3 days in Hanoi

Up a steep flight of well-trodden stairs, I reach a dusky neon-tit room. The owner sits me down at a pale-green, melamine-topped table next to a large open window. The view is of angry electricity cable and Christmas lights and hammer and sickle motifs string the street. Below, thousands of tidily turned-out kids in ties and crisp shirts mill towards a concert, waving red national flags, their gold stars festive with light. Above me, a gravity-defying shrine juts, table-like, out of the wall on high, displaying little cabinets of gods, incense, and fake roses in a blue-and-white china vase, all coated in a delicate bloom of cooking fat. Nothing cools, as it’s as hot in as it is out. All is as clogged as the glaze on the vase. There’s no menu, no choice, and no luxuries. Yet I’ve made it, just before closing, in time for the most heavenly herby noodled thing on earth. At Cha Ca La Vong, a restaurant in Cha Ca Street, Hanoi, they dish up only one thing: cha ca (grilled fish with noodles).