleekly updated take on Vietnam's classic Indochina style, modernized through the use of funky, colorful lamps and artwork. The Lotus Room, for instance, is infused with a soothing pink light, while The Ao Dai Room features original floor tiles, art deco doors and windows, and walls hung with tasteful portraits of women in traditional dress.

With its attentive service, pretty ambiance, reasonable prices and carefully prepared dishes, this restaurant is sure to prove popular with locals and visitors alike.

"I would like people to come not only to eat the food but to taste our culture,” says Son. "Culture isn't something you can buy. You must experience it to understand it."

Lac Viet - 18 Thi Sach Street, Hanoi.