Cha Ca (Grilled fish) - The best traditional dish in Hanoi

1.  The history of Grilled fish:

Actually, accroding to many newspaper, Grilled fish is a folk dish of Doan family. In French colonical period, the No.14^th of Hang Son street belonged to Doan family, a patrotic family who always took their house as a place to bear De Tham’s insurgent. At this time, the owner of this family used to make a delicious pork-pie. Gradually, the insurgents decided to help this family opened a restaurant to sell food with two aims, one for supporting the family, the another for turning this place into their meeting place.Later, the name “Cha Ca” is named after the street.

Nowadays, at the 14^th Cha Ca street of the Old Quarter, this family still make this dish and has kept it as a business secret for many years. Up to now, “Cha Ca” has become a favorite dish of Hanoi’s gourmets. 

2.  Ingredients and preparation:

Grilled fish is the dish which requires high demand about the freshness. This requirement is described through the method of choosing fish- the main ingredient.

- Fresh hemibagrus is necessary. This is the fish which has little bones and sweet meat. The most special and extremely rare about this fish is the origin. To catch a good fish, people have to catch it at the junction of Bach Hac river in Viet Tri, Phu Tho province. Fish fillets need to be sliced from two sides.

- Fish sauce, galangal, turmeric, grains, pepper, lemon, shrimp paste, chilli, white wine, stem, starfruit, roasted peanut, green banana, dill.

- Fresh herbs: Apricot, pineapple, yellow ginger as the side dish.

- Vermicelli as the side dish.

3.  Cooking method:

-          Fish meat is marinated with galangal, turmeric, chilli, fish sauce accroding to one special and esoteric method of at least 2 hours, then clamp it on the pair of bamboo. The grilled man must burn the fire, then flip all hands to make two sides of fish meat become equally golden.

-          Making sauce is very complicated. Sauce is the premium shrimp paste which is squeezed with lemon, a little chilli, few drops of white wine and then soaked with belostomatid.

A delicious and tasty fish meat must follow the rule: fish meat must be not broken, not too dry. It must have the yellow colour, an aromatic smell with sweet and fat flavour.

 4.  The art of eating:

-          When enjoy grilled fish, you have to eat when it is still hot. When eating, pick up fish meat one by one into your bowl, then sprinkle the boiling fat cooking oil on top. It is served with vermicelli, roasted peanuts, basil, dill, onion and shrimp paste.

- There are two popular ways to enjoy this dish:

+ Put the grilled fish, onion and basil into one frying pan. When the vegetables is ripen, take it out and eat with vermicelli, herbs, roasted peanuts and shrimp paste by put vermicelli in one bowl, place vegetables and some pieces of grilled fish on top, sprinkle little peanuts, shrimp paste and mix all of these ingredients.

+ Put fish meat and vegetables into the bowl, sprinkle the boiling cooking oil and eat immediately. It can be eaten with baked rice cake.

One small attetion is that visitors should enjoy the grilled fish slowly less than usual in order to feel the aromatic of fish meat, the sour flavour of starfruit, the tasty of spice and the special flavour of shrimp paste and lemon.

5.  Notable restaurants:

- Cha Ca Thang Long at No.21 Duong Thanh street, Hoan Kiem district, Hanoi. Each helping costs about 150.000VND.

- Cha Ca Phan at No.20 Ha Hoi street, Hoan Kiem district, Hanoi. The price for per helping is 100.000VND.

- Cha Ca La Vong at 14 Cha Ca street, in the Hanoi Old Quarter.

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Tour relate:

-  Hanoi street food tour

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-  Hanoi Cooking Class.