Hanoi’s Cuisine embodies refinement and harmony in color, taste, aroma, and season. Each season in Hanoi offers its own enticing culinary delights. In the autumn, there is a plethora of irresistible treats like fragrant, sticky green rice (cốm), piping-hot prawn cakes (bánh tôm), and ripe persimmons (sấu chín dầm) that add a distinctive touch, making Hanoi’s autumn flavors even more complete.
Sticky Green Rice from Vong Village
Sticky green rice from Vong Village has long been one of the signature treats of Hanoi’s autumn cuisine. While it is now available year-round, the best time to enjoy cốm is during the cool autumn days. Since early autumn, mothers and grandmothers have carried woven baskets filled with fresh cốm to sell throughout the streets of Hanoi.
The flat, green rice grains are wrapped in lotus leaves to maintain their chewiness and impart a delicate fragrance, almost as if they’re bringing the essence of autumn to Hanoi.
Varieties of Treats Derived from Sticky Green Rice
From cốm, the people of Hanoi have created numerous other treats that enrich the autumn cuisine, such as cốm sausage, sticky rice dishes with cốm, cốm cakes, and cốm desserts.
Cốm-filled cakes with their soft and fragrant mung bean filling are beloved by many tourists. In fact, Hang Than’s cốm-filled cakes have become a traditional specialty of Hanoi, often used as gifts and ceremonial offerings. The outer layer of the cake is soft, enveloping the creamy mung bean and rich coconut filling, creating an alluring taste.
Cốm sausage is commonly enjoyed with vermicelli or rice meals.
Prawn Cakes
During the autumn weather, hot and savory prawn cakes become an appealing treat for locals and tourists alike, leaving a distinct mark on Hanoi’s culinary scene. The most renowned is the West Lake prawn cake. However, visitors can savor delicious and affordable prawn cakes in other places like Phu Tay Ho or Hang Bo.
On a cool autumn day, a plate of hot prawn cakes is sure to satisfy diners. To avoid overwhelming flavors, it’s recommended to eat them with fresh vegetables and dip them into flavorful dipping sauce.
Ripe crocodiles
Ripe crocodiles are a favorite snack for young people during the Hanoi autumn. Unlike the sourness of green crocodiles, Ripe crocodiles possess a balanced combination of sweet, sour, and slightly spicy flavors that create a delectable experience, making one want to keep eating endlessly.
The ripe crocodile’s skin is crisp, while the inner flesh is tender, releasing sweet juices. The mixture of sweet and slightly salty and spicy flavors from chili salt harmonizes with the tanginess of the rocodiles, creating a pleasant sensation. Therefore, ripe crocodiles become an addictive snack during Hanoi’s autumn.
Dong Du guavas
As autumn arrives, the green and fragrant Dong Du guavas become a longing for many people when thinking of Hanoi’s autumn cuisine.
Dong Du Village (in Gia Lam District, Hanoi) is renowned as the “guavas village” that produces this unique fruit in the region. Nurtured by the fertile alluvial soil along the Red River, Dong Du guavas possess a flavor superior to those from other areas. Although they are not large, Dong Du guavas are plump, crunchy, and sweet. When ripe, they emit a delightful aroma and offer a juicy sweetness that stimulates the senses.
Nowadays, Dong Du guavas are available year-round (also known as four-season guavas), but autumn remains the ideal time to enjoy the ripe, fragrant, and sweet guavas that tantalize the taste buds.
Xuan Dinh Pink Persimmons
Among the distinctive and delicious autumn treats of Hanoi, Xuan Dinh pink persimmons are sweet, fragrant, and delightful. Xuan Dinh pink persimmons are a source of pride and a precious gift for Hanoi.
Only during the autumn season can one savor the pink persimmons with their delicate pink skin, smooth flesh, and a tantalizing scent that cannot be matched anywhere else.
Candied Persimmons While many fruits are available year-round, candied persimmons are a delicacy that can only be enjoyed during certain times of the year. When discussing Hanoi’s delectable offerings during the autumn, candied persimmons are a must-mention treat. Candied persimmons are crisp, refreshing, slightly bitter, and are also popularly included in the Mid-Autumn Festival feasts.
Not only is candied persimmon a delicious autumn treat in Hanoi, but it also contains compounds that researchers have found to have potential anticancer properties. Therefore, if you have the chance to visit Hanoi during the autumn, don’t miss out on these treats that contribute to the flavors, colors, and tastes of Hanoi’s autumn.
Red Persimmons
Alongside candied persimmons, red persimmons are also a type of fruit that appears exclusively in Hanoi during the autumn. Red persimmons have a thin skin, plump fruit, and an enticing ruby-red color.
Red persimmons are not meant to be consumed while still hard; they must be allowed to ripen slightly before they are truly delicious. If consumed slightly too early, they may be dry and astringent, and if consumed slightly too late, they may have lost their appeal.
When ripe, red persimmons are soft, sweet, and not overly astringent, allowing the experience of both the juicy flesh and the slightly grainy seeds. Their taste and the texture of the seeds often evoke a mouth-watering sensation, especially when autumn arrives.
Traditional Hanoi Mooncakes
The most famous traditional mooncake shop in Hanoi, which is always packed with customers during the autumn, is Bao Phuong on Thuy Khue Street.
For generations, this renowned traditional bakery has continued to produce mooncakes in the traditional style, preserving the original flavors of the baked and sticky mooncakes of the past. The baked and sticky mooncakes are filled with a mixture of ingredients, including lotus seeds and candied winter melon, all wrapped in small, fragrant lime leaves, delivering the traditional flavor of the Mid-Autumn Festival to households.
Furthermore, customers have the opportunity to watch the bakers meticulously prepare the dough, knead it, shape the cakes, and place them in the oven. As a result, the freshly baked cakes come out hot, aromatic, and fragrant, one after the other.
