Bánh tôm Hồ Tây: shrimp fritters on the causeway
Whole freshwater shrimp and sweet potato fried into a lacy slab, eaten on the strip of road between West Lake and Trúc Bạch. A dish that is half about where you eat it.
Some dishes travel. This one does not, and it is honest enough to say so in its own name.
Bánh tôm Hồ Tây — West Lake shrimp cake — is a batter of sweet potato and whole freshwater shrimp, deep-fried into a flat, lacy, irregular slab, and eaten within sight of the lake the shrimp used to come from. You can get bánh tôm elsewhere in Hanoi. It is fine elsewhere. It is not the same thing.
What it is
Batter — rice flour and wheat flour, sometimes with a little turmeric for colour, loosened until it runs.
Sweet potato — cut into matchsticks and stirred through the batter in quantity. This is more of the dish than people expect; bánh tôm is as much a sweet potato fritter as a shrimp one.
Shrimp — small freshwater shrimp, used whole, shell and head and all. They sit on top of the batter and go scarlet and brittle in the oil. You eat them entire. The shell is thin enough to shatter.
Fried in a shallow ladle lowered into hot oil, so the fritter sets into a rough disc with a lacework of crisp edges and a denser centre.
What comes with it
Nước chấm — the same diluted fish sauce as everywhere, with green papaya and carrot slivers pickled in it.
A plate of greens — lettuce, perilla, rau mùi, sometimes shiso.
How it is eaten: cut off a piece with scissors or chopsticks, lay it on a lettuce leaf, add a herb, roll it loosely, dip, eat.
The wrapping is not optional decoration. A deep-fried sweet potato slab on its own is heavy; with a cold lettuce leaf and a sharp pickle it is balanced. Nearly every complaint about bánh tôm being greasy comes from someone who ate it unwrapped.
The two-minute rule
Bánh tôm goes from excellent to disappointing faster than almost anything else in this guide.
Out of the oil it is brittle at the edges and steaming in the middle. Four or five minutes later the residual steam has softened it from the inside and it is a different, sadder object.
So: eat it immediately, and do not order it to take away. If a plate arrives at your table that is not hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold, send it back or order a fresh one.
This also means it is a poor choice for a large group ordering at once, because the last plate will have been sitting.
Where to look
The causeway between West Lake and Trúc Bạch. The strip of road separating the two lakes is the home of the dish, and the long-established restaurant there — a large, slightly institutional place with lake views on both sides — is the one everyone means when they say bánh tôm Hồ Tây.
It is touristed. It is also, straightforwardly, the right place to eat it, because the setting is half the dish: you are on a narrow road with water on both sides, eating something named after the water.
Smaller stalls along the Tây Hồ lakeside roads do a cheaper, less formal version, often alongside bún ốc and ốc nóng. Frequently just as good and considerably more relaxed.
Old Quarter fryer corners sometimes do a small bánh tôm. It is a snack rather than the dish, and it is not really what this article is about.
When
Afternoon and evening, roughly 3pm to 9pm. The causeway is at its best around sunset, which is also when it is busiest.
Autumn and winter are better than high summer — it is fried food eaten outdoors, and the West Lake wind in November is part of the appeal.
What it costs
70,000–120,000 VND for a plate at the causeway restaurant, which is two or three fritters and enough for one person as a snack or two people sharing. 40,000–60,000 VND at the smaller lakeside stalls.
Beer is the correct accompaniment and is cheap everywhere along there.
How to order
“Một đĩa bánh tôm” — one plate of bánh tôm. “Mới rán” — freshly fried. Worth saying at the busier places. “Thêm rau” — more greens.
At the causeway restaurant there will be a fuller menu with bún ốc, nem and lake fish. The bánh tôm is the reason to be there; the rest is filler.
Making a proper evening of it
Bánh tôm is a snack, not a dinner, and the best use of it is as the first stop in a Trúc Bạch evening:
- Bánh tôm on the causeway around five or six, with a beer, watching the light go.
- Walk south onto the Ngũ Xã peninsula.
- Phở cuốn for dinner — cold, fresh, the exact opposite texture.
- Ốc nóng or a bia hơi corner afterwards if the evening is going well.
That is about a fifteen-minute walk end to end and it is one of the better food evenings in Hanoi that does not involve the Old Quarter at all.
If you only do one thing
Go to the causeway an hour before sunset. Order one plate. Wrap every piece in lettuce with a perilla leaf before dipping. Eat it while it is still too hot.
Then walk south for phở cuốn.
Next: ốc nóng — how to order snails without embarrassing yourself.