The East, Hanoi, Vietnam

The Micheline Guide gives this a Bib Gourmand rating, and that is a level of the guide that we have really enjoyed. The fact that Vietnam is amongst the countries that get ratings is a puzzle (other than it is a former French colony, and maybe that is the beginning and end of it, I do not know). In any case, after a night haunting multiple restaurants that were not exactly street food but were inhabited almost solely by locals, we went the other direction.

The meal was quite reasonable by Michelin Guide standards--$50 that included a beer for each of us (the wine in Vietanm is crazy expensive and we did not have any the entire trip), we were disappointed. The food looked far better than it tasted, and we were left to wonder if it was trying to gear towards non-Vietnamese diners. The seafood was fresh but the flavors were almost bland, and so overall it was a miss for us. We went back to places where we couldn't eat the uncooked vegetables nor have ice in our beverages, but the food was undeniably more richly flavored and a fraction of the cost.