Banh Canh Da Nang is one of my favorite Vietnamese foods. It’s heartier than most of the other noodle dishes, plus there’s no much variety among just this one dish that you could never eat it every day for a week and never have it the same way twice. Oh and did I mention it comes with fried breadsticks that you dip into the soup? I’ll show you why this dish is awesome and where you can get it!
Making Banh Canh
Although not every shop makes it in front of your, banh canh is actually really cool to watch people prepare. First, the dough is rolled out flat, then wrapped around a thick spool. While holding the spool over boiling water, the chef will take a blunt knife and chuck off pieces of the flour into the broth.
After the noodles cook, the chef takes a slotted spoon and scoops them out of the boiling water and into your bowl along with your topping of choice.
Ordering Banh Canh
Speaking of toppings, typically shops will offer some combination of shrimp, fermented pork, beef sausage, pork on the bone, quail eggs, fish, and sometimes even crab. The amount of choice varies widely between restaurants, with some offering just one option. If you get veggie banh canh, it’ll come with tofu, mushrooms & other goodies.
As if that’s not enough to choose from, you also get to select your noodles. Banh canh Da Nang generally comes in three varieties: bột mì, bột gạo and bột lọc. Some places will have more than one and offer you a choice when you order. I like tables, so I made one to compare the three kinds:
[table id=2 /]
One of the most famous shops in Da Nang is Bánh Canh Ruộng Phương at 47 Hà Thị Thân, open pretty much all day.
If you want a veggie banh canh, there’s a great shop at 14 Điện Biên Phủ. They only sell banh canh on the full moon day (15th of the lunar month); the rest of the month it’s a banging pork chop & rice shop which I’ll write about soon!
